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Maintain order in the fab shop with process refinement and tech

Attendees of The FABRICATOR’s 2019 Technology Summit in Denver learn how to overcome everyday challenges on the shop floor

Jeff Murphy of Precision Metal Manufacturing talks about the SafanDarley press brake.

Jeff Murphy of Precision Metal Manufacturing explains how inexperienced press brake operators can start making parts after a day’s worth of training on the company’s new SafanDarley electric press brake.

“How do you define chaos in your shop?” a speaker asked a roomful of metal fabricators at The FABRICATOR’s 2019 Technology Summit in Denver on Oct. 1-2.

Their responses were as varied as the metal parts they fabricate on their shop floors:

“Different jobs coming in.”

“Moving work across the floor.”

“Changing priorities.”

“Personality clashes.”

“Changing skill sets.”

Well, the commonality is “chaos”; it just manifests itself a bit differently in each of their shops.

“I will be the first to say that you won’t be able to eliminate all of the chaos in the shop. That’s just the life you live,” said Dave Lechleitner, senior business consultant, Ultra Consultants, and the person who asked the question about chaos. After 27 years of experience helping metal fabricating companies evaluate, select, and implement technology, he said he has discovered that complete control of the production process in a fabricating shop is a myth, but steps can be taken to introduce some sort of order. Fabricators got a chance to learn about different ways to accomplish that and see how other shops are tackling their own chaos.

Before any shop seeks out new technology, Lechleitner said, it needs to find out what exactly it’s trying to remedy. “That means identifying the chaos.”

Visitors watch the Mitsubishi 6-kW ML 3015eX-F fiber laser run.

Visitors on The FABRICATOR’s Technology Summit tour learn about the Mitsubishi 6-kW ML 3015eX-F fiber laser at Precision Metal Manufacturing.

For example, if the chaos is related to an inability to complete orders according to agreed-upon schedules, management should ask some basic questions: Are the parts too complex? Do employees have the right skills to tackle these parts? Do they have the right tools? It’s all about getting a small team together and repeatedly asking “why” until a root cause of the problem is revealed.

At that point, changing a process, deploying existing technology in a better way, investing in new technology, or some combination of these can be used to resolve the issue. Incremental improvements accomplished in these types of exercises pave the way for future continuous improvement activities, Lechleitner said. This is when a company can start to define strategic goals and use this same root cause analysis to identify areas of improvement, maybe even services that customers would be willing to pay more for.

In many instances, customers prize on-time delivery more than anything, and the fabricators in attendance got to see that in some of the plant visits scheduled over the two-day event.

Information Tames the Chaos

Precision Metal Manufacturing, Northglenn, Colo., is a contract manufacturer that is “looking for long-term relationships” with its customers, according to Clay Reiser, the company’s president. In seeking out those manufacturers that it can grow with, Precision Metal has to be a reliable supply chain partner.

“[Customers] have as many problems as we have on our manufacturing floor. We have to be responsive and demonstrate the ability to change,” Reiser said.

One of the ways that it can do that is a homegrown enterprise resources planning system that delivers work to stations that are ready for it. The material mover has a tablet that tells him what to pick up and where to deliver it, then dropping the work-in-process in a spot next to the machine. Reiser called this spot the “batter’s box” because it is next in the production lineup for that operator and machine.

Fabricating technology plays an important role in being able to meet on-time delivery goals, so it’s no surprise to find three to four pallets in front of the new SafanDarley electric press brake. Jeff Murphy, Precision Metal’s continuous improvement coordinator, said the brake can be set up and ready for a bending job three to four times faster than the company’s older hydraulic brakes. The tooling is easily inserted into the machine, and with a click of a button, the brake is ready for bending.

“We are able to hire people right off the street and have them set up and run [the press brake] by the end of day one,” Murphy said.

