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Preventative Maintenance Tips for Forges that Cut and Process Metal

August 20, 2017 / best practices, blade failure, blade life, blade selection, bottlenecks, continuous improvement, LIT, operator training, predictive management, preventative maintenance, productivity, quality, workflow process

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While some downtime is inevitable, more and more forges and other industrial metal-cutting companies are discovering that proper maintenance and proactive care of equipment can significantly reduce its occurrence.

The problem is that maintenance departments are typically busy putting out fires, which pushes anything “preventative” to the side. Why take the time to stop a potential problem when there are enough real problems happening right now?

However, as stated in the eBook, Five Performance-Boosting Best Practices for your Industrial Metal-Cutting Organization, proactively addressing maintenance issues allows managers to reduce costs, increase blade and tooling life, and, most importantly, avoid costly mistakes. “With a simple check-list, operators can enhance their knowledge base and positively affect performance on the shop floor,” the eBook states.

What does this look like in practice? According to the white paper, Accounting for Operator Inefficiencies in the Metals 2.0 Environment, operators can conduct daily preventative maintenance (PM) checks in less than 10 minutes. Programs can be as detailed as a manager feels is necessary, but in a band saw environment, the following are a few key checkpoints to include:

• checking coolant levels
• cleaning saw blades of debris
• visual tests of critical tooling elements such as the feed system and lasers
• double-checking parameter settings (i.e., speed and feed rate)

Although many shops conduct PM checks at the start of each shift, there are several ways managers can schedule their PM procedures. In a recent blog, maintenance software provider SM Global offers four possible PM schedules:

1. Date based: Schedule PM checks every X amount of days, weeks or months. So, for example, you can have a maintenance task scheduled every 5 business days, on every Friday, the second Monday of every third month, every January on the first Wednesday and so on.
2. Meter based: There are two different meter types. In one, you schedule maintenance every time a meter reading increases or decreases by a certain amount. For example, an oil change when a meter reading increases by 3000 miles. The second type is a batch meter. You schedule maintenance after an equipment processes X number of units. For example, replace a bearing every time the equipment produces 500 widgets.
3. Alarm based: You schedule a maintenance task every time an alarm condition happens. For example, an alarm could be excessive vibration on a machine. You can schedule a PM check on the machine when this alarm occurs.
4. Relative to another task: Start a new maintenance task when another task completes. For example, order more coolant every time you clean your fluid/lubricant reservoir and screen (typically every 3 months).

If your metal forging operation doesn’t have a current PM program in place, you may want to consider working closely with your equipment and tooling supply partners to set up daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual PM schedules. In addition to helping you create checklists, many provide complimentary annual or bi-annual PM check-ups, which can provide more in-depth equipment diagnostics.

Reducing Operator Error in Your Machine Shop

August 15, 2017 / best practices, blade failure, bottlenecks, continuous improvement, human capital, LIT, operator training, productivity, quality, Safety, workflow process

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A top goal of every operations manager is to reduce error on the shop floor, whether it be mechanical error or human error. While 0% error rates are pretty hard to achieve, the reality is that even a small percentage of error can quickly add up.

An article from Competitive Production puts this into perspective:

“If things are done correctly 99 percent of the time, that equates to two unsafe landings at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport each day; 16,000 pieces of lost mail each hour; 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions each year; or 500 incorrect surgical procedures completed each week. In manufacturing, the slightest of errors, for example one-tenth of a percent, can have a significant impact on a company’s financial performance and profitability.”

When it comes to band sawing, error remains a top concern for managers. As Matthew Lacroix of LENOX explains here, fabricators and other metal-cutting shops have three main areas of concern regarding their band saw processes. “The top frustrations that we repeatedly hear from fabricators are machine downtime, blade failure, and operator error,” he tells Canadian Metalworking. “In each case, there are steps they can take within their own organizations to manage the problems.”

