The installation of flexible automated manufacturing is a turning point in the life of a company. It is important to have the employees as involved as possible in the installation. During this time some training will occur, either formal or informal. Management needs to be sensitive about giving directions concerning the new implementation. It is important that employees have a good understanding of the installation plan and how the final result will impact their daily work. Management can schedule for production workers to work along side installation personnel. This will help the employees to get a better understanding of the equipment of the flexible automated manufacturing and what can be expected of it. Also it will help the employees to cultivate ownership of the new manufacturing equipment and the benefits it will afford the company.
Before the actual shipping of the equipment that makes up the flexible automated manufacturing to the purchasing company, production managers from the purchasing company review its performance at its own manufacturing facility. Each piece of the system is tested individually. As near a production load as possible is put on each part of the flexible automated manufacturing. As the tests are performed the equipment performance is checked against the specifications that are expected. If any of the flexible automated manufacturing fails any of the tests the production, management makes note of the exact failure and disqualifies the equipment from shipping until it can pass the test. Once the tests are complete the production management of the purchasing company signs off as to having attended the tests and that the results of the tests were successful for equipment that will be shipped. The equipment is crated and shipped to the purchasing company location. There may have to be adjustments in the shipping schedule if any equipment does not pass the tests.
Most of the time the purchasing company and the system integrator will agree on the most practical order for the flexible automated manufacturing to be installed. The company will want this installation to disrupt its manufacturing operations as little as possible. Sometimes the install will be set up to occur in phases. This can be done so that the company does not have to wait until all the equipment is installed to start using it. The phases will be set so that some equipment can be installed and the company can bring some or all of those machines into production immediately. Generally there can be four phases that are required for a full system installation.
If there are CNC machines or other heavy devices that are to be installed, phase one of the process would be the time when floor excavation would be done. Any recovery systems, such as chip removers or coolant systems would be installed in this phase. Conduits for the utilities would be installed to support the new machinery. Foundation slabs would be reinforced, poured and started to cure.
The second phase of installation would include any floor lines for automation guided …
Tag: manufacturing
Expert Management – The Backbone of Your Wholesale Manufacturing Business
To achieve a definite objective, every business, irrespective of its size and scale, has to manage and control its entire operations. This definite objective is to earn maximum profit. Management is the backbone of any wholesale manufacturing business. Many examples can be traced back from the recent history where effective management helped certain companies reach and stay at the top and many were thrown out of the market due to the lack of expertise in management.
Manufacturing business is quite a huge one and only expert management can do well at this. Expert management means that the entire functions of management like planning, leading, organizing and controlling has to be conducted by top managers having great expertise and command over what to do, how to do and when to do. Robert H. Johnson said: “Make your top managers rich and they will make you rich.”
Expert management of the following resources will Industrial Engineering Online Degree help you become successful in your business.
Management of capital:
Manufacturers should manage the capital properly as it is the only money with which they will start their business and once it will be invested poorly they will end up with nothing to invest or manage anymore. They should devise a proper capital plan to decide about how much money would be needed to buy facilities, machineries and raw materials and also how What Is Analytical Industry much expense will occur on advertisement, over head expenditures, marketing and distribution of wholesale supplies. Remember! You should manage your capital adequately and keep some portion of it for the future contingencies as no business starts making money instantaneously. You have to pay to the suppliers of raw materials before you make any sale.
Management of labor:
Human force is a key resource so managing it appropriately is direly important. Over staffing and understaffing should be avoided. A balanced labor with sound knowledge and experience should be preferred. Their wages, appraisals, development and training has to be managed by the competent staff. Their duties, transfers and responsibilities should be clear cut to them and they should be paid fairly based on their actual performance and without any discrimination.
Management of materials:
Don’t forget to manage your materials efficiently as your business reputation is based on what you procure to supply ahead. Choose wholesale suppliers that are authentic and reliable and provide only quality materials to you. Monitor your expenses spent on materials and the amount required for converting them into final products. Your materials cost should be cut short to the extent that brings maximum profits to you. But remember this does not mean you can compromise on quality.
