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The Three-Legged Stool of Manufacturing Excellence:
Process Design, Process Analysis, Process Understanding
12-27-02
Manufacturing Excellence, through the concepts and precepts of Process Design, Process Analysis and Process Understanding, has come to the forefront of metalworking and a host of other manufacturing enterprises as an area of endeavor that is rich with opportunities and reward for the manufacturer and the customer alike. Led by activities such as the Toyota Production System, G.E. and Motorola Six Sigma Process and Boeing Lean Manufacturing Concepts, most major industries, including metalworking, have radically retooled their manufacturing systems to focus on their "processes". Objectives in all instances are collapse of lead and flow times, elimination of waste, inventory elimination and reduction of cost. The "processes" involved include not only classical processes in manufacturing flow path steps but also supporting activities such as customer service, order entry, design, and quality assurance.
The bottom line? Consider the success of the aluminum forging industry in reducing flow times for intermediate size, complex closed-die forgings such as aircraft wheels from 22 - 24 weeks to 9 weeks and for very large, heavy hydraulic press-forged airframe structural components from 32 weeks to 12 weeks or less. Additionally, with these concepts lead times for new tool and die designs and new die manufacturing have been cut by 50% or more, from 12 - 18 weeks to 6 - 9 weeks.
For aluminum alloys, metalworking manufacturing processes include molten metal processing (ingot or casting fabrication), raw shape making activities (forging, extruding and rolling), thermal treatments (imparting mechanical properties) and machining activities to achieve the final component. For purposes of this article, the focus will be on metalworking and thermal treatment processes, which are combined into the overall concept of thermomechanical processing to manufacture the wide variety of products utilized by a large number of end user markets.
What do Process Design, Process Analysis and Process Understanding mean? For metalworking and thermal treatment processes for components from aluminum alloys, Process Design encompasses a range of technologies that are founded in and/or are enablers for design and reduction to practice of highly efficient thermomechanical processes. These thermomechanical processes provide cost and time effective final products meeting customer specifications for geometry and mechanical properties. Process Design utilizes powerful computer-based tools such as CAD/CAM and Finite Element Modeling (FEM), deformation and thermal modeling techniques (DEFORM, Forge 3, NIKE, ANSYS and others) in thermomechanical processing and product design, including design and manufacture of necessary tooling and dies. With these computer tools, the manufacturer has the ability to quickly evaluate alternative manufacturing concepts, design necessary tooling and manufacturing processes and validate the most efficient approach using optimization techniques in advance of committing product to actual fabrication on the shop floor.
Process Analysis is a concept employed to improve existing manufacturing flow paths, to collapse flow times and to reduce cost. Key concepts employed are Kaizen events, Six Sigma Investigations and similar techniques that rigorously decompose a process or a flow path into its underlying elements, establish theoretical and practical bounds of the process elements, and develop alternatives or optimums. Process Analyses lead to consensus definition of the "as is" state of the process or flow path and then seeks to elucidate the "to be" state and the steps by which the future state is captured. By necessity all Process Analyses are based upon statistically validated data and analytical techniques. Improvement Analysis is a variant of Process Analysis utilized by some practitioners to focus more on the future or improved state of the process. Most Process or Improvement analyses utilize multi-disciplinary teams to acquire, analyze and capture the teachings from process data.
The final leg of the three-legged stool for Manufacturing Excellence is Process Understanding. Process Understanding is frequently an endeavor that is undertaken in concert with Process Design or Process Analysis because it provides the insights needed into the fundamental, underlying science that is required to succeed in development or capture of manufacturing process improvement objectives. Conceptually, many practitioners refer to Process Understanding as "listening to the process." In other words, through unbiased, but careful data acquisition, it is allowing the process elements and/or the flow path to identify their critical elements and frequently critical bounds. In many instances, in order to acquire the necessary science to enable Process Analyses objectives, it is necessary to exploit well-designed experimental programs in concert with process modeling technologies.
The emphasis on Manufacturing Excellence throughout all industrial sectors is relentless and the aluminum metalworking industry is no exception. Most state-of-the-art manufacturers of aluminum products are heavily engaged in these endeavors, where the critical enablers are the underlying technologies of Process Design, Process Analysis and Process Understanding.
Want to learn more about this area? Useful web sites are:
- Ohio State University Engineering Research Center for Net Shape Manufacturing (nsmwww.eng.ohio-state.edu/ ). This Center, funded by NSF, is a consortium of U.S. and U.S.-based foreign companies. OSU-ERC has acted as a focal point for metalworking-related technology programs and research for over ten years. The ERC has conducted and currently sponsors R&D projects in all fields related to manufacturing and Process Analysis and Process Modeling technologies.
- Forging Industry Association (www.forging.org). The Forging Industry Association (FIA) is an industry group representing both U.S. and international forging companies and suppliers and customers. The FIA collects and disseminates data from manufacturing technologies related not only to forging but also Process Analysis and Process Design and leads member companies in consortia focused on advanced manufacturing concepts.
- Aluminum Extruder's Council (www.aec.org). The Aluminum Extruder's Council (AEC) is an industry group representing US and international aluminum extrusion companies, supplier and customers. AEC collects and disseminates data from manufacturing technologies related to extrusion and Process Analysis and Process Design concepts. AEC leads member companies in consortia focused on advanced manufacturing concepts.
- ASM International (www.asminternational.org) and TMS (www.tms.org). ASM International and TMS are worldwide materials industry organizations representing a broad spectrum of materials and processing technologies. Both have extensive information on the processing of aluminum alloys and other materials including Process Design and thermomechanical processing.
- National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (www.ncms.org). NCMS is a federally funded organization with a wide membership of U.S. companies in all manufacturing fields. NCMS acts as the national focal point and center for all manufacturing science-related technologies and sponsors R&D in a wide variety of advanced manufacturing technologies, including major efforts in Process Analysis, Process Design and Process Understanding.
Article provided courtesy of The Aluminum Association - www.aluminum.org
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