The white paper, Accounting for Operator Inefficiencies in the Metals 2.0 Environment, provides a few steps managers can take to reduce error in their band saw department:

• Optimize workflow. Reducing error and increasing productivity often go hand-in-hand, and taking steps to optimize workflow often accomplishes both. This typically includes analyzing equipment placement, material flow, and ergonomics. Even something as simple as adjusting the height of staging tables can make a difference. By reducing the amount of times an operator handles the material, managers can improve operator efficiency, reduce the chance for error, and improve safety.
• Implement accountability procedures. Without a paper trail, there is no way to account for errors when they happen. One-over-one verification procedures can be used to ensure that operators are following the correct procedures and running saws at the proper settings. Band saw operators, for example, could be required to sign-off on paperwork once they have set up equipment and performed the initial cuts. Another operator or supervisor can then sign off to verify that proper procedures have been followed.
• Make operator training an ongoing procedure. Most shops have multiple shifts, which means that inexperienced night-shift operators may be running the same machinery as seasoned day-shift operators. This often causes inconsistencies in quality and productivity. By instituting regular operator training, managers can level the shop floor talent and add consistency to production procedures. Managers can discuss topics such as proper blade selection and use, scrap rates, and material requirements. What other strategies has your machine shop implemented to reduce error?

Four Ways Fabricators Can Encourage Lean Success

August 10, 2017 / best practices, continuous improvement, employee incentives, Employee Morale, human capital, lean manufacturing, LIT, operator training, productivity, resource allocation

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Continuous improvement and lean manufacturing are certainly not new concepts to today’s fabricators. The numerous benefits of “getting lean” have been widely accepted, which means that most shops have already undergone some type of improvement initiative. In many cases, understanding the benefits of lean manufacturing is not the challenge. The real challenge is making the initiative stick long enough to produce results.

Unfortunately, that is often not the case. Using a hypothetical example, an article from The Fabricator explains that it is not uncommon for a fabrication company to go through four or five different improvement initiatives, none of which end up successful. The problem, the article states, is that engineers and managers may make changes to the way employees do their work, but they really don’t spend enough time helping operators and other employees understand why or how to do it. Even if everyone is often willing to take on the lean transformation, managers need to teach everyone the “what, why, and how” behind the lean principles.

In addition, there are often employees that are hesitant to embrace improvement initiatives like lean manufacturing. Some may even actively fight against it, even while performing their assigned lean tasks.

The goal for any manager should be to not only get workers to adopt lean principles, but to fully embrace them. Getting everyone—from the top down—is the only way a shop will start seeing results. As explained in the eBook, Five Performance-Boost Best Practices for Your Industrial Metal-Cutting Organizations, for lean to be successful, “it must permeate the business silos and receive universal backing amongst senior management and employees.”

How can managers accomplish this? A recent article from IndustryWeek offers four ways fabricators can get even the toughest employees on board with lean initiatives:

1. Don’t Gloss Over the Fact that Challenging Times Lie Ahead. Instead of minimizing potentially negative consequences of the looming change, state flat out that some individuals will face more adversity than others. Much of this has to start from the top. The unknown intimidates, frustrates, and creates emotional insecurity. If leadership communicates and exhibits its vision, then change becomes the catalyst for improvement.
2. Evaluate Current Staffing. Lean management is not synonymous with layoffs. However, some team members are not open to working in a lean culture. They may not agree with lean philosophies, nor do they want to better understand these principles. If you retain these individuals as company culture evolves around them, you are not benefiting them by allowing them to continue working for a lean company. Consider respectfully transitioning recalcitrant team members out of their positions.
3. Pre-plan Team Communications. Use rich communication mediums to announce change. Face-to-face communication cannot be overvalued as a means to convey positivity, commitment, and optimism. An “all hands” meeting is an appropriate venue for the initial announcement. Do not make a habit of distracting teams from their primary responsibilities with frequent updates.
4. Highlight Empowerment Versus the Increase in Responsibilities. Team members accustomed to traditional workplace cultures will not readily evaluate their own actions and suggest process improvements. This type of self-evaluation may be completely foreign to them. Initially, many team members will find the concept of increased responsibility daunting rather than empowering. To teach lean thinking, strive to make lean ambassadors out of the organization’s influence drivers. Focus on those who can deliver change and who will become not only the informal leader on the floor, but also the industrial athlete of the cell.

While changing processes is certainly a huge part of any lean manufacturing journey, getting people to accept, embrace, and understand the changes is the first and most important step a shop can take. As many fabricators have discovered, missing this critical step could mean the difference between seeing results and hitting another dead end.

