Precision Aerospace Machining and the seven wastes of lean manufacturing (part 5)

The fifth of the seven wastes is the most readily obvious waste – defects.  A part or product that is not made correctly and needs to be either re-worked or discarded, is obviously a waste.  The time spent on the original part is wasted, the material and other costs are wasted, the time that it takes to re-work or re-make the part is wasted.  Overall defects cause considerable disruptions and waste.

Once again high volume work has an easier time of removing defects from the process.  the length of the run of a part will justify creating more complex and expensive fixturing to enable quality at the course – so that the part has little or no chance of being produced improperly.  Custom inspection procedures will allow quick discovery of any non-conforming parts as well.

In a low volume high mix facility – as a large portion of CNC Industries is, making custom machined parts and precision aerospace machined parts, we cannot spend an extensive amount of time on fixturing – our lead time for the entire first batch of product is sometimes shorter than production companies will spend on a single fixture for a production part.  The inspection requirements and quality standards will also vary – sometimes greatly – between parts running through our shop at the same time.  We have to ensure that each fixture is made quickly and still performs as it needs to.

Of course defects are caused by a myriad of issues beyond just the fixturing the part correctly.  We have many more methods of preventing mistakes and defects before they occur, but I think a more telling evaluation of a companies dedication to eliminating defects is the processes taken when a defect does occur.  At CNC Industries, we place great emphasis on root cause analysis and corrective / preventative actions.  As we are nearing our AS9100 certification, we are more aware of this need than ever before.

Our Corrective Action System is based on the Apollo Root Cause Analysis and allows and indefinite depth of root cause analysis.  We regard and defect as a serious issue and are quick to come to an understanding of the root cause that allowed the defect to occur.  With our ERP system, we are able to quickly resolve any ongoing systemic issue and immediately take the necessary corrective action to prevent future occurrences of the issue.  Preventative and corrective actions and their resolutions are transmitted throughout the company immediately upon completion and necessary procedural and process changes are automatically updated.  All relevant documentation is kept entirely in sync with our digital paperless document system.

The ability to adjust our entire process to address a deficiency in the processes that we utilize allows us to have an extremely low defect rate – and when the very occasional defect does occur we can quickly adapt and prevent the problem in the future.

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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation  markets.   The company presently employs approximately 55 people.

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June 18th, 2010|Tags: , , , , , |

Precision Aerospace Machining and the seven wastes of lean manufacturing (part 4)

The 4th waste identified in lean manufacturing is Motion.  Motion concerns the ergonomics of the workers in a process and any unnecessary steps or movement that they have in the process.

To again look at the difference of a high mix / low volume precision aerospace machining facility and a high volume production we will see a difference in the ability to reduce motion.  In a high volume production environment you can count on a particular workstation being focused on a single task – even if that task is performed over a variety of individual parts, the motions and the ergonomics will be similar.  In a low volume precision machine shop, the task on one day may be entirely different than the task of the prior day.  While they will be related still – depending on the functionality of the machine at the workstation – the individual parts may require a significant difference in motion or handling.

To compensate for this changing process, CNC industries has designed it’s facility to accommodate a high mix of precision parts easily.  While the information and documentation may vary from one part to another, we have standardized the method of getting that information into electronic information stations which are uniformly located near the workstations.  Each worker in our facility may count on being able to get all necessary work instructions in the same way.

We have also standardized our machine setups with the tooling being handle off of the machine to eliminate unnecessary motion in the setup process.  The advantages of removing extra motion include more productivity, less stress on the people involved in the process, as well as lowered chances of errors and mistakes being made.  So even with a facility dedicated to fully custom machined parts and prototypes, we can easily remove unnecessary wastes.

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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation  markets.   The company presently employs approximately 55 people.

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June 14th, 2010|Tags: , , , , |

Precision Aerospace Machining and the Seven Wastes of Lean Manufacturing (part 7)

The final of the seven wastes that we are looking at is waiting.  Any time that a part is waiting is additional time that you are holding the costs of the part without receiving the income of the part.  Waiting, as we have identified it internally comes from three main places:  1) having a part or batch finish with one machine and the next machine required for the part is not available and 2) any part that is in a batch but is not currently being machined, 3) inventory.

