Production Machining - Your access to the precision machining industrial buyer.
Issue link: https://pm.epubxp.com/i/739833
Edited by Chris Felix Reducing Production Times with Robotic Automation T here are as many reasons to explore manufacturing automation as there are CNC machine shop owners. For Rusty Arant, of family-owned Northeast Tool, located in Matthews, North Carolina, the trigger for considering this technology was a statement he heard at a 2013 customer/ supplier conference. "e speaker said, 'If you are not a progres- sive company that is willing to automate, you may not be here next year,'" Mr. Arant says. at was a wake-up call for the then 50-year-old precision manufacturing company. "We'd been considering ways to improve our workflow, but hadn't really looked into using robots to automate our machining processes. We already had some robotic welding stations, but that was the extent of our manufacturing automation." Northeast Tool's 62 employees produce about 2,000 unique parts each year in quantities ranging from one-offs to 40,000 pieces. A complete overhaul of its processes using lean principles helped this shop improve production by almost 90 percent. :: ABOVE: Northeast Tool produces parts for the transportation, aerospace, medical, defense and energy industries, including a series of aluminum end caps for carbon fiber compressed natural gas tanks. CNC SINGLE-SPINDLE 36 PRODUCTION MACHINING :: NOVEMBER 2016