Manufacturing Automation Grows A Small Business From Job Shop To Product Manufacturer

Manufacturing Automation Grows A Small Business From Job Shop To Product Manufacturer

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A job shop that has been in business for a while has all the expertise that is required to be successful when making parts for its customers. Usually the customers that a job shop would serve are in one industry and have a long standing relationship with the job shop. This relationship has been built and become strong because of the ability of the job shop to meet the needs of the customers at the time that the customers require quality parts. An example of this type of relationship might be one that has developed between a job shop that makes pump parts for oil industry customers.

All the parts that are made by the job shop are replacement parts for pumps that are used in the oil field. There is a great demand for these replacement parts because of the heavy work that they are put through. Usually these parts will have a short life time and need to be replaced often and routinely to keep the machinery at an oil well working like it should. These maintenance part replacements are made at the job shop in small batches. There are several manufacturers of pumps that need these types of replacement parts, so the job shop is effective in creating many different types of replacement parts for a lot of pump models.

As part of the expertise of the job shop it is very efficient in turning the metal parts. The nature of the job shop operation is to produce the small batches of parts for many different customers on lathes and other metal cutting machines. The shop is producing the parts at a maximum production rate, given the current equipment being used and the manpower that is available. Management of the job shop is interested in improving the overall revenue of the shop and at the same time would like to increase the production rate of the shop.

It has been determined through market research that there is an unfulfilled demand for certain metal parts that the job shop has expertise to produce if the production capacity was made available. A very important support of the desire of the management of the job shop to produce products with manufacturing automation is that the employees have a full understanding of the manual production. If employees understand the manual production of the parts it will assist the business in moving to the manufacturing automation of those same products.

The current manufacturing process requires that an employee lift a 15 pound raw material piece to load into the turning machine. The production cycle is set to so that a piece must be loaded into the lathe every 2 or 3 minutes. This is the limiting point in the production rate. Actually this process can be dangerous and more than one employee has been injured doing this job. This, in itself, is significant enough reason for management to move the process toward manufacturing automation in order to eliminate the manual lifting.

In addition to the desire by management to move in to the manufacturing automation arena for production, there has been a shift in the demand for the manufacture of the pumps for which the company was supplying replacement parts. The suppliers of these pumps were not meeting the demand and there was a shortage of pumps in the marketplace. The job shop discovered that it as possible for there production to also include some of the manufactured products that were in short supply.

Knowing that the company could increase its product lines and the revenue of the business, management was then sure that manufacturing automation would have to be a main part of the move from a job shop to a product manufacturer. Putting the value stream map to good use, it was determined that the best way to accomplish the goals of increased revenue and reduced cost would be to install automated gantry loaders that would do the heavy lifting that employees had been doing. Automated lathes would receive the raw material and turn them to the correct size. Then the gantry would unload the product and load a new piece of raw material.

Management of the business realized once the manufacturing automation was in place and optimized that keeping manufacturing automation simple made sure that it was understandable and would keep the cost of it down. With the installed system there is very little changeover between jobs, so the production line is kept running to its optimum, keeping the production rate up. In this case automation is not set up to run unattended, like in some other companies. The automation is there to make the job of the operator easier. Production is up with less injuries to workers. Because of the types of products that are being made automation was setup so that two gantry loaders and two lathes faced each other.

This configuration allowed one side of a give part to be processed on one lathe. Then the parts was transferred to the other lathe to be processed on the other side. After the operation conversion the management related that it is important to keep an open mind when considering the move from manual processes to automation. The value stream map can allow management to experiment with configurations of automation with going to the expense of actually purchasing and installing equipment. Also working with a quality integrator can be a great help. Usually they will have suggestions about configuration that management may not have considered, and will save the company money when converting.

About the Author:
John Mitchell is President of Provision, Inc, an online publisher of information about the uses of automation in business. The company website,
http://www.provinc.net, allows companies to evaluate
job shop automation.
Requests for quotes can be submitted to automation specialists.



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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