The first of these items is very self-explanatory.  A batch of parts sitting by a machine waiting to be run through that machine is very obviously waiting.  What is a bit less obvious is that even while the batch is being machined, the majority of the parts are still waiting.  If there is a batch of 500 parts that each take 1 minute to complete an operation then at minimum each part will have 499 minutes of waiting while the rest are getting machined.

In any production facility where resources are shared between multiple batches / parts, it is extremely difficult to schedule all of the jobs so that no part is ever waiting at all.  In fact this scenario is used to illustrate a difficult to impossible problem to solve with computers – known as the Job Shop Problem.  This problem may be especially difficult in the aerospace machining industry.  With long lead times and large numbers of operations requiring many different resources, scheduling jobs to move through the shop at the best possible rate is exceptionally difficult.

At CNC Industries we address the problem of time wasted while a part is waiting in several different ways.  One of the main approaches is our design of a universal fixturing system.  We have designed a system of attaching fixtures to our milling machines that will allow a fixture to be machine independent in it’s use.  We may design a fixture assuming that the part will be run in one of our Haas VF-2 Superspeed machines, but find that our Toyoda Horizontal is a better choice.  With our universal fixturing system we can easily move the part to the most appropriate machine at the correct time and with minimal disruption.

Additionally we focus on redundant machines.  Our capacity for production needs to be unaffected by any downtime that a given machine may have.  We keep all of our machines well-maintained to prevent any problems, but there is on way to completely prevent down-time.  With redundant machines we have the security of knowing that we are not going to be in trouble meeting our deadlines if a machine has any unexpected down-times.

Finally we have worked very hard to get our batch sizes as small as is reasonably possible while also reducing the setup time of each batch.  This allows us to eliminate a sizable portion of each part waiting while the rest of the parts in the batch are being machined.  The smaller batch sizes also help us to reduce our inventory and prevent the third source of waiting that we have identified.

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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation  markets.   The company presently employs approximately 55 people.

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June 9th, 2010|

Precision Aerospace Machining and the Seven Wastes of Lean (Part 3)

In continuing on the Lean Journey, we will talk about the third of seven wastes: Inventory.  Historically, inventory was not considered a waste.  Large batch manufacturing was a necessity at the beginning of modern machining and manufacturing.  Inventory stocks were considered healthy as they indicated that a business could ship to their customers quickly.  The story of Inventory becoming considered a waste starts in post WWII Japan.  Japan underwent a transformation in their productivity and processes after WWII and began to compete well on the world market.  Unfortunately Japan does not have the land area that America does, and therefore the cost of holding inventory was much greater – due to the higher property costs, etc.  Toyoda quickly realized that smaller batches, when made efficiently, lead to lower overall costs than large batches do.

In a precision aerospace machining environment, a balancing act is needed.  Since CNC Industries machines a large variety of precision parts we cannot afford to have a specialized machine for each part or process that we do.  Small machine shops also do not have the luxury of a rolling assembly line between our machines.  With these restrictions, and the large amount of processing and manufacturing time that it takes to make a single aerospace part, we are put into a more difficult position that a production facility.  We cannot truly operate with no inventory as the goal would be, so we must decide on the ideal inventory to keep on hand.

Precision aerospace machining processes typically have rather long setup times relative to simpler machining processes.  This causes the ideal batch size to increase in order to compensate for the lost time on the machine while it is down for setup.  At CNC Industries we have worked long and hard to decrease our setup times and have successfully lowered our setup time by 75% over the last 5 years.  This has enable us to lower the ideal batch size as well, which in turn allows us to hold less inventory.

In addition to the setup process improvements that we have made over the years, information management is key to efficiently running small batches.  Smaller batches will mean more switchovers, more setups, and more jobs running at the same time.  With all of these issues, scheduling is both critical and difficult.  Job Manager II allows us to have a visual reference of the schedule at any computer throughout our facility and quickly identifies and problems or potential problems at an early stage of the process which allows us to quickly make any necessary adjustments.

June 7th, 2010|Tags: , , , , , |

CNC Industries is Re-Assessed to ISO 9001-2008

SGS PROUDLY ANNOUNCES ISO 9001:2008 RE-ASSESMENT OF: CNC INDUSTRIES INC., A PRECISON MACHINING AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY

For Immediate Release

SGS is pleased to announce the successful ISO 9001:2008 Re-Assessment for CNC Industries Inc. A PRECISON MACHINING AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY. This re-assessment confirms that CNC Industries’ Quality Management System continues to conform to the requirements of ISO 9001:2008, which was originally certified at CNC Industries in 2003.

