Jul 23
StevenDeamAS9100, Certification, Precision Machining AS 9100
July 16th was the final day of our Stage 2 AS9100 audit! It has been a lengthy, stressful time to move from ISO 9001 to AS 9100. We have done extremely well in our audit process, and only have a pair of very minor findings to be 100%. Both corrective actions are completed and we are waiting on getting a little bit of paperwork done, and then final review from the audit board at SGS and we will be officially certified as an AS9100 company.
At CNC Industries we look at this as another way to add confidence to our customers – who are extremely quality conscious. As I have talked about on this blog aerospace machining is a difficult industry to be in. The price, quality, and delivery requirements put on aerospace suppliers are all extreme and the management of the business must be able to handle the many pressures and unforeseen issues that will arise.
Here at CNC Industries, we feel that we have all of the tools necessary to provide the best of the ‘three-legged stool’ to our customers – best price, on-time delivery, and quality. We look forward to issuing a formal press release as soon as the paperwork is complete on the audit.
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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation markets. The company presently employs approximately 55 people.
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Jul 09
StevenDeamAerospace Machining, Lean Manufacturing, Precision Machining
The final of the seven wastes that we are looking at is waiting. Any time that a part is waiting is additional time that you are holding the costs of the part without receiving the income of the part. Waiting, as we have identified it internally comes from three main places: 1) having a part or batch finish with one machine and the next machine required for the part is not available and 2) any part that is in a batch but is not currently being machined, 3) inventory.
The first of these items is very self-explanatory. A batch of parts sitting by a machine waiting to be run through that machine is very obviously waiting. What is a bit less obvious is that even while the batch is being machined, the majority of the parts are still waiting. If there is a batch of 500 parts that each take 1 minute to complete an operation then at minimum each part will have 499 minutes of waiting while the rest are getting machined.
In any production facility where resources are shared between multiple batches / parts, it is extremely difficult to schedule all of the jobs so that no part is ever waiting at all. In fact this scenario is used to illustrate a difficult to impossible problem to solve with computers – known as the Job Shop Problem. This problem may be especially difficult in the aerospace machining industry. With long lead times and large numbers of operations requiring many different resources, scheduling jobs to move through the shop at the best possible rate is exceptionally difficult.
At CNC Industries we address the problem of time wasted while a part is waiting in several different ways. One of the main approaches is our design of a universal fixturing system. We have designed a system of attaching fixtures to our milling machines that will allow a fixture to be machine independent in it’s use. We may design a fixture assuming that the part will be run in one of our Haas VF-2 Superspeed machines, but find that our Toyoda Horizontal is a better choice. With our universal fixturing system we can easily move the part to the most appropriate machine at the correct time and with minimal disruption.
Additionally we focus on redundant machines. Our capacity for production needs to be unaffected by any downtime that a given machine may have. We keep all of our machines well-maintained to prevent any problems, but there is on way to completely prevent down-time. With redundant machines we have the security of knowing that we are not going to be in trouble meeting our deadlines if a machine has any unexpected down-times.
Finally we have worked very hard to get our batch sizes as small as is reasonably possible while also reducing the setup time of each batch. This allows us to eliminate a sizable portion of each part waiting while the rest of the parts in the batch are being machined. The smaller batch sizes also help us to reduce our inventory and prevent the third source of waiting that we have identified.
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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation markets. The company presently employs approximately 55 people.
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Jun 18
StevenDeamAerospace Machining, Certification, Document Management, Lean Manufacturing, Precision Machining Aerospace Machining, Custom Machined Parts, ERP, Job Manager, Lean Manufacturing, wastes
The fifth of the seven wastes is the most readily obvious waste – defects. A part or product that is not made correctly and needs to be either re-worked or discarded, is obviously a waste. The time spent on the original part is wasted, the material and other costs are wasted, the time that it takes to re-work or re-make the part is wasted. Overall defects cause considerable disruptions and waste.
Once again high volume work has an easier time of removing defects from the process. the length of the run of a part will justify creating more complex and expensive fixturing to enable quality at the course – so that the part has little or no chance of being produced improperly. Custom inspection procedures will allow quick discovery of any non-conforming parts as well.
In a low volume high mix facility – as a large portion of CNC Industries is, making custom machined parts and precision aerospace machined parts, we cannot spend an extensive amount of time on fixturing – our lead time for the entire first batch of product is sometimes shorter than production companies will spend on a single fixture for a production part. The inspection requirements and quality standards will also vary – sometimes greatly – between parts running through our shop at the same time. We have to ensure that each fixture is made quickly and still performs as it needs to.
