If you want innovative ideas, Cosworth Racing, among world leaders in designing and manufacturing high performance engines for race, rally and road cars, is a good place to go. Products are specified to close tolerances, batch sizes are small, lead times tight and modifications frequent. So the shop floor is a test bed for challenges and solutions.
And here’s some good ones. As part of its programme of continuous improvement, the firm has extended its DNC and shop floor manufacturing IT system, resulting in better optimised production processes – and major time, cost and productivity benefits. It’s been so successful that Cosworth is now looking at directly linking in customer order and production requirements data to the shopfloor to further improve its efficiency and responsiveness to change.
According to machine shop manager Paul Green at the Northampton site, his DNC and shop floor manufacturing data system, installed some years ago by developer DloG, started the path to productivity improvement. Back then, by providing manufacturing data – like tool lists, machine offsets, process sheets, gauging requirements, product drawings and graphical set-up information – as well as the machine tool programs directly to shop floor operators via PCs in the manufacturing cells, it had transformed production efficiency.
Key to continuous improvement
But that was just the start. More recently, manufacturing wanted to understand what its machine tools (organised as cells for specific build, like crank shafts and cylinder heads, with some specialist machine sharing) were doing and get production times accurately and in real time. “We recognised that up-to-the-minute information on the status of each machine tool could hold the key to maximising utilisation of our production resources, as well as optimising throughput,” says Green. Additionally, reasons for stoppages could be captured on a database and analysed for improvement.
At the time, set-ups, delays and production periods were being recorded on cards, with data being entered onto Excel forms – resulting in errors, incomplete records and wasted resource. Green selected Dlog again, for its Prisma system, and phased the installation, starting with a three-month pilot in the connecting rod production section. All went well, with the system recording information on machine status and stoppages via hardware signals, while providing for manual input for information like machines stopped awaiting materials. In fact, since operators may be away from a cell when machines complete their cycles, the system has been configured to lock a machine tool after a pre-determined period, so preventing it from being re-started until a reason for delay has been entered.
Cell leaders can now get a real-time overview of production status, machine utilisation and delays, with reports generated automatically for production management. Cosworth has since rolled out the system across its other manufacturing areas in Northampton. Says Green: “Our team leaders have effectively gained an extra hour a day to devote to productive work. As a result, we have optimised our production processes – with major time, cost and productivity benefits.”
Next up will be interfacing the machine monitoring system directly to Cosworth’s Preactor finite capacity scheduler. That system has been in use for some time for shopfloor planning and sequencing across the cells, linked to the firm’s ageing ManMan MRPII sales and materials management system. But feedback from the factory floor is currently an additional manual process, with operators logging themselves on and off jobs. Harnessing real time information should take responsiveness and customer service that bit further.
Indeed for the future Green says that, notwithstanding the current IT review under a new management team – looking at everything from engineering change control systems to engine build management and rebalancing manufacturing for more flexibility – he wants to extend DloG again. First he wants it for modern tool management and then to link customer order and production requirements data from Manman to the shop floor electronically. As he says, not only would Cosworth create virtually paperless production, it would further ramp up efficiency and flexibility as accurate information reaches those that need it faster.
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