Overcoming Old Ways of Thinking!
Over the years I have really looked at different ways of doing things. This ranged from my continuing education, going to industrial expos, reading about new technology and advancement in materials and science. I have listed some of the experiences I have had during over my forty years in manufacturing, sales and distribution as food for thought. I believe in the very near future will see changes in manufacturing that will force us to think and look at things in a different manner.
Case 1:
Around 1987 I submitted an alternate bid to manufacturer aerospace parts that our company was manufacturing. Most of our major cost of producing parts was due to raw materials. We used aluminum forgings, castings or forged blacks. The lead times for the forgings was around 52 weeks and the forged blocks and castings varied from 12 to 16 weeks after receipt of our order. These long lead times created problems in meeting our customer’s delivery needs. We could also face other issues if we needed to replace any material due to scrap due to our facility or the customers.
The bid we submitted was to use lower cost bar, plate or forged blocks in lieu of the forging or castings listed. We showed a significant price reduction on the finished product as well as a great lead time reduction, based on the alternate materials. But, I believe due to the timing of the proposal we submitted this alternate bid the idea was unfortunately declined.
Around 1989 we submitted this alternate bid again. Our customers engineers weren’t backlogged like they had previously been. This would allow the engineers the opportunity to research this alternative. Most of our material lead times were at 52 weeks after ordering. All potential price reductions were also being looked for by the buyers and procurement agents as costs for current materials were skyrocketing.
On this alternate material request the engineers reviewed our proposals, made some changes where necessary and submitted their recommendations back to us. After all the engineering changes were approved and added to the blueprints the new materials were implemented. Most of our material lead times dropped to 4 to 6 weeks. The long lead time materials were out around 16 weeks. In almost all cases the cost of the parts dropped around 10 percent. The cost reductions also including our company absorbing any of additional tooling and engineering costs for manufacturing.
Our customer had seen the value of this alternative way to manufacture aerospace parts. This practice has become a manufacturing standard in the aerospace industry.
Case 2:
Between 2005 and 2008 I worked onsite at a local aerospace plant. I was hired by a large integrated supplier to work as a tooling specialist, to support most of the companies tooling and manufacturing departments. Part of my job function was to reduce costs to our customer either by finding a less cost alternative or better manufacturing methods.
My company had reduced many of the costs of supplies by better negotiations with suppliers or lower a lower cost alternative product. We were now faced with the situation to either find even lower cost products or figure out better production methods.These cost savings were part of the terms of my companies’ contract with the customer and vital to the company keeping the contract.
At the time the customer was manufacturing and assembling many parts from various composite materials. Most of the surfaces of these composite parts and assemblies were rough and had to be sanded down before they were painted. The customer had been using a paperback PSA disc for their sanding operations. These discs were purchased at a very low cost per disc and these paperback discs were everywhere throughout the customers facilities.
Since my job position allowed me to work with many of the manufacturers application engineers I tried to meet with them, whenever possible. One of these representatives came in one day and told me he had worked on several projects in the past, but wasn’t able to get anything implemented. He was trying to replace a paperback with a film back disc, but the cost was around 50 percent more and the implementation was met with resistance.
We looked for and found several areas that were willing to test the film back discs against the old lower cost product. We were looking at documenting any increases in the product life as well as any reduction in the sanding process time. After a several weeks of testing we found out the higher cost discs lasted four time longer than the previous discs. This provided a nice cost reduction on the cost, but the real cost reduction was in the labor. On one large fuselage assembly the labor was reduced from 2-1/2 hours to 30 minutes. By the time our testing was complete the actual cost savings in these areas was around $400,000 per year. With our company being allowed to show a savings over a 3 year period; our customer would save $1,200,000.
Not many people believe that a low cost sanding disc would lead to this type of savings. It was a perfect application, with management being willing to try something that new. One of the added bonuses of this testing was that the new discs lasted three time longer than the old, lower cost disc. My personal added bonus was that both the management and the people involved in this testing. I didn't hear the reply that they were happy with what they were using and wasn't looking at new products.
Case 3:
I have recently been working with a new representative of a carbide tool manufacturer. He is new to my area and his company has not has a lot of exposure to our marketplace. We have mainly targeted more difficult to machine materials, such as 15-5PH stainless steel and 6Al-4V titanium. Most of these types of materials usually have a high consumption rate of perishable carbide tooling and provides the best opportunity for cost savings.
The new application engineer for the cutting tool manufacturer offered a tool and inserts that would best utilize the customers lower horsepower machines. This tool was brought into the company on a guaranteed trial test. Our customer was very skeptical, since most sales and application engineers he met, always said their tool was the best. This application engineer understood the customers concerns, but stated what he though he could do with the tools he would provide.
I had personally applied this type of tool at various companies I worked with years ago. This may not have been the newest technology out there, but this company had not been shown this type of tool before. Due to cutting tool manufacturers consent improvements of carbide grades, tool coatings and various edge preparations this tool was worth the opportunity to try on this application.
The test tool was implemented by my customer, even though they had to make some minor programming changes. This tool was programmed to run at the parameters that were given to them by the application engineer, which was way beyond the material removal rate this customer was use to . Within a couple of days, both the application engineer and I were contacted by the customer to bring in some additional inserts for continued testing purposes. Within a week, it appeared that the tool and inserts were going to provide a overall best value solution for our customer.
Currently the customer is still very happy with the results of this tool. They implemented more tools throughout the shop to work on various machining operations on this part. In this particular application, with just the insert cost our customer saved $14.35 per insert. But the true victory of this tool was the cost reduction due to metal removal rate. This customer was able to dramatically reduce their run time. By this single "new tool" implementation this customers end results were over capabile of producing a $250,000 hard cost savings. This savings does not include and additional money the customer gained through additional machine hours gained throughout the year. My personal estimate is that the total money gained in a years time would be around $400,000.
Overview:
There is a lot of new technology out there. All types of new machinery, manufacturing methods, production tools as well as computers programs to make us more efficient. We all need to make sure that we don’t get stuck in the paradigms of doing the things the same way. Some changes can be difficult due to cultures that have developed and need to be overcome. I think we all have heard, “that’s the way we have done it for years and it works”, why change it! One of the canned answers I hear frequently is that we are perfectly happy with what we are using and are not looking at anything at the moment. We will keep your information on hand for future reference.
My mentors in the past and present have taught me to try to "think outside the box"! They tried to give me constructive suggestions when they thought I might be off track. We always need to be willing to look at new ideas and methods. I also remember the simple ideas that were presented to me in the past that I couldn’t envision. This was due to own beliefs on how things were supposed to be done. We are all human and can not know everything!
I hope this post will generate some thought and ideas for anyone who is willing to read it. Like my previous article, I love hearing ideas and situations you may have faced. If we are not learning new methods and ideas, we can become stagnate. I've lived long enough to see many companies go out of business for not being willing to change. Even though I’m getting older I don’t want to get set in my ways and wear blinders. I need to always keep an open mind and be willing to listen to new ideas
I like the example of Studebaker! For those people old enough to remember them of learned about them in school. Studebaker was a wagon manufacturer that switched to making automobiles as the tranportation industry was changing. If they had not made this switch they would have went out of business way before the autombile plants were finally closed in the 1960's.
"Vision is the art of seeing things invisible." - Jonathan Swift