Product category:
Tool management systems
News Release from: Toolvend | Subject: Tool vending machine
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 21 November 2007
Tool vending machine aids CNC machine
productivity
A UK machining subcontractor doubled its turnover through having invested heavily in shop floor equipment and installing a cutting tools vending machine.
In little over two years Lowley Engineering has doubled its turnover to beyond the GBP 1 million mark, thanks to ongoing extensive investment in machine tools and growth in the hydraulic valve sector The Launceston, UK-based subcontractor has invested heavily in a shop floor that operates high specification machine tools such as six Yamazaki Mazak machines and a tool vending machine from ToolVend
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 20 Jun 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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Lowley Engineering production director, Andrew Cameron, said: "I honestly don't think we could have grown at the rate we have without the ToolVend system, because we would have just been holding ourselves back.
The machine is perfect for a company like ours; it has put the responsibility for tooling back to the supplier, allowing us to get on with the job at hand".
Like many small subcontract businesses, the 16 employee company has no storeman to monitor tooling consumption.
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The ordering process used to involve operators writing a fax order form when tools were used.
However, machinists often forgot to send the faxes to tooling supplier, TruCut Tools of Poole.
The only time Lowley knew it had a tooling problem was when an operator asked if a particular cutter was available and looked in the tooling draw there was not one.
Lack of tooling immediately caused machine downtime and lost labour hours.
On top of this, the whole process of tool ordering was labour intensive as tools also had to be booked in as well as out.
Identifying the ongoing problem, Lowley installed the ToolVend vending machine on a three year lease hire period from TruCut.
As Cameron said: "Since installing the vending machine in March 2007, the administration side of things has been wonderful with no ordering, booking or chasing for tooling.
We now have our stock levels right and we haven't had a period where we haven't had tools we needed".
However, Lowley believes that stock levels would not have been so easy to correct without the exceptional company growth.
"We had thousands of pounds of stock and luckily we installed machines like the Mazak Integrex with a 40 tool carousel.
This enabled us to naturally deplete stock levels by filling carousels and starting from scratch with the ToolVend system".
Lowley manufactures hydraulic valves, connectors, pipes and valve bodies for the likes of Caterpillar and Henry Hoovers.
Previously the company had a GBP 3000/month tooling spend before installing ToolVend and the Mazak Integrex machine.
Since then, and in spite of what Lowley described as 'phenomenal growth' the tooling spend has only increased by GBP 200/month.
Holding GBP 10,000 of tooling stock on the shop floor, the slight spend increase has come as part of the culture change the vending machine has brought to Lowley.
As Cameron said: "The shop floor used to take drill after drill, using them briefly and then leaving them to one side and discarding them.
Now, machinists know they are accountable and traceable through the computerised system.
All of a sudden drills weren't wasted and our drill consumption fell immediately.
This also happened with our inserts.
We now have our inserts in boxes of one or two at a time as opposed to boxes of 10.
Suddenly operators took two inserts and used all the cutting edges as opposed to taking a box of ten.
When machinists realised insert costs and that they were individually accountable, our insert and drill waste and costs fell remarkably.
We have definitely increased our efficiency with the ToolVend machine".
At present, Lowley has upwards of 70 different tools in the vending machine with further tools planned for entry onto the system to fill the 120 tool capacity machine, said ToolVend to manufacturingtalk.com.
Plans for the future include fully stocking the vending machine and then installing a second ToolVend system to accommodate cutters to compliment the inserts.
Cameron concluded: "The vending machine produces a monthly report that tells us how much tooling we use and spend and this allows us to control and budget our spend accordingly.
As our company grows so does our range of tooling and the ToolVend system enables TruCut Tools to monitor the system every two weeks and supply us with exactly what we need, when we need.
The cost, production, labour, stock and administration benefits have been countless and we still haven't got around to realising the benefits of production analysis the system offers as yet.
We definitely intend to install a second machine very soon as the benefits have been exceptional to our small business.".
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