CNC Industries Inc., established in December 1995, specializes in precision machining of standard and custom parts for medical, aerospace, defense, semiconductor, analytical, and other industrial industries. The company’s lean manufacturing practices, skilled machinist workforce, and quick-turn machining solutions, include the latest technology in CNC flexible machining centers as well as the latest Information Management technology.

The majority of products are machined complete from aluminum or plastic plate or bar stock, or from metal castings or forgings. All manufacturing, sales and administrative activities are conducted from its 36,000 sq. ft. production facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The company takes great pride in providing customers with quality machined products and fabrications, delivered on time, at optimal and competitive cost.

CNC_ISO 9001-2008

For more information regarding CNC Industries Inc. please refer to the company web site, http://www.cncind.com , or call             260-490-5700       x123 or 122.

For more details on SGS registration services, we encourage you to visit our website at www.us.sgs.com.

June 1st, 2010|

Ordering custom machined parts with a new machine shop supplier

In continuing the last post on finding a new precision machine shop for custom machined parts, I am going to go over a bit of what to expect with the first order or two.

Communication is still the key to the process.  At CNC Industries, we have often been told that our communication is a large part of the reason we are a favored suppliers.   Precision Machining is a relatively demanding process still today.   The information overload that comes with each part drawing can often lead to overlooked features or specifications.

Aerospace components often contain numerous mil-specs, customer-specific specifications, large amounts of technical call-outs, and even separate purchase order specifications.   Parts that are less complex than aerospace components may have critical details that are easy to overlook.  Part Revisioning can cause increased complexity and another chance to overlook a crucial piece of information.   If you have not checked it yet, it is important to carefully evaluate into your supplier’s information management system.     The Boeing Company has stated that they consider a supplier’s information management system an important part of their selection process.

It is important for the new machine shop supplier to ask any clarifying questions necessary to get the complete picture of the machined part that they will be producing.   Ideally all questions from the machine shop should come out during the RFQ process.    However, it is not uncommon for the engineering team to take a deeper look at the part as they plan the production process.    For example, during the RFQ process for new customer that we recently acquired we were able to ascertain that they had mislabeled a set of drawings they had sent us to quote.   Through our examination of the part we noticed that some of the details seemed to be wrong for the stated use of the part.   We consider our discovery of this error on their drawing to be a large part of the reason we received the initial purchase order.

Another important aspect of the first job is to carefully select which parts you will be sending to the new supplier.    Looking toward a long-term relationship, it has worked well at CNC Industries for a new customer to order a variety of potential parts in the initial order.    That way we have a good feel for the potential piece-part complexities.   If you are to beging working with a new precision machine shop and send only small simple parts to them, you may find that they are not capable of handling the more complex machined parts that you want to order down the road.   Likewise if you are sending only complex parts and you want to have a single source to deal with for machined parts, you may find that the machine shop is not price competitive on simpler parts.   

As you can see from our parts profile page, CNC Industries works with a large variety of complexities and quantities on a daily basis.

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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation markets. The company presently employs approximately 55 people.

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June 1st, 2010|

CNC Industries Recieves Accreditation and A+ rating from Better Business Bureau

By Steven Deam Jr – CNC Industries, Inc.  Fort Wayne, Indiana


May 21, 2010


CNC Industries, Inc. Earns BBB Accreditation

CNC Industries is Committed to BBB’s Standards of Trust

This week, CNC Industries announced its recent accreditation by BBB Serving Northern Indiana.  As a BBB Accredited Business, CNC Industries is dedicated to promoting trust in the marketplace.

According to BBB reports by Princeton Research, seven in ten consumers say they are more likely to buy from a company designated as a BBB Accredited Business. BBB is a resource for the public, providing objective, unbiased information about businesses.

“We are pleased to be a BBB Accredited Business because we value building trust with our customers,” said Steve Deam, Sr. “Our BBB Accreditation gives our customers confidence in our commitment to maintaining high ethical standards of conduct.”

BBB Accredited Businesses must adhere to BBB’s “Standards of Trust”, a comprehensive set of policies, procedures and best practices representing trustworthiness in the marketplace. The standards call for building trust, embodying integrity, advertizing honestly and telling the truth, being transparent, honoring promises, being responsive and safeguarding privacy.


About CNC Industries

CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based Job-Shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation  markets.   The company presently employs approximately 40 people.

