Burning Up For Quality Enhancement

Investing In a Pallet System Makes a Difference at Maxon

Quality production is a point of heritage with Maxon Corporation, just as much as the company’s strong background with the more famous Ball Corporation. Both companies grew up together in Muncie, Indiana, about 100 years ago–Maxon providing the industrial burners to make the glass, and Ball manufacturing the renowned jars that made Muncie a global center of consumer manufacturing, and eventually the home of Ball State University.

Maxon’s market expertise has continued to make the area a manufacturing center for industrial burners, nozzles, valves and control valves, both domestically and internationally through its Brussels, Belgium, and Shanghai, China, operations. The company, which prides itself on being an ISO 9001 operation that makes world class products, discovered it needed to enhance its manufacturing system in order to meet increasing productivity demands.

It turned to the Makino Machining Complex (MMC) automated pallet handling system to integrate machining operations and enhance productivity. The MMC is powered by both a Makino A55 and a Makino a51 horizontal machining center, and provides Maxon the flexibility and cost effectiveness to increase productivity to meet market demands.

Raw castings with complex features on all sides of the part used to take Maxon four weeks to send through the machine shop due to multiple handlings and functions. Now, these can be completed in days with one setup and process. Other parts that took 90 hours to machine in a conventional fashion now take 25 hours, while lot sizes and inventory have been reduced due to the productivity.

Mark Lohmar, engineering manager states, "We are not afraid to make a major investment to keep us competitive and current with modern technology. After a thorough investigation, Makino proved to be more competitively priced due to our productivity gains.

"As a quality-conscious organization, our emphasis is on our product serviceability, design, customer satisfaction and to enhance lead times. Because of this focus, we need machine tools that supply results. Makino has done this."

Resource Reductions [back to top]
Maxon’s market is so diverse within general industry, no one customer has more than one percent of its business. Paint curing, food processing, heat drying, laminates, flooring, drywall, paper mills, oil processing–anything that requires industrial heat would require Maxon products. The company not only supplies these products, but it also now does ’total solution’ system integration, supplying everything needed by a company to put an industrial burner into operation.

Due to product volume and lead-time demands, Maxon set out to find machinery that would help the company reduce machining hours and show a positive return on investment (ROI). "We developed a formal justification that conservatively eliminated two and-a-half machines with this MMC acquisition. We believe it is as high as four machines," says Lohmar. "We went from approximately 25 percent spindle utilization up to 95 percent spindle utilization on two shifts.

"The percentage of setup time required to run machine tools at Maxon has also dropped, while machine utilization has increased. A large part of this productivity gain clearly has come about from the Makino MMC and horizontal machining center cells."

The Makino machinery has allowed Maxon to increase productivity. "We have been able to adjust our techniques and become very competitive with the MMC," says Joe Carmichael, manager of machining operations for Maxon. "We can get the same productivity with one person versus three people, allowing us to allocate personnel elsewhere and to increase employment security for our people.

"We call the MMC our ’problem solver.’ We are reducing inventory by leaps and bounds because of the ability to run a raw casting and bring it out finished, eliminating benchwork buffers in the shop and gaining unattended machining time. The Makino MMC and horizontal machining centers have also allowed Maxon to successfully internalize some processes it had sent out in the past, saving additional out-of-pocket costs. And, while our scrap rate used to be two percent, it is now just 0.7 percent. The savings in time and cost across the board have been substantial."

Cellular Manufacturing [back to top]
Maxon initiated cell technology more than a dozen years ago, most of which was for specific markets or products on two to three manual machine setups. Implementing the Makino MMC with horizontal machining centers has helped drive that concept more toward group technology and true cellular manufacturing.

"We started out with isolated cells that were departmentalized–drilling, milling, turning–just to get ourselves organized. Then we took our vision for restructuring the shop to a new operational level with Makino," says Lohmar. "This has led to our rethinking how to organize the entire facility and how the plant is laid out. We are looking at things quite differently with the MMC.

"Maxon primarily makes valve products and some burner parts on the MMC. The machines in the cell are being driven for productivity now instead of the operator being driven, which for us was a different manufacturing philosophy. We have eliminated handling processes between the part being put in one side and a finished part coming out of the other. For some of our products that require high positional tolerance, the Makino horizontals are the machines that can best complete the process."

"We run some inventory on at least six different parts every shift on the 23-pallet MMC," says Carmichael. "As an example, there are three sizes of a main base that we run on the A55. The main base is a proprietary part to Maxon, and serves as part of the housing for the actuators for our valves. We do machining on all six sides of the part, significant amounts of ’true positioning’ machining, milling and tapping. The smallest of these three main bases used to go through four setups in our box-line cell. It now goes through two setups on the A55 in the same volume as before, but it has eliminated all deburring and bench work.

"We have one part that used to take 19 different setups for 19 different machining activities; now it is done with just one setup. Maxon runs 139 different part numbers requiring more than 200 different operations on the A55, and 200 different part numbers requiring more than 300 operations on the a51 and A55 together. This type of performance on high and low volume production, from 500 parts to one part, saves us tons of time and money, including thousands of dollars we no longer have to outsource. And, because of its performance accuracy and quality, we are actually reducing the number of holes we need to drill."

Combining Technologies [back to top]
The Maxon MMC automated cell is powered by both an A55 and an a51 Makino horizontal, the latter being the newest addition to help with volume, overflow and backup. "We recently remanufactured a product that we were struggling with in the market, a control valve with some positioning difficulties," says Lohmar. "And we eliminated the problem by tightening up a lot of tolerances, which would not have been an option without the Makino A55.

"When increased volume created the demand for an additional machine, the a51 proved more than sufficient at handling a great deal of the three and-a-half axis work that we do, with tolerances and speeds comparable to the larger A55. They are a nice pair that work well together, and in many ways act like the same machine."

"This combination gives us flexibility and capability," says Carmichael. "Our cost system is based on the lot size and setups. This further adds to our flexibility, and relieves the load of many other machines in the shop. And, it alleviates any production down time should one machine require maintenance, ensuring we meet our JIT (just-in-time) production demands.

"It is our desire to reduce the amount of older machines in our facility that take up floor space and do not provide maximum productivity. Floor space is a premium.

"We have three old manual machines that essentially are being replaced by the MMC," continues Carmichael. "We have a host of other products out there that require multihandling, and these will run more efficiently on the MMC than through current processes."

Market Demands [back to top]
In addition to all of the performance and productivity gains, a primary justification for acquiring the MMC was shortening customer lead times.

"This allows us to be much more responsive to market demands and customer needs. That is our primary concern," says Lohmar. "We may not be as efficient as a lot of commercial machine shops are, because we are here to serve the internal and external customer needs of a specific market.

"To any customer, though, low cost is not always the primary consideration factor. Quality and on-time delivery are two of the most sought after factors, and they remain our biggest attributes. We are not that cost-driven; we are much more quality, delivery and customer satisfaction-driven. That is what ’lights the fire’ under our operation. And our customers have seen the results of this technological advancement first-hand, thanks to Makino."

For additional information on the products and services of Maxon Corporation, contact the company at 201 E. 18th Street, Muncie, Indiana, 47302-4124.
You can call them at 765-284-3304, or visit them on the web at www.maxoncorp.com.mm