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employees to manage their own work area," Mr. Utecht says. "ey manage their own small businesses, every cell gets its own profit and loss statement each week." ey know exactly how profitable they are, they know what they have spent on labor, materials and on small tools. "Everything we do is in cells," says Doug Weisshahn, project technician and NC programmer. Mr. Weisshahn started as a machinist 28 years ago with Miller Electric, and in 2005, he moved into a CNC programmer role. About three years ago, Mr. Weisshahn took on the position of process technician, which is like a manufacturing engineer. "eir labor is tied down to a production area, their invest- ments and deprecation is tied to that area so they can calculate a labor rate. e sales from that area are tied back to them," he says. Mr. Utecht says he does a lot more coaching than he does directing. e supervisors will not micromanage and make every little decision. In addition, workers at all levels contribute to the continuous improvement atmosphere. Shopfloor workers even weigh in on how they want new equipment positioned on the floor. "Who best understands the intrica- cies of how that machine will be used and how its position will help or upset the workflow of that area?" Mr. Weisshahn says. All of the cells have an average of between 250 to 300 components, assembly or part numbers they support. "For example, we will have a production cell with about 18 employees; they run higher volume Swiss components. ey won't bid anything unless it's more than $10,000 in revenue," Mr. Utecht says. "ey all have their focus and niche, so we gear that equipment and their processes around that." High Demand Part Production Need Copper MIG welding nozzles is one particular component type that drives high demand for the Miller team. Besides the high volume needed, various configurations are also required. ese nozzles are consumables that also push production numbers higher. Due to the overwhelming demand, the Components Division challenged its vendors to find solutions to its copper nozzle production needs. Hydromat Inc. in St. Louis, Missouri, was one of the compa- nies asked to submit a solution. Hydromat was already a known entity to the Components Division; it had been running old legacy-style Hydromat rotary transfer machines since 2001 making welding tips. Recently, the division created a new area to manufac- ture tips—moving one of the rotary transfer machines from another part of the complex and moving four other machines from the Beecher, Illinois, location. Two of those being double production machines with dual bar feeder setups. As the company relocates departments for better efficiency, it also created a new area specifically for the manufacture of nozzles, in which now resides a new Hydromat Epic R/T 45-12 machine, its first full CNC-type Hydromat. Previous production of most of these nozzles were done in-house on traditional CNC lathes with secondary operations and the rest were outsourced to third-party suppliers. A review was in order. "We did a full option evaluation. We actually went down four different avenues and broke into teams exploring the different production processes," Mr. Utecht says. "en we would meet back and review where we were, and what made the most sense." Mr. Weisshahn explains how the company looked at the status quo, leaving the process as it was. e team reviewed it, drawing the part through a transfer press and looked at high volume multi-spindles. As another option, the team looked at machining the part out of solid barstock. e team at Hydromat came up with a process that would machine the part without secondary operations and minimal scrap, not to mention bringing the work back in house. Developing a Process Hydromat proposed that during the machining process, the part would be removed from its CNC Epic, which would be robotically integrated to be swaged in a hydraulic press and then reloaded back into the rotary transfer process to be finished. Hydromat engineers incorporated a pneumatic unloader/loader, a FANUC robot, and a turntable on the Neff hydraulic press to accomplish this process. Besides increasing production, elimination of scrap was a necessity, and the only way to eliminate excessive amounts was to use tubing and apply a forming applica- tion of some kind. Miller Electric needed the versatility of machining, but the efficiency of stamping; blending these two processes together created a workable hybrid. e Hydromat project was a collaborative effort, and Mr. Weisshahn played an integral part in the improvements. With this particular project, 80 percent of communica- tion with Hydromat's staff was handled by Mr. Weisshahn. Hydromat engineers incorporated a pneumatic unloader/ loader, a FANUC robot, and a turntable on the Neff hydraulic press to accomplish this process. ROTARY TRANSFER 36 PRODUCTION MACHINING :: SEPTEMBER 2017