EM Feb 2016

VOL 07 | FEB 2016 www.efficientmanufacturing.in

EFFICIENT MANUFACTURING

TOP 10 AGILE TECHNOLOGIES

Also available in China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand & Hong Kong

For small & mid-size manufacturers

FOCUS Laser cutting

SPECIAL FEATURE Alternative materials for automakers

EM - Interview

P. 60

Brian Thompson

Senior Vice President— CAD Segment PTC

P. 34

(p. 26)

Perfect, Precision, Progressive Machine Technology HYUNDAI WIA Machine Tools pours its whole efforts on every process of production and distribution, covering from self-reliant designing to manufacturing and after sales service.

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Analysis (OptiStruct, RADIOSS & MotionSolve)

CFD Contest (AcuSolve)

This section of the contest is open to students and will constitute the This section of the contest is open to students & will test their skill Analysis and Optimisation stream, student will need to solve a combination with regards to CFD simulation using Altair AcuSolve of Altair provided analysis (CAE/MBD) and Optimisation contest problems and student contribution using Altair’s industry leading Analysis and Optimisation solution - OptiStruct, RADIOSS, and MotionSolve

Design (Inspire) This section of the contest is open to students and will constitute the Design stream, student will need to solve a combination of Altair provided design contest problems and student contribution using Altair’s industry leading design optimisation solution - solidThinking Inspire

Manufacturing Simulation This section of the contest is open to students undergoing tool/die design diploma/graduate/post-graduate courses and will test their skill for Stamping Simulation using Altair HyperForm

Faculty CAE Expert* This section of the contest is open to Faculty from Engineering Colleges & will test their skill with regards to CAE using Altair HyperWorks

E D I TO R I A L

Interesting time for SMEs!!!

“The future is full of possibilities for SMEs and it is up for grabs by the virtue of opportunities made available by increasing globalisation and ‘Make in India’ initiative”

It’s a known fact that SMEs are a crucial factor in India’s competitiveness, wealth creation, quality of life and employment. The SME sector currently employs close to 40% of India’s workforce, contribute 45% to country’s manufacturing output and about 42% to direct exports. With this, I cannot imagine a more interesting time for these enterprises. The future is full of possibilities for SMEs and it is up for grabs by the virtue of opportunities made available by increasing globalisation and ‘Make in India’ initiative.

But now, with increasing competition in the domestic as well as international markets and the stringent market demands, Indian SMEs have been passing through a transitional period. Technology adoption has become imperative, to drive down costs and improve quality and use of data, and information technology has become the key element in the technology adoption process.

While advanced technology promises improvements in efficiency and management agility, it also brings in its own challenges, as far as its realisation by SMEs is concerned.

The very first is the affordability, then comes the benefit awareness and of course the application knowledge. Moreover, implementing advanced technology can sometimes also mean putting a lot of time, effort and additional investment into maintaining and updating that technology as well. Most of the time, this prohibits SMEs from the list of options, due to the tight working capital and limited resources they have. However, the scenario, for sure, is changing, but slowly.

The Cover Story in this issue gives a bigger picture of the top ten technology trends for SMEs from the IT perspective, which delves into opportunities to reinvent the business processes you currently deploy with investment in new technology. I am sure this would be of great interest to you, as you start strategising your plans for this year!

Shekhar Jitkar Publisher & Chief Editor shekhar.jitkar@publish-industry.net EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Sonali Kulkarni President & CEO Fanuc India

N K Dhand CMD Micromatic Grinding Technologies

Dr Wilfried Aulbur Managing Partner Roland Berger Strategy Consultant

Dr K Subramanian President, STIMS Institute, USA Training Advisor, IMTMA

Vivek Sharma Managing Director Yamazaki Mazak India

S Ravishankar Managing Director DMG MORI India

Raghavendra Rao Vice President Manufacturing & Process Consulting Frost & Sullivan Dr P N Rao Professor of Manufacturing Technology Department of Technology University of Northern Iowa, USA

Satish Godbole Vice President, Motion Control Div Siemens Ltd Vineet Seth Managing Director India & Middle East Delcam Plc

