[jamessiffel]

Does anyone out there actually practice lean machining? I work for a shop that claims to, but they really are the antithesis of the principles!

[Geof]

What is lean machining?

[jeffrey001]

Never saw lean machining but lean manufacturing do exist.

Jeff

[78nova]

I believe what you possibly meant to refer to was " Lean Manufacturing "

We have setup work cells to practice this vision. We use to practice the one man one machine thinking and still do in some areas and on some manual machines. In our CNC areas of machining we have one 4 machine cell setup that two guys run two machines each. They practice " Zero Setup Time " Standard Work " FIFO " ( First In First Out ) " & Part Flow ".

Those are just some of the terms used.

They are able to have zero setup time since these machines have two 5-axis tables and a three tool drums of 80 tools each. The first 80 tool drum is shared with both pallets and contains standardized tooling. The second drum is for pallet " A " only. The third drum is for pallet " B " only. This way you can have one job running and another job setup waiting to run. Offline setups are performed while the machine is running.

Their jobs are mostly ran in 4 operations that the run times are balanced to within no more 20 minutes difference to one another. Once you get all four machines running you are getting a completed part done in about 90 minutes. All of these jobs have dedicated fixtures and tools. A few of these jobs get semi completed parts left on their fixtures when the job is completed. You just take the last 3 completed parts from machines 1-3 and load them onto fixtures 2-4, the next time another order comes in you get all 4 machines setup ready to run. You load a new part on the first machine and start all 4 machines, you now have kept the flow of work active and the flow is not broken, producing a completed part in about 90 minutes.

Most of our NC machines utilize the Erowa pallet system.

This is a sampling description of Lean Manufacturing the way we practice it in one of our areas. We have other areas with different type machines that all work on part flow to get their parts through their areas in the least amount of time and the least amount of travel distance.

Hope this helps out some.

Kenny

[pbd1971]

I came across this "Lean Manufacturing" whilst job hunting. Once I began to read up on it I soon realised that I had been doing a lot of it without actually knowing it.

I have always been one of those people who "keeps busy" I would never just stand idle at a machine and watch a component being manufactured. I would get one of the cnc machine tools running and during the cycle time I would be tooling up the next machine, producing a cnc program on the CAM system or planning the route and tooling selections for the next component/job.

We were only a small company so I would imagine bigger companies can afford to employ people to oversee LM and no doubt spend a fortune on implementing it but IMHO its just a case of working smarter with the resources you have.

Thanks

[Geof]

..... so I would imagine bigger companies can afford to employ people to oversee LM and no doubt spend a fortune on implementing it....

I am sure a lot of large, and probably not so large, companies do precisely this. Spend ten dollars on management to save five out in the manufacturing area.