The rise of the rapid response cell in the metal fabrication shop

When production at Decimet Sales Inc. kept getting interrupted for hot jobs and the shop floor expressed its frustration, company management knew it needed a new way to approach its short-run and prototype work. That led it to create a rapid response cell at its fabrication facility, which would be dedicated to jobs that had a delivery date of less than one week, less than 50 pieces, or parts that needed rework. Decimet Sales Inc.

To say that the internet has changed the retail industry would be the understatement of the decade. It’s turned it upside down, shook it fiercely, and tossed it aside like the newspaper that used to get delivered to everyone’s house.

That sort of tumult has resulted in lead times that a metal fabricator can appreciate. For example, the hottest actress/singer/influencer might be unveiling a new line of high-fashion sneakers to the world, and a retailer decides that it needs new displays to capitalize on the buzz and turn that into in-store sales. The project is handed off to someone with retail experience, but with no real knowledge of how these displays are made. Some ideas of what is needed are there, but that still leaves questions about size, materials, and budget. Design, fabrication, and delivery need to be done in a month.

Decimet Sales Inc. (DSI) is the best friend of retailers and in-store marketing companies. The Rogers, Minn.-based metal fabricator has worked with companies to create displays and racks for several years. It’s maintained that business by being responsive for quick turnaround on prototypes and short runs—literally to the point where it sometimes delivers urgent orders in 24 hours.

The reality of the internet age is that those types of expedited orders are now the norm, and lead times are measured in days instead of weeks. DSI made it work, but it came at the cost of huge disruptions on the shop floor. Everything halted, from large projects that took multiple shifts to assemble to high-production runs for contract work outside of the retail sector, as the expedited orders were processed.

“We’d have multiple teardowns when these orders hit the floor,” said Troy Vande Brake, DSI’s operations manager. “You had to clear out material, change over the tooling in the press brakes needed, tear down fixtures in welding, and find a place to store half-completed parts, usually on the floor or in a rack. So the teardown could be a half-hour to an hour, and then you’re setting up for that expedited job, which could take an hour. We were doing that on average of two to three times per day.”

Shop floor personnel grew frustrated with the continual interference to the shift’s work. They knew that they could be more efficient if given the opportunity to stay on task in a consistent manner, Vande Brake said.

Max Foster, DSI’s controller, said the company had a golden opportunity to address that frustration when it made the commitment to purchase some new fabricating equipment more than a year ago. The new technology would allow the older equipment to be used elsewhere, and management had just the right idea: create a cell to take on the work that was causing all of the headaches for the shop floor.

Constant Change

In many ways a metal fabricating company is in a constant state of evolution. Fabricating technologies advance, and customers are pushing shops to offer more services and produce parts more efficiently.

DSI is no different. Jack Hines founded the company in 1982 as a broker for fabrication projects. He had spent roughly a decade before working for other fabricating companies and thought he could be a better interface between the buyers of the fabricating services and those companies that offered them.

His customers believed in him, and to maintain the service levels that his customers expected, Hines needed to take on manufacturing. He couldn’t afford to rely on others. That led Hines to build a production facility for Decimet Sales in 1996.

Hardware insertion is the first station in the rapid response cell.

An office building followed in 2005 and a new warehouse in 2006. By 2014 an expansion was done to accommodate fabricating activities, and powder coating capability was added four years later. Today DSI has about 80,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing space split between a machine shop and a fabrication shop and employs more than 100.

With this type of growth comes stresses, and by 2019 DSI needed to address its shop floor disruptions. Frustration among shop floor personnel was real, but that was just one symptom of a bigger problem. Not only did the scheduling conflicts increase the check of quality issues and blown lead time projections, they also threatened sales margins because delayed jobs could blow up budget estimates. Customer satisfaction and profitability were at stake.

That led to the creation of what DSI called its rapid response cell (RRC) at its fabrication facility. It would be dedicated to taking on prototyping and short-run jobs that had a delivery date of less than one week, less than 50 pieces, or parts that needed rework. The RRC was going to allow the larger projects and long-run production jobs to run uninterrupted.

Company management was able to carve out a 30- by 30-ft. space and move over key pieces of equipment. For example, the company’s new Amada HRB 1003 ATC press brake with automated tool change freed up one of the company’s older press brakes, which was moved over to the newly created space. The same thing occurred when DSI purchased a new 3,000-W Mazak Optiplex Champion fiber laser that replaced a 2,500-W Mazak Super Turbo-X 510 CO2 laser as the main laser cutting workhorse. The RRC now comprises the 2,500-W laser cutting machine; a 6-ft. press brake; a hardware insertion machine; and a welding table.

There is no material storage near the RRC. Material arrives on a pallet, works its way through the cell, and winds up on another pallet to be prepped for shipping. The RRC is located next to the shipping department to allow for an easy handoff between the prototype/short-run cell and those responsible for delivery of the goods.

Two people are dedicated to working in the RRC. They are cross-trained so that they can tackle every station in the cell.

“When we were talking about this, it was put up to a particular group, and some people stepped up. They really wanted to work in the cell,” Vande Brake said. “You’re not doing the same thing over and over, so people do enjoy it.

“Whenever an opportunity comes up for people to work in the cell, we typically have a line of people who want to get in,” he added.

Steps have been taken in the front office to address the existence of the RRC as well. DSI’s team of 11 engineers and project managers spends a lot of time working with retail customers to turn vague ideas into 3D CAD drawings and subsequent CAM files for the shop floor. To ensure that work destined for the RRC stands out from the typical jobs that require back-and-forth discussions with customers, DSI created a special prefix for the prototype and short-run work. In fact, Lisa Horn, DSI’s engineering manager, said that RRC work is where the more experienced designers are spending most of their time now.

With this huge change in the way that jobs would be hitting the shop floor, DSI also made a major commitment to its 13 welders who worked on the day, night, and weekend shifts. It was going to take a big step in trying to further minimize disruptions to really large jobs. Management called it a “24-hour weld lock.”

The cell also has a dedicated press brake.

“If a job was going to take more than 24 hours, it was going to stay there in the fixture. It wasn’t going to get torn down for any other job,” Horn said.

Diverting small and hot jobs to the RRC and pledging not to interfere with really large welding projects once they were underway was a dramatic shift for DSI, but the results have been pretty dramatic, according to Foster.

A Change Leads to More Change?

“The biggest advantage that we now have on the shop floor is that we can get production set up, and we don’t have to worry about tearing down and setting up multiple times. That keeps production flowing and keeps our schedule more attainable and more accurate,” Foster said. “We don’t have to shuffle things around as much.”

Vande Brake said the shop floor is excited because they feel like they can have more of an impact on their own work. They don’t have to worry about multiple interruptions during the day. They can focus on completing their tasks in a quality manner.

“We did see production efficiencies go up because they were now able to control what they could get out in a 24-hour period,” Vande Brake said.

That production efficiency opened up new capacity, and with the manufacturing economy revving up this spring, DSI took on plenty of new work. Foster said that the company hired about 25 people over two months in the early summer just to keep up with the new business opportunities.

So, what’s the next step for the RRC concept? Foster said that plans now call for trying to replicate the success of the cell in the machine shop. The super-quick responses to requests have helped to boost satisfaction with retail customers, and DSI wants to replicate that in all areas of manufacturing.

So enthusiastic are customers that some actually are asking for their own dedicated RRC cells, and Foster said that more cell-focused production might become a reality for the metal fabricator. It seems that adding internet-like response times to old-fashioned business-to-business relationships is a winning combination.

Because fabricating technicians are cross-trained for specific fabricating tasks if they are working in the rapid response cell, they also can handle welding jobs.