 

About BBB

BBB’s mission is to be the leader in advancing marketplace trust. BBB accomplishes this mission by creating a community of trustworthy businesses, setting standards for marketplace trust, encouraging and supporting best practices, celebrating marketplace role models and denouncing substandard marketplace behavior.


Businesses that earn BBB Accreditation contractually agree and adhere to the organizations high standards of ethical business behavior. BBB is the preeminent resource to turn to for objective, unbiased information on businesses and charities.

May 21st, 2010|

Precision Aerospace Machining and the Seven Wastes of Lean Manufacturing (Part 2)

In continuing on the topic of lean manufacturing in an aerospace machining environment today I will look at how CNC Industries handles the second waste identified in lean manufacturing.  The second waste is typically identified as unnecessary transportation.  At CNC Industries we look both at internal and external transportation as areas that can cause waste.

The costs of external transportation (shipping) are easy to identify.  With external transportation we can easily see the cost of the transportation in dollars as we receive bills from the shipping companies.  Any extra shipments obviously incur additional charges and it becomes important to keep the number of shipments required to an absolute minimum.  To facilitate this we often work with our outside vendors to have our parts shipped directly from one vendor to another in the case that we have multiple outside operations back to back.  As often as possible we find outside vendors that handle multiple processes to save both on the cost of production as well as the cost of transportation.  In addition our AS9100 compliant procedures for selecting and purchasing from our vendors allows us confidence in the quality of the parts that we have outsourced.

Internal transportation costs are often more difficult to quantify.  Many times companies will both start and stop their efforts on cycle times and overproduction as I talked about in the prior post.  Transporting the parts internally more than necessary is also a form of wasted efforts.  The cost of moving the parts throughout a facility may seem minor but all forms of transportation take up time and do not add anything to the value of the part.  In addition every time a part is moved it is another chance for the part to become lost or damaged.

Extra transportation can occur due to a number of factors in the manufacturing process.  If the parts were not scheduled correctly they may need to be moved aside to allow a different part through the machine.  Poor routing of the operations that the part takes through the manufacturing process may mean that a part is scheduled through machines that are far apart in the factory.  Poor engineering of the part machining process itself may mean that the part has more machining operations than necessary.  Any of these items may add additional internal transportation and raise the cost and potentially lower the quality of the part.

Our ERP System – Job Manager 2 – allows us to schedule our parts with confidence that they are engineered and routed correctly.  In addition to the initial engineering and routing we have a comprehensive corrective action system and Process Change Request system that allow us to continually improve our processes.  Each time we manufacture a part we are able to review and adjust the process and operations as necessary to make the parts even better and more efficiently than the last time.

Aerospace machining and the high mix / low volume work that comes with it creates additional challenges in scheduling.  Our engineering processes are designed to quickly work through the numerous issues with new parts and smaller batches.  Our scheduling module in Job Manager 2 has a visual scheduling board that allows us to quickly determine the best routing of each part and quickly determine any problems with the processes involved.  Job Manager 2 also allows us to analyze each part and quickly find any areas that have lower efficiency so that we may quickly focus our efforts in the appropriate places.

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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation  markets.   The company presently employs approximately 55 people.

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May 14th, 2010|Tags: , , , , |

Aerospace machining and the seven wastes of lean manufacturing pt2

Due to a few issues on renaming the old post I am repeating the original post with the original title.

In continuing on the topic of lean manufacturing in an aerospace machining environment today I will look at how CNC Industries handles the second waste identified in lean manufacturing.  The second waste is typically identified as unnecessary transportation.  At CNC Industries we look both at internal and external transportation as areas that can cause waste.

The costs of external transportation (shipping) are easy to identify.  With external transportation we can easily see the cost of the transportation in dollars as we receive bills from the shipping companies.  Any extra shipments obviously incur additional charges and it becomes important to keep the number of shipments required to an absolute minimum.  To facilitate this we often work with our outside vendors to have our parts shipped directly from one vendor to another in the case that we have multiple outside operations back to back.  As often as possible we find outside vendors that handle multiple processes to save both on the cost of production as well as the cost of transportation.  In addition our AS9100 compliant procedures for selecting and purchasing from our vendors allows us confidence in the quality of the parts that we have outsourced.

