Every Second Counts
Post by Mike Gugger
I have the pleasure of working with companies across the state and across industries… It is the fun part of my job, working with many skilled and knowledgeable people, helping out and learning new ideas and solutions every day.
A company I was recently engaged with had to learn the lesson I call “every second counts.” Here’s the situation:
The company made a strategic decision to take a job knowing full well that they would not make much if any money with the price they used to secure the bid. They won the bid, but are now struggling both with cost of production, but more importantly, with making delivery per customer demand.
Why are they struggling? Not because the job is a loss leader, but because there is just too much non-value added time in the process to make it a success for the company. Every second counts. When you are already operating on the slimmest of margins, don’t make it worse with waste in your processes.
As an example, the programmer has put in a standard retract plane into the CAM software – every tool comes to the same point above the part. This is done for safety purposes and is commendable. However, there are some tools that retract as much as 3 inches from the cut zone! They then reposition and then go back down to the feed plain. It’s not a big deal if it happens once or twice but this is with every feature, over sixty of them!
Example number two… there are a number of tightly held bores on the part. Rather than evaluating the machining results of the finish bore and tracking them with SPC, the operator sees fit to check every third bored hole, regardless of the history of the feature. Again, his diligence is insuring quality features – but at what cost? If he were to track the measurements he is already taking, he could use that information to determine when to adjust. The operator could go well beyond stopping the machine after three holes and still be certain that no scrap is being produced.
Example number three… the bore tool (or any other tool for that matter) needs a new insert; the machine is stopped while the operator walks to the tool room to use the pre-setter. There is a tool probe system on the machine! How much time would that save through the entire project if it were simply programmed into use? Again the operator is diligently changing out the tool and insuring that it is set properly but again at what cost?
Every second counts. Take the time to evaluate the non-value added as well as the value added activities in a process. Don’t think that because the process is inside a CNC there is no waste. Use the technology and the process controls to remove the waste from inside the machine.
I do this with my clients all the time using a process I call “machining kaizen.” Akin to a standard Lean kaizen used to eliminate waste from a value stream, the “machining kaizen” is focused on removing waste from the processes inside the machine.
