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August • September 2002 • Vol. XX No. 6 • An Arnold Publication |
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Lights Out At
Sunset |
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by C. H. Bush, editor; photos courtesy Sunset Manufacturing Co. |
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Suppose you land a job shop’s dream, a really big, long-term contract with high-volume requirements and a customer who appreciates your company. Further, suppose you have a modern, 15,000 sq ft facility, equipped with lots of advanced-technology CNC machining centers manned by highly skilled, loyal employees. Sounds like job shop heaven, right? Maybe, but suppose when you begin to analyze your manpower requirements, you suddenly realize you can’t keep up with demand, even running 24/7. You don’t have enough skilled people available inhouse and there’s a shortage of trained workers in your area. So, what do you do now? Tell the customer, “Sorry, we made a mistake? We’d really like to help you, but you’re wrecking our shop? We just can’t find enough manpower to do your job?” Not if you’re Jim Warren, president and CEO of 58-year-old Sunset Manufacturing Co., a successful machining job shop located in Tualatin, Oregon. “That situation is pretty close to what happened to us,” says Warren. “We were going along normally, growing steadily, but wrestling with the manpower shortage. Then we had a chance to bid on a product one of our customers was having made in Mexico from steel castings. We quoted on machining the products from solid blocks of 12L14 steel. Our price was competitive and the way we proposed to produce the parts allowed the customer to make design changes without the long lead times and costs involved with cast parts. We got that contractand everything was fine. The customer was happy and so were we.” But then the customer’s product sales took off. “Suddenly we were faced with a major increase in demand for the parts we were producing,” Warren explains. “Of course, we had no choice but to produce them on our CNC horizontals because that’s all we had.” Use of the stand-alone horizontals was all right for the short run, but it simply wouldn’t do over the long haul. Warren: “All of a sudden I looked around and realized that the way we were tooled, we were running 24/7 with manual operators and that we couldn't utilize full spindle time because we couldn't set up as fast as the machines could produce parts. When we analyzed the situation, we learned that set up time and cutting time were almost equal and that was intolerable. We had to find a more cost-effective solution.” Automation The Answer Warren and his sister-partner, Linda Nees, found a solution that not only met their immediate production requirements, but set them up for future growth as well. “We decided to invest in an automated, palletized manufacturing system,” Warren says. “We wanted a system that could run for hours lights out, yet meet our precision requirements. We also wanted maximum flexibility in the volumes and types of parts we could run. We wanted minimum setup time in relation to cutting time, and we wanted a system that could be operated by as few people as possible. On top of that, it was important to us to have detailed job-cost feedback. Over the years we invested heavily in developing our own ShopWerks software system to give us useful cost data. I didn’t want to lose that information just because we decided to invest in automation.” 3-Machine Hitachi Seiki System Almost as soon as they made the decision to invest in new equipment sales representatives somehow got the news and started bringing in proposals. “Actually that was good for us,” Warren comments. “It saved us a lot of legwork, because we got to look at a lot of different systems and almost every one of them could have produced our parts. However, I was determined to have a control system that could give us the kind of cost data we needed. In the end only one company went the extra mile to find a solution for us and that was Hitachi Seiki, represented by Selway Machine Tool Company.” According to Warren, instead of saying they didn’t have a way to interface with Sunset’s ShopWerks job-cost software, Hitachi went to work and solved the problem. “They looked at my job-cost reports and said, ‘No problem. We can do this. They worked together with Selway and a company that makes a DNC software system called Refresh Your Memory, which can pull the data from the HS500 controller. It was really refreshing to see, because they all really put forth the effort to help us.” When the smoke cleared Sunset invested more than $2 million in its new cellular manufacturing system. “The system we bought included three Hitachi Seiki HS500 high-speed machining centers,” reports Warren. “We tied them together with a multi-level pallet system serviced by a friendly robot that plays music when it’s in motion. We currently have 16 pallets with 3 more on order. The control system gives us the ability to mix short and long run parts and the whole thing can run unattended until it runs out of things to do. In our case at present that’s about 18 hours lights out.” In the end Warren’s main reason for selecting Hitachi Seiki was pretty simple. “Frankly the differences in all the systems we saw were very small,” he says, “but for us it came down to two things: a really user friendly control system and very worker friendly load stations.” Automation In Operation
How has the new cellular
manufacturing system worked out so far? All Machines Tooled The Same Way Sunset has tooled all three of the 180-tool machines the same way so that any machine can run any part at any time. “The advantage of this is that no part will go waiting for a machine,” Warren says. “If a machine is off line for any reason, the parts are simply scheduled for the next available machine. Our ratio of set up time to cutting time has gone from fifty-fifty to about fifteen percent.” Since the parts Sunset produces don’t need all those tools, they duplicate the most-used cutting tools. “We duplicate some of the tools,” Warren says, “because some parts may need as many as three of the same tools to get through the night. The machine senses when a tool has gone bad, changes tools automatically and keeps on cutting. It’s really amazing what the system can do.” The HS500 not only delivers 12,000-rpm spindle speeds, and feed and and reverse rates up to 1770 ipm, it comes with a built-in, programmed-in SPC system. “The system can use touch probes for both set up and QC, if required,” says Warren. “It constantly measures critical dimensions to make sure parts are in tolerance.” Other Benefits When Warren decided to buy the manufacturing cell he half expected resentment from some of his employees. The actual response surprised him. “Having the machine has actually increased our employee’s moral,” he says. “In fact, it has been the cooperative attitude of our employees that has really made this system work. The system seems to be fun and a source of pride for them. Everyone likes the little song the robot plays.” Another eventual benefit Warren sees from automation in general is that it may help increase employee wages. “With the gain in productivity eventually we should be able to pay our employees more,” he says. “In the long run that will make it easier for us to attract the kinds of skilled people we need.” Manufacturing Future How does Warren see the future for his company and others like it? “I believe that more and more product manufacturers will decide that the investment in capital equipment is just too high,” he says. “They really can’t afford to keep up with the latest technology. I think they will concentrate their efforts on product design and marketing and let people like us do the production.” And how does he plan to prepare for this new future? “We’re planning to buy another 3-cell Hitachi Seiki system just like this one,” he says. “Probably some time early next year.”
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