[Q&A] What is the Most Effective Press Layout? - Kevin Carey

[Chris]

Author : Kevin Carey

The changes and the com­mer­cial chal­lenges in the diecut­ting indus­try are com­ing fast and often. It is obvi­ous while qual­ity is a given, the focus is on speed to mar­ket, on turn­around, on response time, and on through­put is essen­tial for mar­ket sur­vival. One of the obvi­ous areas to eval­u­ate is the high cost of labor and a search for the most effi­cient use of the small­est group of peo­ple we can effec­tively man­u­fac­ture with. This is par­tic­u­larly rel­e­vant to diecut­ting press oper­a­tions, but it has stalled as it has run into the bas­tion of tra­di­tion and an inabil­ity to imag­ine a dif­fer­ent approach to press man­ning. Each suc­cess­ful diecut­ting com­pany has pared the oper­at­ing team down to the small­est num­ber of tech­ni­cians and sought every option for faster speed, increased yield and lower waste. Every­thing is chang­ing, but one thing has been ignored: the basic lay­out and arrange­ment of the diecut­ting presses. To run this equip­ment suc­cess­fully with the small­est team of peo­ple, while improv­ing qual­ity and con­sis­tency, and max­i­miz­ing press speed and yield, the lay­out of the equip­ment has to rad­i­cally change.

Diecut­ting presses are tra­di­tion­ally arranged in a row, each press fac­ing the same direc­tion, with a min­i­mum of one oper­a­tor per press. See above. Unfor­tu­nately, while this seems log­i­cal it ignores the prac­ti­cal real­ity of our mar­ket envi­ron­ment. Our goal is to build teams and to fos­ter a coop­er­a­tive sup­port struc­ture to max­i­mize out­put while min­i­miz­ing labor cost. But the tra­di­tional lay­out in the illus­tra­tion above effec­tively builds walls between each oper­a­tor, and even though one oper­a­tor may be strug­gling, while the oper­a­tor on the next press is sim­ply a pro­duc­tion observer, it is dif­fi­cult to eas­ily see what is hap­pen­ing on the adja­cent press.

The first rev­o­lu­tion, which many com­pa­nies adopted, was to reverse one of the presses and join and expand each plat­form so there was more space to orga­nize tools, equip­men­tand changeover. See left. This lay­out gives both oper­a­tors a per­fect view of what is hap­pen­ing on either press and they can flow to the press, which has a prob­lem. There are imme­di­ately two peo­ple who can par­tic­i­pate in changeover, two peo­ple to cover for each other, and in the major­ity of oper­a­tions where this is a stan­dard pro­ce­dure, one and often both of the oper­a­tors are usu­ally pri­mar­ily involved in prepar­ing the next job for both presses, as the presses run. The coop­er­a­tive involve­ment of two oper­a­tors in this way gen­er­ates rapid train­ing and skill devel­op­ment, and coop­er­a­tive prob­lem solv­ing and trouble-shooting.

The most recent devel­op­ment is a Press Work Cen­ter, where three presses are arranged on three sides of an open space. See above. In the open area in the mid­dle of the work cell pre-press activ­i­ties are orga­nized, there are usu­ally one or two diemak­ing work­sta­tions, and often a CAD CAM work­sta­tion. This is the ulti­mate team effort, with all of the peo­ple who impact and are impacted by their col­lec­tive deci­sions are on hand to see and expe­ri­ence the con­se­quences of their deci­sions and actions.

By involv­ing pre-press, diemak­ing and CAD in press make-ready knowl­edge, skill, expe­ri­ence and com­pe­tence rapidly grow, and the major­ity of the prob­lems, which under­mine fast make-ready and opti­mal speed and yield are grad­u­ally elim­i­nated. This abil­ity to see every­thing that is hap­pen­ing from every van­tage point in the work cell means the num­ber of peo­ple required to be involved is far less than a tra­di­tional approach to the same pro­duc­tion capability.

Sure this is dif­fer­ent from any­thing you have tried before, but as every­thing other approach has failed to gen­er­ate opti­mal pro­duc­tiv­ity isn’t it time to think lat­er­ally and get your head out of the sand? See left.





Source : Die-CuttingWorks