Internal transportation costs are often more difficult to quantify.  Many times companies will both start and stop their efforts on cycle times and over production as I talked about in the prior post.  Transporting the parts internally more than necessary is also a form of wasted efforts.  The cost of moving the parts throughout a facility may seem minor but all forms of transportation take up time and do not add anything to the value of the part.  In addition every time a part is moved it is another chance for the part to become lost or damaged.

Extra transportation can occur due to a number of factors in the manufacturing process.  If the parts were not scheduled correctly they may need to be moved aside to allow a different part through the machine.  Poor routing of the operations that the part takes through the manufacturing process may mean that a part is scheduled through machines that are far apart in the factory.  Poor engineering of the part machining process itself may mean that the part has more machining operations than necessary.  Any of these items may add additional internal transportation and raise the cost and potentially lower the quality of the part.

Our ERP System – Job Manager 2 – allows us to schedule our parts with confidence that they are engineered and routed correctly.  In addition to the initial engineering and routing we have a comprehensive corrective action system and Process Change Request system that allow us to continually improve our processes.  Each time we manufacture a part we are able to review and adjust the process and operations as necessary to make the parts even better and more efficiently than the last time.

Aerospace machining and the high mix / low volume work that comes with it creates additional challenges in scheduling.  Our engineering processes are designed to quickly work through the numerous issues with new parts and smaller batches.  Our scheduling module in Job Manager 2 has a visual scheduling board that allows us to quickly determine the best routing of each part and quickly determine any problems with the processes involved.  Job Manager 2 also allows us to analyze each part and quickly find any areas that have lower efficiency so that we may quickly focus our efforts in the appropriate places.

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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation  markets.   The company presently employs approximately 55 people.

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May 14th, 2010|Tags: , , , , |

Aerospace Machining and the Seven Wastes of lean manufacturing (Part 1)

As I talked about in the last post, I will be examining the seven wastes identified in lean manufacturing and showing how CNC Industries handles each in a high  mix / low volume aerospace machining environment.  The first of the seven wastes is Overproduction.  Overproduction is using more resources than necessary to create and deliver a part to the customer.  Overproduction can be further defined as producing more, sooner or faster than what is necessary.  Elimination of overproduction is a large factor in Just-In-Time systems that many manufacturers are focusing on.  Just-in-time has a goal of eliminating inventory and producing or ordering material to arrive just in time for the operation that it is needed in.

Batch size is a large factor to consider when looking at overproduction.  It is important to not produce too many parts – this leads to storing the excess parts in inventory for an excessive amount of time.  However, in an aerospace machining environment the complexity of the parts is prohibitive to a true just-in-time system.  When a part may take 6-8 weeks to manufacture and only a small amount of the parts are needed each week to create a new batch for every shipment would necessitate setting up a new batch each week and having multiple batches open at the same time.  The logistics of tracking all of these batches combined with the costs and time of setting up a machine each week for the same part would be prohibitive.  In addition to the setups and the logistics, material orders would necessarily be smaller and more frequent which would eliminate cost savings in ordering and require more time in purchasing and receiving material.    Of course a production facility can avoid many of these pitfalls by having specially made machines that are dedicated to a certain process or part.  In a high mix environment, machines tend to be needed for many different parts and cannot be dedicated to a select group of part.

Instead for a high-mix low volume aerospace machining facility, selecting the right batch size includes factoring in the setup costs and the lead time to create a batch that is a reasonable multiple of an individual shipment.  In the above example it may be seen that a batch that is the equivalent of 10 weeks of shipments is the optimum size to reduce overproduction and minimize inventory storage time as well.  The key is to account for holding costs, batch setup costs, and the estimated demand on a given machined part.  Our ERP system, Job Manager 2, has a module to handle these calculations and give a suggested batch size in order to lower the overproduction to the lowest feasible amount.  Selecting the right batch size is of paramount importance in attempting a lean operation in an aerospace machining environment that tends to have high mix and low volume production.

CNC Industries solves the problem of overproduction waste through efficient information handling and analysis.  We have strong visualizations of our production and inventory and we regularly examine our production to ensure optimum batch size.  Our ERP system both handles the batch size determination and the scheduling of the new batches to ensure that parts are produced at the right time and with the right quantity.  When maintaining a Kan-Ban System for our aerospace customers it is vital that we both maintain enough inventory to handle their surges in demand, as well as minimize our batch size to allow us to produce the wide variety of parts that are requested.

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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation  markets.   The company presently employs approximately 55 people.

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May 7th, 2010|
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