Strategies to Help Metal Service Centers Keep Safety First

August 5, 2017 / best practices, continuous improvement, Cost Management, industry news, LIT, operations metrics, operator training, productivity, quality, Safety, strategic planning

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Safety is one of those issues that every manufacturer knows is important, yet as evidenced by the unending list of OSHA fines, it is pretty clear that it often slips through the cracks. Even big name companies like Exxon can fall short.

Put simply, your manufacturing operation can never be too safe. Like any other process or initiative, safety should be approached with continuous improvement in mind. This means that service centers, as well as any other manufacturing operation, need to continually reevaluate their safety procedures and processes to look for areas for improvement.

The manufacturing industry as a whole is promoting this type of mentality, knowing that “safety first” needs to be more than just an underlying principle. It needs to be an ongoing, active practice. The Metals Service Center Institute (MSCI), for example, recently teamed up with the National Safety Council to offer ongoing, relevant safety tools and resources to its members. “Advocating for an industry-wide safety culture is a critical part of all that we do at MSCI,” said M. Robert Weidner, III, MSCI president & CEO. (You can access MSCI’s resources here.)

To help service centers keep safety at the forefront, the LENOX Institute of Technology (LIT) has researched some best practices being used by industry leaders. Read below to discover some safety strategies and the additional benefits they can bring to your service center:

• Implement Ongoing Safety Training. Almost every manufacturer requires new hires to undergo initial safety training; however, it doesn’t take long for an operator to take safety for granted and minimize its importance. That’s why many companies are starting to expand their safety training requirements. McInnes Rolled Rings, a forging operation featured here in Forging magazine, says that instead of just requiring new employees to have basic safety training session on day 1, it now requires additional safety training on Day 8, Day 30, Day 60 and Day 90. In addition, the company tells Forging that it conducts annual safety training for all associates (including office personnel) and has team leaders conduct “Toolbox Talks” throughout the year.

• Use Visual Devices. Don’t underestimate the power of visual safety reminders. LENOX Tools, for example, has implemented a Safety Sticker program, which visually displays whether or not its operation has had any safety incidents. Sticker dispensing stations and a safety calendar are located at every entrance to the facility, and every employee is required to put on a green sticker with the number of days “accident free” written on it. When a recordable accident occurs, everyone in the facility changes from a green sticker to a red sticker for a seven-day period. After seven days, everyone reverts back to the green sticker. According to LENOX, the program has been “a good rallying point for the facility and builds energy around safety.”

• Leverage Mobile Technology. Another way to encourage and enforce safety procedures is to utilize mobile technology. As discussed in this article from LNS Research, a growing number of manufacturers are using mobile devices and apps that require operators to log-in before using a particular machine, either as part of training or everyday tasks. Once logged in, the system can validate if that operator has completed a required training, read an update to a quality specification, and so on. If that person has not done so, the system will not let him or her proceed. Many companies are also utilizing digital checklists. Shops can use this digital approach to keep a record of what items an operator has checked off, as well as anything that has to be overridden on the checklist for a process to move forward (for auditing purposes).

• Undergo an Ergonomic Study. According to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Association (OSHA), ergonomics is defined as fitting a person to a job to help lessen muscle fatigue, increase productivity, and reduce the number and severity of work-related injuries. By making ergonomic improvements, your operation will almost automatically be safer. That was the case for California-based Earle M. Jorgensen Company (EMJ), featured here in a white paper from LIT. After performing an in-depth ergonomic study at one of its metalworking facilities, EMJ made several changes on the shop floor, including repositioning band irons and adjusting the height of staging tables. As a result, the service center was able to reduce employee injuries, improve operator efficiency, and increase output.

• Track Near Misses. As Modern Machine Shop reported in a column by Wayne Chaneski, one way to increase safety in a manufacturing environment is to report what he calls “near misses.” A near miss is an incident that didn’t result in medical attention or time away from work, but could have. Tracking near misses can predict potential workplace accidents and provide an opportunity to prevent them from occurring in the first place. Some common causes of near misses include electrical cords, hoses, or tubing on the floor; sharp objects inside a drawer; low-hanging objects; unsecured ladders; a hot tool or piece of equipment left out without a warning tag; and improperly secured items in cabinets. According to Chaneski, the best way to track near misses is to encourage employees to report them and to add them as a category during internal safety audits.

