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.
May 05
StevenDeamAerospace Machining, Lean Manufacturing, Precision Machining, Technology Aerospace Machining, Lean Manufacturing, overproduction, wastes
Lean manufacturing is a concept that most businesses strive for and many claim. The primary concept of lean manufacturing is eliminating all unnecessary costs and time associated with production. The primary way most companies will start with Lean is to manufacture parts as fast as possible – to get as much production from each machine as possible. As the cycle time decreases wasted machine time decreases as well. This is a great start to lean manufacturing, but it is also the most common method. Many companies focus on cycle time reduction almost entirely in their lean efforts.
Cycle Time reduction works best in environments where a machine shop is producing the same part for a long duration. This is typically a full production shop and will have dedicated machinery to optimize a single process to the fullest extent possible. In the aerospace machining industry or custom machined parts production we are not producing high enough volumes of many parts to dedicate an entire machine to a single part. As such aerospace machine shops and custom manufacturing shops (or job shops) will face additional difficulties in going ‘lean’.
Adjusting the cycle time down by 10% is not as effective of a lean tool when machine time may only be 60% or less of the time spent on producing a given part. The lower the proportion of machine time to non-machine time in a job, the more important it is to go lean in additional ways. in connection to that – the more often a machine needs to be set up for a new job the more non-machine cost is in the job – for reference a single aerospace machined part may have 5 or 6 separate machining operations each requiring an additional setup on the machine. Transferring the material to different areas, setting up the machine, inspecting the part throughout production, and other items add to the non-machine time at every step.
Over the next few posts I will be looking at the 7 wastes identified in a typical lean manufacturing implementation and how CNC Industries deals with each on in relation to our low volume / high mix work. We have some production jobs as well, but those are handled in slightly different ways, and will be discussed at a later time.
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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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Mar 09
StevenDeamDocument Management, Precision Machining, Technology Document Management, ERP, management, Technology
Document Management is a very tricky and important skill to have in a Precision Machine Shop. At CNC Industries, we deal with a wide variety of custom parts. Some are simple and some are very complex parts. Either way, each part that we machine has a variety of dimensions which may be very critical to the part. In addition to the physical dimensions, in dealing with aerospace or military manufactured parts, there may be a large number of quality specifications which need to be followed.
CNC Industries uses a component of our ERP system to handle our document management needs. Job Manager tracks all pertinent documents for all of the thousands of custom parts that we manufacture. The Doc Manager Module is fully searchable, indexed, and has security implemented. All uses may see only the documents that they need to, and any documentation that is needed is available quickly.
Gone are the days of the 50 page Job Router. With our Paperless Doc Manager system, we have been able to save time and money while ensuring that all of our information is kept up to date at all times. All documents are updated in real time allowing us to quickly react to any engineering or customer changes that occur.
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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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Mar 01
StevenDeamPrecision Machining, Technology Continuous Improvement, Job Manager, Precision Machining, Technology
There is a lot of buzz about continuous improvement in the business world today. As a precision machine shop that focuses on contract manufacturing, CNC Industries has a different perspective than am office or a production machining facility. While we do have several production jobs, the bulk of our work comes in short term contracts.
With short term contracts we do not have the luxury of being able to improve upon our performance throughout a physical run of a job. Our customers demand a high level of precision, so we also cannot ‘dial the tolerance in’ over time. Instead we need to focus on getting a repeatable general process developed which allows us to quickly and efficiently switch between our various contracted jobs.
Our continuous improvement initiative needs to account for the fact that our machines may be running different custom parts tomorrow than they are making today. With all of this in mind, we allow each person in our company to suggest improvements both to how we run an individual machined part, as well as suggestions for the overall process of machining, how we get ready to machine parts, ability to keep precision, and any other facet of how our company works. Our Process Change Request system ensures that each employee has the ability to express their thoughts for improvement in a way that will be reviewed in a timely manner.
Through the use of technology – specifically our ERP system Job Manager, we are able to monitor how effective we are from day to day. We are able to track overall shop performance as well as any individual job performance. We make sure that all of our machinery is kept up-to-date with maintenance and we regularly purchase new equipment as needed. As we see areas that are lagging in performance we are able to quickly remedy any deficiencies.
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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based Job-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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