May 2007 Edition

Cutting Tools

Cutting Tool Management Leads to Increased Profits

Managing cutting tools and consumables as they move around the shop floor can have as big an impact on cost-savings as using the right tool in a machine

Effective competition is more than pushing parts out the door. Increased machining productivity is critical to any shop’s survival, but, what Avon Gear Co., Rochester Hills, MI, discovered is that cost savings can present itself in some surprising ways.

Avon Gear specializes in the manufacture of precision-machined components and subassemblies to heavy industrial equipment manufacturers. Its product line includes numerous styles of gears as well as shaft, housing, and spline products in a variety of configurations.

The company produces more than 600 part numbers in annual quantities that range from five to 80,000 pieces. With so many complex, value-added parts being run, new processes must undergo continuous examination and optimization, which influences the style and numbers of cutting tools being used each day.

Checking the Path

With PCA, Seco evaluates the productivity of a single machine tool process, or the complete path a workpiece takes during its journey through the shop.

“Typical results with PCA show reductions in tooling costs of more than 30 percent with productivity improvements of 40 percent,” Magnus Tillman, Seco Business Solutions program manager, said.

Prior to PCA, Avon Gear had a tool management provider supplying tool vending machines, managing inventory, and dispensing products.

“What we found under our existing system,” Dave Share, Avon’s general manager, said, “is that it was difficult for us to implement the tooling and productivity changes recommended by Seco.”

“Avon came to us and said they’d like us to provide a proposal to handle everything – the tools, application support, tooling management, and logistics,” Tillman said. “While we supervise the PCA and application support, we needed someone to handle the actual inventory and stocking. We turned to the distributor, E&R Industrial Sales, Sterling Heights, MI, as our program partner.” 

Vending Machines Gunned
Under its existing tool program, Avon Gear had seven vending machines to manage inventory and dispense products.

E&R first removed the machines and replaced them with three smaller SecoPoint machines powered by SupplyPro. This reduction was possible because the SecoPoint machines hold significantly more tooling in a smaller space using the Seco configurable Smart Drawer technology.

One-off is the standard at RER, with a typical workpiece starting as a 600 lb billet and finishing as a 400 lb machined shaft. With the look-ahead feature of the Siemens CNC, the Weiler control maintains a constant cutting speed, while adjusting for angle-to-radius changes, especially on precise internal threading.

Although designed to hold Seco products, the Smart Drawer system can accommodate any manufacturer insert as well as safety gloves, ear plugs, safety glasses, and other items.

E&R also recommended a Seco single insert dispenser – SID. The SID stores 20 individual inserts in separate compartments and distributes them one at a time. This method allows for 1,280 inserts per drawer compared to 96 under the old storage system.

But, it is the Seco SupplyPort web portal that ties it all together. All of the point-of-use devices communicate with SupplyPort, analyzing inventory and consumption patterns on a daily basis and automatically adjusting the minimum and maximum inventory levels.

Avon was assigned a dedicated area of the SupplyPort web portal, which is hosted at a secure data center. Avon’s Gerald Pitts was appointed as the program leader to manage the system, stock inventory on a daily basis, as well as access and manage SupplyPort via the Internet using a standard web browser.

Less Running
“I spend less than an hour a day managing inventory,” Pitts said. “With the prior system, I ran back and forth from the fl oor to the supply room three or four times a day trying to fulfill tooling needs.” With the solution provided to Avon by Seco, both accountability and accuracy are there as each dispense transaction is recorded and inventory levels adjusted appropriately. Each transaction includes the date and time dispensed, employee number, product, quantity dispensed, and customer-defi ned information such as work cell, job number, or serial number.

“It changed my company’s way of doing business,” Pitts said. “Commodity management was how we operated under our old program. We might have been paying a few cents less per insert, but we were buying a whole lot more inserts than necessary. Since we couldn’t adjust the order data, we were placing emergency tooling orders all of the time.”

Scrap Avoidance

“Some of our parts are in the machining process for three to four hours,” Share said. “When it gets down to the last operation and the correct tool isn’t there, it can mean the part is scrapped, and scrap means lost profit.”

Inventory management is just part of the picture.

“PCA has increased our productivity, Aaron Remsing, Avon Gear’s president said. “It finds the fastest and most economical way to produce a product. For example, a PCA analysis done on a bevel gear proved that we could reduce our cycle time by 2.38 minutes per gear, getting more parts out the door in less time.

“Besides saving machine time, our tooling costs decreased almost 90 percent annually. Improvements like this allow us to keep more work in-house and increase profitability.”

“We like to refer to Seco Business Solutions as the three-legged stool solution,” Avon’s Hassan said. “First, the Smart- Drawer units are designed to accommodate an increased density of product.

“Then, SupplyPort software handles real-time tool management to accurately assess and adjust to the daily tooling needs.

“Most importantly, there is the technical support that we offer through PCA to optimize productivity on the floor.”

Seco

Visit www.rsleads.com/705mn-204 for more information

What do you think?
Will the information in this article increase efficiency or save time, money, or effort? Let us know by e-mail from our website at www.ModernApplicationsNews.com or e-mail the editor at pnofel@nelsonpub.com.