Metal Stamping Press
Component Engineers Inc. (CEI) has taken another step to improve its production efficiency. As an advocate of the Kaizen Management System, CEI has utilized the philosophy to advance its metal stamping production.
For 25 years CEI has been a leader in the precision metal stamping industry. Metal stamping is a type of material fabrication that produces metal parts in high volume, while allowing a low manufacturing cost. Sheets of metal are fed into a high tonnage press between stamping dies that cut and form metal to customer specifications. CEI takes pride in its wide range of Metal Stamping Machinery, operating 45 presses at any given time. Through an army of progressive, compound, and secondary dies with up to 300 tons of stamping power, the presses perform blanking, piercing, forming, insertion, drawing, and coining operations. Collectively, CEI’s presses have the ability to metal stamp parts of endless sizes and material types for the medical, automotive, electronics, industrial, military, aerospace, and other industries.
CEI has taken continual steps to improve its metal stamping production. In 2002 the company doubled its original square footage with its first building expansion, and expanded again in 2005 with the attachment of an additional 6,000 square feet. This extra space allowed CEI to add more stamping machines to its arsenal, including presses with 200 and 300 tons of power.
This summer CEI has completed its most recent improvement in the 19,000 square foot press room. By following a philosophy called Kaizen, CEI was able to reorganize its presses so that operation and production runs smoother and quicker. The Kaizen Management System (KMS) provides a roadmap for long term business success and continuous improvement by making small changes from manufacturing to management. All changes are for the purpose of reducing costs, increasing effectiveness and improving the bottom line. A core element of the Kaizen philosophy is Lean Manufacturing. Often known simply as “Lean”, this ideology focuses on identifying waste and then eliminating the root cause of it. Waste can include any process that uses unnecessary time and/or resources. By eliminating extra processes and therefore extra hours needed to produces a part, CEI can create a leaner process flow, and shorten a project’s lead time. Lean Manufacturing is the optimal way of producing goods through the removal of waste.
To remove waste, CEI focused on implementing flow within the press room. All machinery was systematically arranged so that projects could move as quickly as possible through related departments. CEI’s large 200 and 300 ton presses sit side by side under the supervision of one operator. All maintenance equipment for these presses is in the same locale so that any necessary maintenance is made easy. Progressive presses can run without an operator and therefore were moved to one side of the press room, out of the way of presses that do require manual labor. Those presses that do require operators were situated in a separate area in organized rows where the press room manager can supervise and assist operators. Lastly, all employees who inspect finished parts, such as tubing, are located between secondary operation presses and the Quality Control Department. Therefore, when parts are finished they can move directly to inspectors, who can refer to CEI’s skilled quality control department with any problems or questions.
CEI is continually making small and large changes to improve its efficiency and capabilities. For additional information on Component Engineers, Inc., please visit their website at http://www.ComponentENG.com.