The one operation that Reiser said he wants to eliminate is deburring. Even with the deburring cell running at a high efficiency rate, Reiser said customers aren’t paying for this activity. Anything that can be done to reduce the number of parts processed in this area is a big plus, and he said it’s one of the advantages associated with the company’s new Mitsubishi 6-kW ML 3015eX-F fiber laser. Some of the parts coming off the new laser cutting machine don’t require any secondary processing.

Craig Wilhoyte, president/owner, C&D Metal Products, Northglenn, Colo., relies on information sharing to maintain order and flow on his company’s shop floor as well—even though his company is a job shop.

C&D Metal Products made its own brush tables.

C&D Metal Products made its own brush tables for working with surface-sensitive materials, such as stainless steel, at the hardware insertion machine.

“Even though we do the 500- to 1,000-piece runs, we’ll still do the five and 10 jobs as well,” he told visitors to his shop.

C&D Metal Products has five press brakes, three punching machines (including the Amada Pega 344 he started out with almost 10 years ago), two laser cutting machines, welding equipment, hardware insertion equipment, and ancillary production and storage areas snugly fit into about 25,000 sq. ft. of space. Wilhoyte said he keeps expanding in the same industrial park, knocking down walls next to his leased office, to keep up with opportunities.

Even in the tight space, C&D Metal uses the scheduling component of Global Shop Solutions’ shop management software to ensure the right job is being worked on at the right time. Machine operators can access job information and schedules at kiosks located on the shop floor.

The next big investment to boost production speeds and support the effort to maintain on-time delivery is an Amada 9-kW LCG 3015 AJ fiber laser, which will come with an automated load/unload system. To make way for the new equipment, Wilhoyte said the company is selling its old CO2 laser cutting machine and moving its older 2-kW fiber laser cutting machine to where the CO2 was. The new laser was expected to arrive in November.

At Prescient Co. Inc., Arvada, Colo., information sharing is just as important even if it is making one thing: galvanized steel structural parts. The key is that those parts—posts, panels, trusses, and floor systems (the latter of which is made only in the company’s other manufacturing facility in Mebane, N.C.)—can go together in a variety of ways.

This new type of construction is totally curtained around Prescient’s ability to cull information from the yet-to-be-built building’s design file. With all of that information, production is able to determine the size of the posts, panels, trusses, and floor systems; produce them; and bundle them strategically for quick erection on the job site. Company officials said that this approach can result in a commercial building, such as a hotel, going up 50 percent faster than a similar building made of concrete and 25 percent faster than one made of wood.

With that in mind, Prescient cuts a lot of galvanized steel tubing. That’s one of the reasons that it upgraded its laser cutting capabilities with a Mazak 3D FabriGear 220 II about three years ago. It can cut tube as thick as 3/8 in.

But once again, information is driving production. Digital manufacturing orders, accessible by computer terminals near every manufacturing cell, provide operators with the information they need to ensure that the order has all of its parts and that they are put together in the correct way. In the tube cutting area, for instance, the order lists materials for a bundle, and the operator can scan the codes on the material to ensure that all the pieces are there. When the bundle, with its different sized tubes with unique holes and laser-cut features, leaves the area, downstream operations can be confident that all the parts are present to continue part processing.

These metal manufacturers may not have completely tamed the beast that is production, but they do demonstrate that the shop floor doesn’t have to be the Wild West either. Some order is possible, which makes dealing with the unexpected a lot easier.

The 2020 edition of The FABRICATOR’s Technology Summit is scheduled for Chicago in the early fall. Interested parties can call 888-394-4362 for more details.

C&D Metal Products uses these kiosks for house computer systems.

C&D Metal Products uses these kiosks, which were given to the company by a customer that had extras, to house the monitors that provide the production schedule and job information for shop floor workers.

About the Author
The Fabricator

Dan Davis

Editor-in-Chief

2135 Point Blvd.

Elgin, IL 60123

815-227-8281

Dan Davis is editor-in-chief of The Fabricator, the industry's most widely circulated metal fabricating magazine, and its sister publications, The Tube & Pipe Journal and The Welder. He has been with the publications since April 2002.