Looking for tools
Almost all bending experts are familiar with the situation – an urgent order comes to the machine and you cannot find the tool you need. Tools are spread out over various unlabelled trolleys or stored in tool cabinets. When you finally find the right tool, it turns out that it is damaged. This is annoying and delays the process step – in the worst case, it cannot be carried out at all. Having to go look for the tools is therefore a no-go. With a few lean management tricks (see item #5), you can whip your tool management into shape and prevent searching times.
Carrying out other tasks at the same time
Bending experts often carry out tasks that do not have anything to do with bending. They have to carry out deburring, for example, because their colleague in cutting was careless or the employee responsible for deburring overlooked a part. They also perform packaging tasks because bending is frequently the last process step before the part either goes to the customer or to surface processing. Bending imprints and scratches caused by parts handling must not be present.
Take the load off your bending experts and allocate the responsibilities for upstream and downstream process steps to colleagues who can carry out these operations full time or parallel to production.
Programming on the machine
A machine operator of a press brake should never have to program on the machine. This is time consuming and cannot be carried out parallel to production. Consequently, the productivity of a press brake (which results from components bent per unit of time) is reduced. An effective increase of machine productivity of a press brake can be achieved with offline programming. With the assistance of TecZone Bend as a part of the programming system TruTops Boost, you can program your press brake directly from the office with minimal time required. The operator receives the finished program, including information regarding the tools to be set up directly at the machine. This means that they are able to focus on setup optimizations and the bending, and therefore contribute to increasing the efficiency of your press brakes and, ultimately, of your entire production.
Smart Factory Consulting has solutions for these practical issues that are not difficult to implement, but provide increased efficiency. Discover the smart way to work.