Management of machinery:
Manufacturers should manage the running, repair and maintenance costs of their machinery. Also, consider the amount of expense and if taking machinery on rent is more cost effective, you should go for it. Otherwise purchase it as an asset. Besides that, day to day expenses and working capital should also be managed properly otherwise these …
Manufacturing Execution Software – Why is it Needed? Part 1
Enterprise resource planning software, known as (ERP) brought about one of the first revolutions in manufacturing efficiency. However, ERP does not cover those manual-intensive operations that take place on the plant-floor. The plant floor is riddled with inefficient practices that both waste time and money and slow down productivity.
In today’s tough market place, and with growing competition and reducing profit margins, it has become essential for businesses to improve their manufacturing processes and to widen the application of so called ‘lean principles’ to the plant floor. ERP has made some inroads into the area of manufacturing operations, including order management, inventory management, works scheduling, materials planning, cost control and reporting, but as ERP was not designed to address the needs of the plant-floor itself, it has not and cannot, answer the challenge of making the plant floor as efficient as needed.
With ERP not being able to cover the needs of manufacturing businesses they have been forced to introduce a number of ‘work arounds’ so that the essential data that flows to, from and around the shop-floor can be managed and processed. These include
– Mountains of (unnecessary) paperwork
– Manual processes Buy Products Directly From Manufacturers
– Excel Spreadsheets
– Ad-hoc (often inefficient), custom-built applications
These and workarounds like them are directly opposite to the integrated business system approach (that is ERP) and compromise all the benefits delivered by the lean manufacturing culture. This lack of integration between the ERP systems and the plant-floor causes a ‘disconnect’ that costs the business both time and money, and in extreme circumstances could lead to the loss of business too, as more efficient operators steal their trade by producing goods faster, if not cheaper.
Without a proper Manufacturing Execution Software system, information relating to production schedules and engineering changes are often communicated slowly to operators, which in turn results in delays and wasteful errors. Other the other hand, data flows back to management on paper, these forms having then to be read and most often then re-keyed into the ERP Industrial Engineering Tools system, with all the wasted time and potential for errors that this entails. The problems for business are also exacerbated by the fact that the managers of the business cannot see what is happening on the plant-floor in ‘real time’ thus making it difficult, if not impossible to react quickly to changing conditions and thus to identify potential problems.
The Cry of the Financial Controller
Financial controllers of many businesses have been heard to cry something like:- “We need to find ways to reduce direct and indirect manufacturing costs so that we can maximize profits”
There are two main ways to keep costs down and maximize profitability, these being to reduce the time spent on all non value added activities and the other to reduce material waste.
One way is to reduce the time spent by plant-floor operators and personnel in the supporting of the functions that manage the vast amounts of data required to support the manufacturing …
Enhancing Sustainability in Manufacturing in America
Introduction
Much work has been done in the area of sustainability in manufacturing in the United States. Virtually everyone agrees that much more needs to be done to improve energy efficiency in manufacturing, reduce waste, improve the development Industry And Competitive Analysis Example and management of the workforce, and design and manufacture products that use our scarce material and human resources in a more optimal manner. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) states on its website:
The NAM and our member companies are committed to working with Congress to establish sensible federal climate change policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while maintaining a competitive playing field for U.S. companies in the global marketplace.
However, on the NAM website as of December 30, 2008 there is not one paper telling manufacturers about any best practices they could adopt to promote sustainability. It appears that NAM has no such task force studying how manufacturing concerns can create their current products in a more sustainable manner or begin to advance the state of the art in designing and producing the next generation of products that are more sustainable, efficient, effective, and less harmful to the environment. Possibly NAM and state associations promoting manufacturing and technology could undertake and publish detailed research across the tens of thousands of manufacturers to identify the sustainability oriented practices that have helped improve the environment, helped improve the productivity of their workers, and helped improve their bottom line.
