Page 15 - MetalForming August 2010

200-ton press. Stafford also installed Wintriss SmartPac 2 controls to each new line, with the Wintriss Lets Line Efficiency Tracking Software.
The Diversification Journey
Hickory Springs began in 1944 as a manufacturer of coiled springs for fur- niture and eventually became one of the largest manufacturers of motion mechanisms for furniture items such as recliners and sleep-sofas. It also operates an automotive-supply group (Hickory Springs Automotive) and a tube-mill division. Core competencies in metal- forming include fourslide and clip stamping, and when the market for its core products dropped off beginning in the early 2000s, the firm looked to cap- italize on its metalforming expertise to expand into new markets.
“Beginning in 2006, we set out to diversify to where at least 20 percent of our work would be outside the furniture industry,” says Williams, describing the goal of managers at the Ft. Smith plant, one of only two metalforming shops serving Hickory Springs, which operates 55 plants in all. “Immediately taking advantage of the customer base from our tube mill, we were able to quickly add some of those customers to our stamping-customer list and provide them with parts as well as value-added
Coe Press supplied identical, conventional feed lines for the 200- and 600-ton presses, which include a servo feed mounted to each press as well as a straight- ener, threading reel and 20,000-lb.-capacity coil car. A 42-in. line mounts to the 600-ton press, a 36-in. line to the 200-ton press.
The plant’s new 200-ton press line runs some of the smaller dies needed for its automotive-assembly program, such as the stamped brackets shown exiting here from a two-out die that runs at 50 strokes/min.
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assemblies. Contract stamping now accounts for some 80 percent of our production—we’re manufacturing components for the RV and automotive industries, as well as for retail stores,” adds Williams.
The big job in that lot has been stamping and welding automotive sub- assemblies (for one of the company’s tube-mill customers), a project that launched in February 2010. “Some of the dies for this program measure 12 ft. long,” says manufacturing engineer Tim Wells, “which filled up the biggest press
we had when we first bid on the project. So, we went looking for a new press to handle those dies and that allow us to work with even larger dies.
“This facility had not purchased any new press equipment in a long time,” Wells continues, noting that much of the metalforming equipment in the plant had been acquired on the used market. “Our press lines had been mixed and matched, and so did not always operate at their optimum efficiency level. When we committed to expanding and to becoming a supplier of contract stampings that customers could rely on—not only for quality but also for quick turnaround on high-volume work —we decided that new, fully engineered press lines were the way to go. And we’ve been proven right on that belief, over and over again.”
“We’re setting up stock levels with each customer,” adds Williams, “to ensure we can meet just-in-time requirements. Deadlines are particu- larly tight with one of our retail-store customers, for whom the stock level might be 10,000 for one part and then they’ll get a contract for 100,000 and need them in two weeks. We’ve got to be able to react quickly, and before we acquired the new presses that type of reaction time challenged us. But the new high-speed 110-ton press line and the 200-ton line have allowed us to