Posts Tagged ‘manufacturing’
Wednesday, March 14th, 2012
It’s no secret that many tool makers have experienced and are still experiencing difficult times.
By necessity, the tooling industry is transforming from its roots as a craft to a future as a complex business. For this transformation to be successful, the tooling industry as a whole must realize that it is not just undergoing a temporary downturn in business, but a radical restructuring. This restructuring is evident in not only mergers and acquisitions (consolidation), but also in cooperative and collaborative practices taking place between small- and medium-sized tool shops. Additionally, new business models are being developed by innovative toolmakers for supporting their ability to compete today and tomorrow with just about anyone, regardless of geographic location.
Restructuring an industry, however, is an extremely tall order because it involves cultural change as much as it does developing new business models. One of the toughest cultural aspects that must be recognized and addressed is the fact that although tool making historically has been regarded as a craft requiring high degrees of skill, unfortunately, it is increasingly becoming regarded as a commodity.
What, a commodity with no real distinguishing characteristics?
To a certain extent, yes, (although there are notable exceptions) because what was done by hand and eye by a select number of tool shops can now be performed by just about any shop anywhere, due to technologies (3D solid modeling, rapid tooling and manufacturing processes, high-speed machining (HSM), etc.) available to just about anybody who chooses to employ them. There is a remedy to this commodity perception; however, by seeking out niches and having outstanding product, material, process and customer knowledge, and many North American tool shops are embracing these practices.
Like virtually all other aspects of manufacturing, integrating technologies in tool making assist in becoming more competitive, but in the end, it is the creativity and adaptivity of people (both on the production floor and in the management office) to an ever changing business climate, in concert with appropriate technologies, that will ultimately win the battle and more business.
Tags: CAD, CAM, CNC, die, manufacturing, molds, stamping, tool, tooling
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Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
We’ve all heard now for many, many years that lean manufacturing is one of the keys to remaining competitive if you want to stay in manufacturing. However, can some of the principles of lean manufacturing be applied to other parts of a business beyond manufacturing? That is a question that a growing number of companies are attempting to answer, especially in today’s super-competitive marketplace.
The phrase “lean manufacturing” is an English invention that was coined by James Womack and used to summarize Japanese manufacturing techniques, specifically, the Toyota Production System (TPS). The phrase is used to describe Toyota’s approach for expanding peoples thinking beyond basic tools and tasks.
Since I learned about lean manufacturing (or production) a long time ago, a comprehensive definition has evolved in my mind over the years. Lean manufacturing is one of those things that can defy definition.
Ask 10 people what it is and you’re likely to get 10 at least slightly different answers. Basically, lean manufacturing is a combined philosophy, initiative, and method for continually reducing waste in all areas and forms to improve the quality and efficiency of a manufacturing process. An even simpler way to define lean manufacturing is a method for producing products using less of everything (material, time, energy, etc.) compared to mass production.
Lean manufacturing isn’t just as simple as doing more with less. It is a very complex methodology with many dependencies. It is a comprehensive methodology that seeks to minimize the resources required for creating and manufacturing a product. Although lean principles strive to make things simpler, these principles actually add a layer or level of complexity to processes.
I think that to this point, and somewhat ironically, lean manufacturing concepts have tended to focus strictly on the processes occurring only on the factory floor. Ironic, because to truly exploit all that lean processes have to offer can and should be deployed throughout a company — from the factory floor to the top floor. Obviously, that’s easier said than done, and that’s what we’ll discuss next time in the MCADCafe Blog.
Tags: CAD, CAM, James Womack, lean, lean manufacturing, manufacturing, toyota, TPS
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Friday, January 6th, 2012
Whenever the topic of outsourcing manufacturing to overseas companies or facilities is brought up these days, a fact of business life called offshoring, you usually get one of two reactions anger or fear. Sometimes you get a little of both. Is North American manufacturing headed down the road to oblivion with little ability to stem or reverse the descent? We need to view all of this from an historical perspective.
What is happening to North American manufacturing today in terms of gross numbers of employees is hardly unprecedented. Historically, probably the best analogy to what is taking place in manufacturing today with regard to reduced numbers and overall effect is agricultural farming. In the U.S, between the years 1890 and 1960, the percentage of the job market that was directly tied to the farming sector dropped from about 45 percent to less than two percent. Automation on the farm did not just make the jobs flee to other countries; it made them completely disappear. Even with much lower employment numbers, the farming sector thrived in terms of productivity. Automation helped make farming more productive than it ever was when it was strictly the province of human hands and manual labor and today we enjoy surpluses that allow us to usually export huge amounts of farm goods. When jobs vanished on the farm, people turned to the emerging industrial sector for employment and a new way of life in cities.
Just as industrial manufacturing replaced farming, today in the world economy, services are replacing manufacturing.
There are major differences, however, between how offshoring has affected and will continue to affect both manufacturing and service jobs. Offshoring of manufacturing jobs affects primarily blue-collar jobs in certain industries, whereas offshoring of services affects primarily white-collar jobs across potentially all industries.
Luckily, not all manufacturing or service jobs can be outsourced or offshored because several criteria must be met, including:
- Little face to face customer contact
- Information is a major component of the product
- Work can be done via remote communications
- Low set-up barriers
- High wage differentials
So, while some consider offshoring a necessary evil to North American manufacturing and service workers, their employers are discovering that an the opposite force, known as reshoring, is an essential component of helping their businesses not only thrive, but in many cases, survive.
Because it is such an important emerging movement, reshoring will be the topic of an MCADCafe blog post in the very near future.
Tags: manufacturing, offshoring, reshoring, service
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