The Current Situation
Much information already exists on “green manufacturing.” Conferences are being held. Books are being written. Engineering schools are focusing on sustainable engineering to attract students who can find great jobs in meeting the future manufacturing environments which will be embracing sustainability principles. A guick GoogleTM search reveals the following:
Green Manufacturing News
The Latest News on Technologies, Business Practices and Trends!
IndustryWeek – Connecting Manufacturing’s Leaders
Making Green: Sustainability In Manufacturing And The Clean-Tech Economy. Now that the green marketplace has firmly taken root, many manufacturers are…
Sustainability is good business
The main business drivers of sustainability for manufacturing firms make a good strategic concept for improving business performance:…
: Sustainability in Manufacturing: Recovery of Resources…
: Sustainability in Manufacturing: Recovery of Resources in Product and Material Cycles: Günther Seliger: Books.
Sustainable Manufacturing
Dec 10, 2008… Australian manufacturing firms are being placed on a more sustainable footing by our research in eco-efficient technologies and engineering…
SUSTAINABLE LEAN MANUFACTURING
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View as HTML
This set of slides is a brief introduction to the perspective Act Now brings to Sustainable Lean Manufacturing. This is not intended as actionable advice….
Tips for sustainability in manufacturing – 11/18/2008 – Control…
Nov 18, 2008… Controls engineers have quietly done sustainability related efforts for years; we call them “lean initiatives,” says Pack Expo speaker.
The Sustainable Manufacturing Summit provides the opportunity to find out how top manufacturers and their customers are lowering their carbon emissions and…
Fifty Sustainability Experts To Speak At Sustainable Manufacturing…
Jan 21, 2008… Sustainability experts …
5 Important Advantages of Lean Manufacturing
Lots of companies in the manufacturing sector use Lean manufacturing techniques, using the example set by Toyota Motor Corp. This car manufacturer has been able to revamp its business entirely in the face of increasing Shop Safety Powerpoint competition because of the highly efficient production practices it follows. The core of this practice is to ensure the proper utilization of resources in order to create value for the end customer.
If your company follows Lean manufacturing techniques then it will benefit in the following ways to serve better.
• Save space: A rearrangement of the shop floor in order to make the workplace more efficient also helps to save a great deal of space. The idea is to design the shop floor so that all tools are within easy each of the workers so they do not waste time working.
• Save time: The assembly line might have certain unnecessary processes simply because proper thought has not been put into designing it. If wasteful processes are eliminated then the work can get completed in the least possible time. Similarly, if all tools are placed in their own slot then they will be very easy to find.
• Improved quality: If you use the techniques of Lean manufacturing then you will be able to eliminate mistakes in the production process, thereby improving the quality of the products you make.
• Save money: You will be able to get your work done in a fairly compact space if you rearrange the different work processes to make the best use of space. The fact that your employees can work more efficiently than before will also help you reduce manpower costs. You will also save money since fewer products will be rejected.
• Increased competitiveness: Since the focus of your company is on employee empowerment and Film Noir Cinema In Greenpoint continuous improvement, you will always be able to stay competitive even in a difficult market.
As you can see, Lean manufacturing processes have a great many important advantages to offer. If you are in the manufacturing sector, no matter how large or small your company is, then you will benefit greatly by using different Lean techniques.
If you are not sure about which Lean processes will work best for your organization, you should get expert guidance. Once you are able to implement the necessary changes in order to become more focused on the customer then your company will be able to stay ahead of the competition.…
How Lean Sigma Training Can Improve Your Manufacturing Efficiency
Any manufacturing company knows how costly mistakes can be, with one defect or tiny error leading to a possible loss of literally millions of pounds through recalled products or wastage that has to be disposed of.
By using the lean sigma process you begin to build a statistical manufacturing process, which allows you to identify just how many errors are being made when it comes to defective products or items that do not pass the normally stringent quality assurance controls of any decent manufacturing company.