Of course defects are caused by a myriad of issues beyond just the fixturing the part correctly. We have many more methods of preventing mistakes and defects before they occur, but I think a more telling evaluation of a companies dedication to eliminating defects is the processes taken when a defect does occur. At CNC Industries, we place great emphasis on root cause analysis and corrective / preventative actions. As we are nearing our AS9100 certification, we are more aware of this need than ever before.
Our Corrective Action System is based on the Apollo Root Cause Analysis and allows and indefinite depth of root cause analysis. We regard and defect as a serious issue and are quick to come to an understanding of the root cause that allowed the defect to occur. With our ERP system, we are able to quickly resolve any ongoing systemic issue and immediately take the necessary corrective action to prevent future occurrences of the issue. Preventative and corrective actions and their resolutions are transmitted throughout the company immediately upon completion and necessary procedural and process changes are automatically updated. All relevant documentation is kept entirely in sync with our digital paperless document system.
The ability to adjust our entire process to address a deficiency in the processes that we utilize allows us to have an extremely low defect rate – and when the very occasional defect does occur we can quickly adapt and prevent the problem in the future.
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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation markets. The company presently employs approximately 55 people.
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Jun 14
StevenDeamAerospace Machining, Document Management, Lean Manufacturing, Precision Machining, Technology Aerospace Machining, Custom Machined Parts, Document Management, Lean Manufacturing, motion, the seven wastes
The 4th waste identified in lean manufacturing is Motion. Motion concerns the ergonomics of the workers in a process and any unnecessary steps or movement that they have in the process.
To again look at the difference of a high mix / low volume precision aerospace machining facility and a high volume production we will see a difference in the ability to reduce motion. In a high volume production environment you can count on a particular workstation being focused on a single task – even if that task is performed over a variety of individual parts, the motions and the ergonomics will be similar. In a low volume precision machine shop, the task on one day may be entirely different than the task of the prior day. While they will be related still – depending on the functionality of the machine at the workstation – the individual parts may require a significant difference in motion or handling.
To compensate for this changing process, CNC industries has designed it’s facility to accommodate a high mix of precision parts easily. While the information and documentation may vary from one part to another, we have standardized the method of getting that information into electronic information stations which are uniformly located near the workstations. Each worker in our facility may count on being able to get all necessary work instructions in the same way.
We have also standardized our machine setups with the tooling being handle off of the machine to eliminate unnecessary motion in the setup process. The advantages of removing extra motion include more productivity, less stress on the people involved in the process, as well as lowered chances of errors and mistakes being made. So even with a facility dedicated to fully custom machined parts and prototypes, we can easily remove unnecessary wastes.
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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation markets. The company presently employs approximately 55 people.
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Jun 07
StevenDeamAerospace Machining, Lean Manufacturing, Precision Machining, Technology Aerospace Machining, Custom Machined Parts, inventory, Lean Manufacturing, Precision Machining, the seven wastes
In continuing on the Lean Journey, we will talk about the third of seven wastes: Inventory. Historically, inventory was not considered a waste. Large batch manufacturing was a necessity at the beginning of modern machining and manufacturing. Inventory stocks were considered healthy as they indicated that a business could ship to their customers quickly. The story of Inventory becoming considered a waste starts in post WWII Japan. Japan underwent a transformation in their productivity and processes after WWII and began to compete well on the world market. Unfortunately Japan does not have the land area that America does, and therefore the cost of holding inventory was much greater – due to the higher property costs, etc. Toyoda quickly realized that smaller batches, when made efficiently, lead to lower overall costs than large batches do.
In a precision aerospace machining environment, a balancing act is needed. Since CNC Industries machines a large variety of precision parts we cannot afford to have a specialized machine for each part or process that we do. Small machine shops also do not have the luxury of a rolling assembly line between our machines. With these restrictions, and the large amount of processing and manufacturing time that it takes to make a single aerospace part, we are put into a more difficult position that a production facility. We cannot truly operate with no inventory as the goal would be, so we must decide on the ideal inventory to keep on hand.
Precision aerospace machining processes typically have rather long setup times relative to simpler machining processes. This causes the ideal batch size to increase in order to compensate for the lost time on the machine while it is down for setup. At CNC Industries we have worked long and hard to decrease our setup times and have successfully lowered our setup time by 75% over the last 5 years. This has enable us to lower the ideal batch size as well, which in turn allows us to hold less inventory.
In addition to the setup process improvements that we have made over the years, information management is key to efficiently running small batches. Smaller batches will mean more switchovers, more setups, and more jobs running at the same time. With all of these issues, scheduling is both critical and difficult. Job Manager II allows us to have a visual reference of the schedule at any computer throughout our facility and quickly identifies and problems or potential problems at an early stage of the process which allows us to quickly make any necessary adjustments.
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