Product category:
Machine Tools: Cutting
News Release from: Mike Page - editor's feature articles | Subject: In-house CNC machining
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 22 August 2007
Shorter CNC machining lead-times win
orders
Is it time to bring machining back in-house - the technology is there to reduce manufacturing and machining costs 'at home', suggests Mike Page.
A US manufacturer said recently that shortening lead-times is a key way to maintaining a hold - and leading - in a manufacturing market What is working increasingly against this ideal is 'outsourcing' - and that applies particularly to machined components
Before the 1990s, a typical OEM would have joined the accountant-led trend that reducing overheads was a more logical approach to manufacturing.
Why maintain a machine shop in-house? We have all these small machine shops around us, who are specialised, and they can do a jolly good machining job for us! Okay, that is what many companies did.
Then, as Far Eastern economies began to grow, alongside Internet-based sourcing and cheap labour, more OEMs came under increasing pressure to out-source even further afield.
Unfortunately, waiting for suppliers to deliver - hopefully goods to specification - extended lead-times.
Yes, the piece-part costs had reduced.
Fine, your product is cheaper than the competitor with the in-house machine shop.
Unfortunately, you had begun to have to increasingly face the problems of outsourcing - materials, specifications, quality control, quality assurance, logistics, culture clashes (even in the next city, let alone on the other side of the world!) - all of which began to chew away at the profit margin bolstered by use of cheaper labour.
Meanwhile, in the robotics, machine tools, welding, automation and industrial IT (ERP, etc) areas, costs had been declining.
Robots are not as expensive, and are more versatile and user-friendly, than 20 years ago.
Machine tools are multi-tasking and multi-functional - they often perform in 'one hit' the work that required two or more separate machines before.
Parts can be checked automatically and all operations can be made traceable.
Essentially, 'at home' in 2007, it had now become possible to cut one's own labour costs, such that the labour cost advantage abroad was becoming increasingly outweighed by all the other costs-inducing factors - particularly logistics.
IT software had dropped in price, and systems have become more user-friendly and - importantly - more easily adaptable to a user's needs.
That US manufacturer has seen fit to re-establish a machine shop with all the latest 'kit'.
Machine shop operation is backed by an IT system that lets the production manager, sales office, quality control and accountant, see at almost a 'glance' what is happening in the factory - which orders are outstanding and what the 'panic' jobs are.
Bear in mind that probes and sensors, and associated systems, needed to achieve 'lights-out' and unattended machining, are much more compact.
They don't need great festoons of cabling to get in the way of swarf and coolant.
Now there are even tooling systems, which can be adjusted in-situ without touching them.
The means is the fast-growing wireless communications.
All these are good reasons for visiting EMO and talking to the likes of ABB Robotics, Cincinnati Machine, Citizen, Colchester-Harrison, Delcam, EMAG, Electrox, Festo, Guyson International, Heidenhain, Heller, Igus, KUKA, Matsuura, Mori Seiki, Rofin-Baasel, Star, Trumpf, XYZ Machine Tools and Yamazaki Mazak - to name a few.
The time has arrived to consider whether the OEM should bring back machining in-house.
The EMO is a very good event at which to discuss the idea.
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