Customer Problem
One of the principal enemies of any manufacturing operation is downtime. Plant overhead requires high production volume just to make ends meet. When a line goes down, there is little choice but to spend whatever amount is necessary to restart production as soon as possible.
As destructive as downtime can be, many consider it an inevitable reality of manufacturing. All manufacturers have maintenance and engineering staff on the factory floor to expedite the repair and restart of any line that goes down. Besides the cost of lost production, businesses face the cost of damaged product that occurs often as an effect and sometimes as a cause of downtime. Also, the cost of labor, machinery, and tooling to restart the line can be tremendous.
Solution
One year ago, Federal-Mogul Powertrain Systems'' LaGrange, GA plant changed from a plant that dealt with downtime after the fact, to a plant that proactively worked to eliminate it. The facility manufactures small- and large-engine pistons and piston assemblies for original equipment and aftermarket customers. Established in 1995, it produces more than 4 million pistons per year and employs approximately 130.
Federal-Mogul selected DVT Corp''s SmartImage Sensors to replace more expensive fiber-optic sensors of limited reliability in checking part orientation before critical machining processes. Incorrect part orientation had been resulting in damaged parts, broken tooling, and about 20 hours of downtime per week.
During the manufacturing process, the pistons range in value from about $1 for an unmachined part up to $6.50 for some of the finished pistons. The broken tooling costs about $10,000 to fix and in the past, had to be repaired two or three times per month. Before installing DVT''s Series 600 SmartImage Sensors, the plant utilized a system that depended on fiber-optic sensors to detect part orientation. Even at $100,000 for the system, with redundant sensors to check part orientation, Federal Mogul still lost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
The application required DVT''s SmartImage Sensors to detect piston orientation before a pinbore operation where alignment is critical. The pinhole is cast offset from the piston centerline. The orientation of the piston is critical to the safe operation of the pinbore machine. If the alignment is reversed, the machine "crashes," breaking the tool and possibly damaging the tool holder. By incorporating DVT''s SmartImage Sensors, Federal-Mogul was able to totally avoid misloading the pinbore machine. The DVT system has replaced the fiber optic sensors that previously mis-detected approximately 20% of correctly oriented pistons with a 0.04% false failure reading. The DVT system has not allowed a single piston to go through the system incorrectly oriented, all but eliminating downtime on this particular line.