Time is of the essence in today’s highly competitive manufacturing world. What can you do to save time before, during and after machining? Here are several methods and approaches that can help.
Why care about time when machining parts? As the cliché goes, time is money. With today’s multiaxis and 5-axis CNC machines in manufacturing, there is plenty of opportunity to optimize time for machine shops of all sizes. But before diving into the practical details, let’s take a step back and look at what needs to be done before machine commands are programmed and prior to making chips fly off a piece of titanium or stainless steel.
“It’s important to know how much time and whose time,” writes CNC Cookshop in its blog series on CNC productivity. “Ultimately, you probably want to understand the time impact for people and machines—both are scarce resources that have to be scheduled. It costs more to have too many with people or machines idle or too few where you’re unable to process as much work as you otherwise could.”
Tip 1: Start at the Macro Level: Adopt Lean Manufacturing Practices
So much of lean manufacturing methodology is focused on eliminating waste. At its core, lean manufacturing is about optimization. It’s about improving a process or making a quality part in less time than you do it today. It is not by simply working faster, says lean manufacturing expert Jamie Flinchbaugh, because working faster can lead to errors. Manufacturing work can be improved by performing efforts in parallel, eliminating handoffs and rework—and expelling some process steps altogether.
“Technology is often a solution here, whether it is buying faster equipment in manufacturing or developing software tools for the office,” writes Flinchbaugh for Industry Week.