The Fabricator - November 2013

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MC Machinery has a press brake for you

With MC Machinery, the right press brake is within reach. That’s because we have the industry’s widest selection of press brakes—ranging from 40- to 2,000-ton capacities.

And with smart, value-added features and options—including DiamondSoft© software with auto tooling, collision-check, tool layout, bend reports and back-gauge editing—our technology can’t be beat. Best of all, we back each machine with Mitsubishi’s industry-leading service and support.

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EVERYONE FINALLY A BRAKE FOR

VISIT US AT Fabtech BOOTH S1719

November 2013 The FABRICATOR 49 was placed, and the operator is able to move on to the next set of visual instructions on the touchscreen. The instructions are always in sync with the hardware insertion operation, and the operator can’t advance to the next step until all the pieces are inserted into the correct positions for that particular step.

“Right away our internal and ex-
ternal rejects from that department
started to decrease immediately,”
said Ryan Zimmermann, who is the
grandson of the company’s founder
and who was involved in the software
implementation. “We were able to
show them the sequence and which
one goes where. It helps to guaran-
tee that we’re getting them all in all
the time. Previously they were just
looking at a drawing, and it was a lot
easier to forget. Now it’s a visual trig-
ger for them.”
Today CMP has rolled out its Visual
Knowledge Share (VKS) platform to
other departments, such as its assem-
bly, finishing, and welding areas. It has
even prepared visual work instruc-
tions for its joint-venture fabricating
operation in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Buoyed by its own internal successes, VKS is now being marketed to the manufacturing industry. It was unveiled at the American Society for Quality Conference in May. “We want to help other North American manufacturing companies to attain what CMP was able to attain,” said Kyle O’Reilly, VKS sales and marketing manager.

That’s a big statement considering that CMP has a goal of being a zero-defect manufacturer in 2013. “It’s a really hard goal to achieve, but we’re on track to coming very close to that. It’s exciting,” said Zimmermann, who is now acting as operations manager for VKS.

He is quick to point out that VKS is different from other software products on the market that display visual work instructions for manufacturing and other work processes that are dependent on correctly followed step-by-step instructions. He said that VKS is a dynamic system that always ensures that the most recent revision is the only version of work instructions that an employee can access (see Figure 2).

“If we decide that a guy has a better
process, we can update it instantly,”
Zimmermann said. “The second the process gets changed,
the guy on the shop floor—because he’s on the Internet—
gets an automatic pop-up saying ‘The visual aid that you
were working on has been updated. You will automatically
be redirected to the newest version.”

Figure 2

Bar code scanning is probably the most efficient way for operators to access work instructions. A simple scan of the bar code on the job traveler initiates a project search and the work instructions appear on the screen. Companies also have the option of simply having the employee type in a project identification code, project name, or company name to find the right work instructions.