With the current headwinds buffeting the manufacturing industry and economy in general, it’s imperative that shops evaluate and optimize their manufacturing processes to improve productivity and profitability. Even with supply-chain challenges and a shortage of skilled labor, there are steps shops should take to maximize performance.
Most importantly, determine whether your existing equipment is operating at its full potential. Spindle utilization is the true metric of productivity, and there is no reason to make additional capital investments until your shop is operating at maximum capacity. A shop is only making money when its spindles are turning and cutting material. Everything else is simply parasitic—downtime and waste that drag down efficiency and profitability.
In reality, most shops only get between 40- and 50-percent spindle utilization from their existing machines, with inadequate tool management being the biggest source of idle times. Other contributors to parasitic time include lack of material availability and disruptive flow. To be fully productive, shops must eliminate waste as completely as possible to ensure their spindles are constantly cutting.
A clear understanding of spindle utilization on any given asset and how to improve it, however, is impossible without data. Specific operational information—feed rate, downtime, tool changes, cutting speeds—all need to be evaluated to understand and inform your approach to optimization. Machine monitoring provides the data necessary for improved production capacity.
In our Mazak iSMART Factory in Florence, Ky., we use MTConnect to network and monitor the utilization of individual machines and entire cells across the plant. With that information, we can identify processes for waste elimination and cycle-time reductions. Continuously monitoring each asset will tell you why a machine is running at less than full utilization and identify areas of waste.
To increase spindle utilization, shops must also engage in process optimization for improved capacity. One significant way to optimize processes is to invest in multitasking machines. By combining turning, milling, drilling, tapping, and deep-hole boring on one machine with a single setup, manufacturers increase cutting time without increasing labor costs, while substantially reducing production lead times and part costs. Similarly, migrating from a manufacturing cell containing several two- or three-axis machines to a five-axis vertical machining center with a rotary/tilt table streamlines processes and eliminates multiple setups.
Shops also might consider adding automation to their existing assets. Jobs that entail low variability with medium- to high-volume runs are well suited to robot-tending applications. A palletizing system, on the other hand, is appropriate for low-volume production of differing parts, with a separate pallet established for each family of parts. Cobots that allow unattended production are also becoming increasingly popular. Cobots are cost effective, easy to teach, and can be redeployed from one asset to another.
While there are multiple channels for technology to improve capacity, current labor market challenges demand investing in your workforce recruitment and retention. Because the labor force is so much more transient than in the past, virtually every manufacturer today is spending more on repetitive training. As a result, it is imperative that companies increase their investment in continuous and ongoing training to create additional opportunities and promote advancement for their employees. Plus, they must offer flexible, creative policies that foster lasting service.
While manufacturing presents unique challenges, opportunities abound for shops with a trained, nimble workforce that is armed with the data and technology to optimize performance.
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