Small-footprint material storage system helps manufacturer keep up with new laser

Situation

Danuser Machine Co. is a manufacturer of industrial and agricultural attachments based in Fulton, Mo. Founded in 1910 as a blacksmith and repair shop, the company has grown and evolved to a 120-employee workforce.

Recently Danuser purchased a new 6-kW TRUMPF fiber laser, and that acquisition revealed concerns about material accessibility on the shop floor. The company stored all 7-ga. sheet within a yellow-taped footprint and all 11-ga. material in a separate footprint. But with more cutting capacity, that system would likely be inadequate. Access to each material at any given time would be crucial to keeping operators and machines producing parts, and the company wanted to prevent workers having to spend time digging out the materials they needed, both to retrieve the correct size and to ensure the use of older material first.

The company also was concerned about product damage with the old system. Workers spent hours every week buffing out rust spots caused by wooden runners and battling warped sheets at the press brakes. With the new laser pushing faster production, Danuser couldn’t afford that kind of delay.

Having completed a building addition just two years ago, Danuser wanted to avoid another expansion, so the company set out to find an alternative for holding more sheet metal inventory in its existing space.

Resolution

Danuser veteran Noland Bartley found Lean Manufacturing Products through an internet search, sent on online request, and within minutes was contacted by a product manager. He took photos of the shop floor, showing material stacked six to 10 bundles high throughout—and also showing plenty of vertical space under the crane beams.

Lean Manufacturing Products designed sheet metal storage systems with maximum heights of 13 ft. to house 17 material bundles. The shelving is custom-spaced so each independently accessible cartridge can support 31/8 in. of raw material. No matter which material needs to be pulled, it is available in a minute, as opposed to 30 minutes of digging.

With this system, material damage is no longer a concern. The material does not come in contact with wood, forklift tongs are concealed inside tubes, and sheet edges/corners are always offset to the inside of the cartridge. In addition, injury risks posed by wooden pallets have been eliminated. Material in the cartridges stays trapped within silver perimeter pins to prevent sheets from sliding out. And with the sharp sheet edges offset to the inside, the risk of cuts to operator hands and arms is minimized.