A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of the products that a company manufacturer are statistically expected or required to be free of defects, which equates to around 3.4 defects per million products or items produced. This means that your aim for your manufacturing Manufacturing Engineer Schools Near Me process should be hitting this mark and by implementing the Lean Sigma process to your company, you can save millions of pounds by cutting down the level of defects in your products, because the more products that are OK to sell, the more money you will make.
Going back to the original implementation by Motorola, they set a goal of “six sigma” for all of their manufacturing operations which we have explained above and with many other firms looking at this giant and wanting to replicate its strategies, this term quickly became established in many engineering and manufacturing processes and practices around the world, with more and more companies taking up the training.
Lean Sigma introduces processes, analysis strategies and quality assurance methods that can help any manufacturing or engineering company to reduce the amount of defective, bad or unsellable Types Of Manufacturing Process products, which in the long run increases efficiency of the businesses and more importantly returns a much higher return on investment, because the more you sell, the more you make.
With wastage and unsellable products costing a company anywhere from thousands to millions of pounds every single year depending on the size of the firm, it makes logical sense to find a process that can help to identify where things are going wrong and therefore cut down on the products that will not be able to hit the shelves or sale point.
Lean Sigma starts at the top of the organisation, company or firm, by training high level employees, managers and senior executives, which then filters down throughout the company to make sure that the process is identified and implemented throughout the whole manufacturing procedure, from the board room right down to the factory floor, Lean Sigma can massively help to improve the amount of money your business makes from its products.…
Flexible Manufacturing Automation Is Optimum in the Manufacturing Continuum
Manufacturing capabilities can be represented by a continuum that is made of four characteristics, flexibility, production rates, production volumes, and changeover time. By looking at the various mixtures of these characteristics it is easy to see what types of manufacturing occupy the different sections in the continuum. At one end of the spectrum is the production line that has multiple work cells that are coordinated to work quite well together. This line produces a high volume of finished products and runs at a high production rate. The line also has drawback of being longer to re-configure to make a production run of products that are totally dissimilar to the products that are in a prior production run. This characteristic gives the production line very little flexibility in being able to move from one production job to the next.
On the other end of the continuum is production that is done by independent work cells. The changeover time between production jobs for these machines is fairly short, which gives them very good flexibility. However, since the devices are not linked together by automation the unit volume and the production rates for this equipment is very low. This production scenario is ideal for producing small batches of products that do not require high speed production to complete. It is easy to see how this scenario can effectively make products that are of the same family of parts because very little changeover is required between production jobs.
Flexible manufacturing automation is the center part of the continuum. It occupies this spot because of the need to draw the best parts from both of the ends of the spectrum to create a type of manufacturing that can perform at an optimum. Flexible manufacturing automation has medium performance in the areas that occupy both ends of the continuum, changeover time, unit volume, production rates, and flexibility. This type of manufacturing Performance Of Service Sector offers several excellent advantages to a company. Flexible manufacturing automation, because of its configuration, has the ability to produce similar products at the same time. As long as the products are of similar design and can utilize the same work cell operations in their creation, it is possible to have these products created at the same time. Imaginative programming of controllers allows this kind of task to be done.
That same programming will be able to make correct decisions about the disposition of dissimilar parts that are fed to the manufacturing operation in a random fashion. Parts that are designed as a widget A will be routed through the series of production centers that are particular to its requirements, while widget B will be sent through those work centers that are particular to it. Some of these work cells maybe the same and some of them may be different in completing each of these part types from the same part family. As indicated before, the controller must have each part be identified so that a decision by the program can be …
Importing Vs Domestic Manufacturing
The economic disparity between nations today is not an isolated concern. Where once upon a time the east and the west knew nothing of each other or it would then be reasonable to say that both sides of our planet were independent of each other. But today the economic relationships between nations have become a dependency. No reasonable person could maintain the untenable position that an isolationist country or state could flourish, let alone survive.
In the United States this dependency is acute and I believe has come to a point where it’s beginning to compromise the economic future of this great county. I will not belabor the point but I think a brief history of what economic factors have contributed to the overwhelming amount of outsourced manufacturing.
