Page 10 - MetalForming July 2010

Productivity-Improving Obstacles
Fall Like Dominos
...thanks to new press controls installed on 10 coil-fed progressive-die presses.
• Production efficiency: Up 30 percent • Die crashes: Slashed by 75 percent • Die-repair costs: Down 60 percent
BY BRAD F. KUVIN, EDITOR
The domino affect through the vari- ous production operations at Cla- iron Metals Corp. began in 2006 with the acquisition of new press- automation controls, and has been sig- nificant and impressive. The results, some outlined in the box to the right, speak for themselves.
“Our new controls (Automator II units from Cieco Inc., Clinton, PA) have done their job for us, and more,” says Clairon tooling manager John Butler, “and we’ve seen a domino affect throughout the plant. We continue to raise our perform- ance standards, and adoption of new press controls has been a large contributor.”
On the Upturn, Finally
Clairon Metals operates a 114,000- sq.-ft. production facility and 33,000- sq.-ft. facility for assembly and packaging in Covington, GA, with 31 presses from 35 to 1100 tons. “We’re on the upturn now, finally,” says Butler, “happy to have been able to hire back several employees as our business has recovered from a tough 2009. We’re seeing a lot of takeover work from stampers less fortunate.
“But, I will say that we took steps well before the slowdown that allowed us to survive while others did not,” Butler adds. Those steps include careful mon- itoring and tracking of press downtime and production efficiency, and “getting
lean before we had to,” Butler says. “If we had not, for example, performed all of the quick-die-change Kaizen events we did in 2008, improved production effi- ciency from around 50 percent to 80 percent today, and cut our downtime from 150 hr./day (operator downtime throughout the plant due to idle equip- ment) to just 25 hr./day, we may not have been so fortunate.”
Clairon, which supplies stampings and value-added assemblies to the auto- motive, power sports, HVAC and metal- shelving industries, has evolved into a short-run high-mix operation to min- imize inventory buildup and meet cus- tomer just-in-time supply demands. It runs primarily coil stock of cold- and hot-rolled mild and high-strength low- alloy steels, as well as plenty of 300- and 400-series stainless used for ATV exhaust components and other parts.
Its sweet spot, says Butler, is sheet 0.040 to 0.125 in. thick, although its recently picked up a lot of 1⁄4-in. work
for automotive and truck brackets and f r a m e s . “ We r u n t w o w e e k s ’ w o r t h o f i n v e n - tory max for most of our parts,” Butler says. “So, if our typical annual volume for a part is 30,000 pieces, we’ll set up a press to run 1000 parts and place them in inventory—for some jobs that’s maybe a 30-min. run time on one of our coil- fed presses. The end result is that we’re forced to perform numerous die changes throughout the plant, all day long.”
Quick Changovers Get the Ball Rolling
Making dozens of daily die changes can strangle a shop’s throughput unless efficiency is optimized, and back in 2006 the plant’s pressroom struggled to attain a production efficiency above 50 percent. Typical changeovers were 1 to2hr.,butsometookaslongas6to8 hr. as press operators waited for quali- ty checks on first-parts off.
“We changed the procedure and now allow operators to begin to run parts as
8 METALFORMING / JULY 2010
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