• Talk About It—Often. Perhaps the best way to reinforce the safety message is to talk about it—a lot. Structural Steel of California, a leading industrial metal-cutting company featured here, is intentional about making sure that employees know that safety is a critical aspect of the metal products it fabricates, and that mindset has evolved into an overall culture of safety within the company’s two North Carolina facilities. The manager holds a safety meeting every morning with the operators and a safety committee meeting every month. In addition to enforcing the safety message, this constant communication provides ample opportunities for the manager to discuss any other production issues that need to be addressed.

Achieving Operational Excellence in a High-Mix Industrial Metal-Cutting Operation

August 3, 2017 / best practices, continuous improvement, lean manufacturing, LIT, production planning, productivity, strategic planning, workflow process

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Over the last 20 years, lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, and other improvement techniques have changed the face of manufacturing. Kaizen programs, 5S, value-stream mapping, and other lean strategies have rendered impressive results in high-volume manufacturing plants around the world. However, not every lean principle is an off-the-shelf solution for operational efficiency. This is especially true for high-mix, low-volume manufacturing environments.

Industrial metal-cutting shops are often juggling multiple jobs—many of them custom and almost none of them the same. Production requirements, lead times, and due dates can vary, which makes forecasting and traditional lean concepts difficult to apply. In fact, according to the eBook, Five Performance-Boosting Best Practices for Your Industrial Metal-Cutting Organization, many small, high-mix operations don’t even attempt to implement traditional lean techniques because they are typically more successful in higher production environments.

The good news, however, is that lean manufacturing is evolving. “A growing number of high-mix, low-volume operations are tweaking traditional lean methodologies to their specific situation,” the eBook notes. “Lean manufacturing techniques can be modified to increase efficiency in even the most customized metal-cutting operations.”

For example, according to an article from Canadian Metalworking, one way to achieve operational excellence in a high-mix manufacturing environment is to create a mixed-model value stream. This begins by creating “product families” or groups of products that have similar process flow and work content. “The next step is to create one current-state map per product family and then a future-state design for that family that can achieve operational excellence,” the article states.

There is no question that this task can be complicated when dealing with a variable product mix. To help managers successfully achieve operational excellence in mixed model production, Canadian Metalworking offers the following 10 guidelines: (You can read the full article here.)

1. Do you have the right product families? Create product families based on similar processing steps and work content, not brainstorming.
2. What is the takt time at the pacemaker? Determine how often the pacemaker must produce a part to keep up with customer demand for the product family.
3. Can the equipment support takt time? Determine if existing machine capacity can support the product family within the established takt time.
4. What is the interval? Calculate how often the pacemaker will cycle through and produce all the parts in the product family.
5. What are the balance charts for the products? Balance the work content, per operator, to takt time to create continuous flow through the pacemaker process. There will be different balance profiles for each product within the family.
6. How will we balance flow for the mix? Determine how variation within customer demand and the product family will be handled, either by adjusting labor, sequencing, or work balancing.
7. How will we create standard work for the mix? Standard work means establishing one standard way to build the products in the family, and then having everyone follow that method.
8. How will we create pitch at the pacemaker? Pitch is a visual time frame that tells everyone in the value stream if they are on time to customer demand. The pitch created is tied to how often work is released to and taken away from the pacemaker.
9. How will we schedule the mix at the pacemaker? Determine the mix that can be supported at the pacemaker, and schedule the pacemaker to handle variation within the product family.
10. How do we deal with changes in customer demand? Customer demand can vary, and we need to pre-establish a Plan B to use when it does. Plan B might involve pulling a product or rebalancing the pacemaker.

Of course, this is just one example of how lean can be applied to smaller, variable manufacturing environments. For more strategies, check out the book Made to Order Lean by Greg Lane or these links of archived case studies published by Modern Machine Shop and The Fabricator.

While high-mix, low-volume operations certainly present a unique set of production challenges, there are several custom methods managers can put in place to reduce waste, optimize flow, and improve productivity. It may take a little research and some creativity, but leading-edge shops are finding that in today’s competitive market, the benefits are well worth the investment.