Page 34 - MetalForming December 2017

2017Awards
of Excellence
in Metalforming
The Precision Metalforming Association (PMA) recognizes the best our industry has to offer.
BY LOUIS A. KREN, SENIOR EDITOR
Four organizations are the proud recipients of PMA’s 2017 Awards of Excellence. An annual affair, PMA rec- ognized this year’s winners at FABTECH in Chicago this past November. The honorees, selected by a committee of association members, met strict criteria and demonstrated excellence in their selected categories.
Overall, the awards recognize the high standards of achievement set by the metalforming industry in the areas of design, product development, safety, process control, quality, productivity, training and education, and innovation and technology.
Productivity Award
Anchor Manufacturing Group
Anchor Manufacturing Group, Inc., Cleveland, OH, earned the 2017 Zierick Manufacturing Corporation Productivity Award for its handling of a difficult-to-produce class-A part,
an automotive side-sill. A producer of stampings and assem- blies for a variety of industries, the company has a core area of expertise in class-A-appearance trim parts such as this one, which presented many challenges from the onset of the project due to the need to maintain critical appearance standards.
Part scratches represented the first major issue as the repeating location of the scratches indicated that the parts became scratched during transit to the customer. Anchor developed two new packaging concepts to eliminate this scratching.
A second issue involved inspector agreement—internally between Anchor’s own inspectors, and between Anchor’s inspectors and its customer’s inspectors. The company per- formed a Kappa study to evaluate how the inspectors’ inspec- tion of parts compared to one another as well as to the process expert. With regard to the inspector agreement, the team determined it to be critical that both parties view the parts in
To improve inspection of a Class-A-finish automotive side sill, Anchor built a part stand and positioned it for maximum effec- tiveness during inspections. As a result of this and related improvements, the company has saved $150,000 annually due to scrap reduction, productivity increases and on-time delivery.
32 MetalForming/December 2017
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