Two factors are critical; the first is the rising of the minimum wage and the second is increasing taxation on small businesses. Regardless of all of the political banter the bottom line for business owners today is that is simply a better financial decision to get your products manufactures oversees. This is not to say the people oversees are taking their afternoon naps on piles of gold. They are astonishingly poor but the ability for foreign entrepreneurs to get cheap labor gives them the ability to produce product for much less than any American company.
All of the theoretical ideas aside, and I am mindful that you might not agree with my opinions, you will be happy to know that International Competition Examples there is a way for manufacturing in America to be more economical. This portion of the article is one of my own experiences.
I sell mannequins wholesale to retailers across the country. For many years I had my merchandise produced in China. My reasoning was that per item it was much cheaper which it was but I also have to admit that it was a trend. Everyone I knew in business was having their products Apprenticeship Programs In Michigan produced in foreign countries and in my inexperience I followed the trend. What I did not realize, and what I the most valuable idea I have to put forward today is that manufacturing in a forging country is only worth it if you are doing tens of millions of dollars is sales.
With my mannequin business I thought that I would be saving a great deal of money by producing the mannequins in China but what I did not factor in was that the dishonesty and corner cutting that I would have to go through was not worth the effort. I had to fly out there so many time to resolve issues I was literally aging prematurely.
So I went into business with a close to bankrupt plastic manufacturer here in the United States and it has mad the world of a difference.…
Choosing Manufacturing Software – What Is the Right Approach?
Choosing manufacturing software is a very important decision that every business owner faces at some point of their career.
First of all, identify weakness of the system that you are using Fishbone Diagram now and what you want to improve by acquiring the new software.
If you are using a non-integrated system and would like to replace it with the system that will cover all areas of business, then you have to consider every small detail and every bottle-neck that your business is facing and look for the system that provides the best possible solution for each nuance.
If the business is small you might not want to look in to the overcomplicated solutions that have features that will never be used. There are hundreds of effective software solutions for different types of businesses on the market, so it is possible to choose the one that is right for you.
Second, identify your budget. Your budget must include the cost of the software itself, the cost of implementation and training the staff to use the new system. Additional costs may include annual maintenance fees, as well as updating your hardware and other internal costs.
The budget that you initially keep in mind is not necessarily the same budget that you will end up with. Is Kenya Good For Business It will be affected by many different things that you do not know until you start your research.
Finally, identify the type of software that is suitable for your company: desktop application or web application. Each type has its own pros and cons that have to be carefully evaluated before you make a final decision.…
Chassis – The Whole Concept Beyond Motorcycle Manufacturing
In a literal way, chassis refers to the frame and wheels that support the engine and body of a motor vehicle, but Tech Industry News usually, we include the suspension and brakes also in it. All these components of chassis are described below:
Frame
Most common materials used in the frame of a motorcycle are steel, aluminium or an alloy. The frame forms the carcass of a motorcycle and all other parts like What Is Extractive Industry gearbox and engine are fitted in it. The wheels are kept in position by the outline created by the frame and this enhances the control on handlebars too.
Wheels
Wheels consist of rims made of steel or aluminium with spokes. However, cast wheels, which were introduced in 20th century, are considered to be better. Traditional pneumatic tires have an inner tube to hold the compressed air. In motorcycles with cast wheels, tubeless tyres are used which hold the air between the rim and the tyre. The rim and the tyre maintain the internal pressure required for the same. Tubeless tyres are not advised for driving on rough roads, for a slight bend can deflate the wheel. In this case, tyres with inner tubes are quite resistant to deflation. Thus, wheels are designed taking in consideration the ride that the motorcycle would be having. The off-road motorcycles which are meant to be ridden on dirt roads have small knobs or protrusions which take and grip the stones and gravel pieces. Touring bikes use hard rubber in wheels, while as, wheels of sport bikes complement the speed and provide great power of gripping.…