MidSize Production Shop Goes Lean

KrisDee Turns To Automation Solutions

Most high-production environments are successful because they manufacture hundreds or thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of the same parts over and over again. But there are a number of smaller shops that are leaving their footprints in the production marketplace by embracing lean manufacturing principles.

Specializing in small- to medium-sized production runs, KrisDee and Associates has flourished for more than 20 years by staying diversified and continually adding equipment to meet its customer needs. Because the majority of the work the company does is aluminum—either cast aluminum parts or billet—fast metal removal, while still maintaining accuracy, is the key to its success.

To provide the best quality, lowest cost and shortest lead times in order to remain competitive, the company had to change business processes and avoid running excess parts and maintaining a large inventory for its customers.

These parts would often sit on a shelf until the customers would need them. And while they sat, the company was losing money because they couldn’t invoice the work until it was delivered. This also required too much additional storage space to store the parts, especially some of the larger cast aluminum parts.

Selecting an Automation System [back to top]
In the fall of 2004, Hermann Schneider began investigating ways to improve his operational flow on part production through lean manufacturing principles. As one of the principals at KrisDee in suburban Chicago, he and his partner selected a 75-pallet Makino Machining Complex (MMC2) system to lead the automation and continuous improvement efforts of their shop.

Schneider studied the dramatically positive effects that adding an MMC to the floor at KrisDee could have on the company across the board. This included not having to hold customer inventory anymore while remaining cost competitive through JIT (just-in-time) production and being able to manufacture the right amount of parts needed at just the right time.

After discussing it with his partner, Russ Majewski, he placed the order, and KrisDee took delivery of an MMC with a 75-pallet storage system, Model A3 Cell Controller and four a51 horizontal machining centers (HMCs) with magazines ranging from 134 to 219 tool capacities. Schneider says he hasn’t looked back, as the technology advantage continues to move the operation forward.

MMC Advantages [back to top]
Designed to improve manufacturing efficiency, the MMC is an enhanced pallet-management system created to meet the increasing demands of customers. The system assigns work and initiates operations automatically, based on machine and material availability, utilizing maximum spindle capabilities and monitoring all automated procedures.

With the ability to tie in up to 15 machining centers and four different work-setting stations, MMCs have been incorporated into hundreds of production environments in the United States and abroad. The system can handle up to 200 pallet stockers—stacked either one, two or three layers high—with an unlimited number of parts and fixtures.

It became an ideal system to enhance the capabilities and lean manufacturing requirements of KrisDee, which started in the Chicago area in 1982. Over the years the company has had a diverse product offering, which today ranges from valves to aerospace parts, medical equipment to automotive parts, and diesel engines to heavy equipment parts.

"We’d like to double our business without adding personnel, and with systems like the MMC we are getting closer to being able to realize that goal."

The shop has a total of 21 Makino machining centers on the floor out of a total of 27 CNC machines, most being horizontal machining centers. The company took delivery of its first Makino in 1992, and Schneider says he and his partner were impressed with the fact that they got incredible support from Makino even though KrisDee was a one-machine customer at that time.

As a result, whenever the need has come to add equipment or capability, Makino has been the first place Schneider turned. And the diverse company sought out the MMC to continue to apply lean principles to their manufacturing operation. These principles include eliminating non-value-added setup time, improving the continuous flow inventory system and finding   more ways to automate and stay competitive.

Automation Future [back to top]
Schneider says that the key to success in today’s manufacturing world is going to be found in automating systems. "Our goal is to add as much automation as possible while maintaining the same number of employees," he says. "We’d like to double our business without adding personnel, and with systems like the MMC we are getting closer to being able to realize that goal."

The first robotic automation the shop added was on an a51, which is a dedicated machine for one specific high-volume part. "The great thing is that the robot only requires human loading of parts from the bin of raw material.   The rest is totally automated for us," says Schneider.    "It’s great because our employees are monitoring it and just adding stock when needed without having to dedicate someone to this task.

"They see how the automation is helping make their jobs easier and freeing them up for different work, not taking work away from them. And, we were able to take two employees from this machine and move them elsewhere in the shop immediately."

KrisDee plans to add another a51 to create a two-machine cell for the robot. In fact, Schneider and Majewski were so impressed with the Fanuc robot that they recently purchased a much smaller Fanuc that is mounted to a table in the shop to help reduce labor costs on what formerly were manual functions.

Continuous Improvement [back to top]
The crown jewel on the shop floor at KrisDee is the Makino MMC system. "When we got the MMC we didn’t know exactly how big to buy it," Schneider says. "So we went with the philosophy ’If we build it, they will come.’ That way, we ensured ourselves that we could easily accommodate current work that we planned to gain.

"The bottom line with automation systems like the MMC is that we can eliminate setups on repeat jobs without having to worry about repeatability. The first part is a good part, and is exactly like the last part that was run on it—even if that was a few months ago!"

Because parts are continually changing over, with some machines changing parts multiple times in a day, the MMC will save KrisDee time and money.

"The theory in a production environment is that you can’t do ’one-off’ parts; you have to have a high volume to sustain the business," says Schneider. "But we do have a lot of small- to medium-sized runs. For example, one part that we run took two hours to set up, and the customer needs it in lots of 20.

"In the past, we would run a few months’ supply at a time to avoid the long setup the next time they ordered. Now it’s programmed into the MMC so we can run 20 at a time with very minimal setup. And this is just one example of our lean principles being employed. I can’t begin to guess at the overall savings in time and man-hours we’ll see from this type of system and practice."

Schneider says that the Makino automation technology adds value throughout the shop. In addition, their lean practices, including continuous improvement, teamwork and total involvement have made differences that are sometimes hard to quantify.

"When we got our first A55, we took a six-sided part with six setups and reduced it to two setups and saw an increase in accuracy," he says.

"The speed of the Makinos compared to our other machines has helped, too. We can work on parts now that used to be castings. We can take a billet, especially on small runs, and do the metal removal faster and eliminate the time customers were waiting to get their castings back."

"This allows us to shorten lead times and be more customer focused," says Schneider.   "It’s a huge time savings and an increase in business for us because the capabilities of the Makino equipment on our floor promote lean processes."

Leap of Faith [back to top]
Like many production facilities, KrisDee has often bought equipment in the past only when the need arose, so buying the MMC was a leap of faith for them in some ways. One example of the savings they are now seeing from the MMC is the elimination of four to five hours just in setup on some of the complex casting work they do.

 "Shops in the production world are notorious for doing high volumes, and then they are stuck with the parts and scrap if an engineering change gets made," says Schneider. "The biggest advantages to the MMC seem like common sense to us. The reduction in inventory, in waste, in quick part changeover and the flexibility to engineer and change parts quickly out on the floor are huge lean advantages.

"The bottom line is KrisDee is more flexible than ever before. With the MMC, it allows us to provide our customers with the best quality, lowest cost and shortest lead time possible. That’s the key to our lean manufacturing success today—and for our future."

For additional information on the products and services of KrisDee & Associates, Inc., contact the company at:
755 Schneider Drive
South Elgin, Illinois, 60177
Phone: 847-608-8300
Fax: 847-608-8400
E-Mail: sal.p@KrisDee.com
Web: www.KrisDee.com