The Fabricator - November 2013

Today Metcam uses its ERP system, Syteline by Infor, to schedule and track costs on the shop floor. But the manufacturing steps identified within the ERP still go by process-oriented definitions. To produce a part may require punching, bending, hardware insertion, welding, and painting, and to track orders, workers must log each job before and after each process. That’s a lot of data entry.

To simplify matters, the front-office team is attempting to change the ERP software’s process definitions to include a “cell” as one operation, each requiring a certain amount of time and number of people. This way, just one person needs to log jobs, and only when these jobs enter and exit the cell. This simplifies data entry and reduces the chance for errors.

The details get tricky because of the highly variable nature of job shop work. For instance, two adjacent cells on the floor have a punch press, several press brakes, and hardware insertion presses. Depending on capacity levels, workers may move jobs to other cells. For instance, say they punch and bend on one cell, but then find that the hardware machines are busy with a batch of complicated parts. So to keep parts flowing, they might send that work to hardware insertion machines in an adjacent cell. The company now is identifying all these potential routings. Ward admitted that it is a complicated task. But, ultimately, the system may help streamline operations even further.

For example, say one job requires the operator to contort the part awkwardly to insert the fasteners. Looking at the ERP data alone, a manager would see how long it takes for the hardware operator to make it through a batch of parts, identify that as a constraint process, and may add another hardware press to boost productivity.

Tracking time on a cellular level, though, can identify hidden opportunities. Consider the same part, but now the ERP system is tracking only how long it takes for the job to flow through an entire cell. The ERP iden-tifies an inefficiency but just with the cell, not a specific fabrication process. The technicians at the cell see this inefficiency and brainstorm. What if a brake operator bent these pieces halfway through the sequence, went over to the hardware press to insert the fastener, then finished the bend sequence? It turns out this arrangement can increase throughput without additional people or machines.

This kind of thinking is what has made the cellular concept work so well, Ward said. The cells have been changed since the initial layout last year, and they undoubtedly will change again as new orders come in and the product mix changes. Every change aims not to increase capacity of a certain cutting center, bending machine, or paint line, but to shorten overall manufacturing time. If more products don’t ship in less time, the fastest cutting, bending, or welding technologies really don’t make much of a difference.