Overseas Partner: China, Taiwan, Hong Kong & South-East Asia

EM | Feb 2016

5

CONTENTS

Market

8

Management

NEWS

INTERVIEW 26

14

Focus

“Look forward to long-term gains�

LASER CUTTING

“Making sure manufacturing has no ambiguity at all�

34

Interview with Brian Thompson, Senior VP—CAD Segment, PTC

Interview with Yatendra Kumar, Business Head, MotulTech India

ROUND-TABLE 30

Getting optimal ROI from assets & equipment

Fine laser cutting for medical applications

The article explains the benefits of laser cutting and compares this technology with others, while highlighting the new laser and motion technology that leads to one-stop shop for system integration

The feature discusses various aspects associated with equipment’s true ROI calculation for getting the optimal value from the machine

22

COVER STORY Top 10 agile technologies The feature discusses the leading 10 agile technologies that help small and mid-sized manufacturers meet new challenges

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EM | Feb 2016

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CONTENTS

Technology

SHEET METAL WORKING 38

Redefining metal forming systems

COMPOSITE MACHINING 52

A read on the latest automation techologies employed in the metal forming industry for enhancing productivity

What can lasers do with composites?

The Part II of the article discusses different applications of lasers in processing CFRP composites and the recent work on laser welding of thermoplastic composites

GRINDING 42

Bringing the science to shopfloor manufacturing

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT 56

The article highlights on how a portable diagnostic tool challenges the complexities faced in grinding by interpreting the process signal

New productivity levers for shopfloor

The article explains how high quality manufacturing can be achieved by focussing on supply chain design, planning and logistics

New Products 66 5-axis universal machining centre; Additive Manufacturing & multitasking machine; Energy tube; Laser processing machine; 69 Coolant through the tool feed units; Lathe chuck; Bearing housings; 71 Solid carbide end mills; Technical documentation software; Tool setter for CNC machining centres

MANUFACTURING IT 48

Enabling connected manufacturing

A read on the seven ways in which IoT based ERP implementation is finetuning the Indian manufacturing sector

SPECIAL FEATURE 60

Alternative materials for automakers

The article highlights the challenges in reducing vehicle weight and how the lightweighting strategies drive a shift towards considering the use of alternative materials for automakers

Columns 05 06 72 72

EM | Feb 2016

Editorial Contents Highlights – Next issue Company index

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MARKET | NEWS

Spain’s machine-tool sector has grown up by 3.4% in 2015 With figures that are still provisional, Spain’s machine tool and advanced manufacturing technology sector has slightly increased its turnover in 2015, by 3.4%.The global data indicate that increase in this figure has been driven by metal cutting, which has increased by 4.6%. Metal forming, however, has dropped slightly, by 0.16%, practically maintaining 2014 figures.

Components have also dropped by 7.9%, driven by the situation in China, but the other subsectors, other machines (+9.5%), tools (+6.7%), accessories (+5.6%) & machining (+6.3%), have improved with respect to 2014. According to Antxon López Usoz, President, AFM, the international situation has still been undergoing a strong transformation.

“Over the last few years, we have seen a displacement of the demand for machine As per Usoz, there is a displacement tools from Asia towards the American of demand for machine tools from continent, with Europe investing more Asia towards America cautiously. Thus, whilst USA, Canada and Mexico offer stable growth perspectives, in Europe, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, together with the Spanish market, there is a slight increase,” he said.

Indian Manufacturer of the Year Award 2015 Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) has won the globally recognised Frost & Sullivan’s “Indian Manufacturer of the Year Award 2015” for its consistent display of diligence and perseverance in developing a successful manufacturing organisation at the recently concluded awards banquet in Mumbai.

The award acknowledges TKM delegates receiving the “Indian Manufacturer Toyota’s facility in India as of the Year Award 2015” the one to have achieved and sustained manufacturing excellence with global standards. Expressing his delight on the award, Raju B Ketkale, SVP—Manufacturing, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, said, “The conclusions drawn from the unique assessment model by Frost & Sullivan has helped us get a better insight of the strengths and areas of improvement in our manufacturing process. Our focus has been to deliver customer satisfaction with highest quality at the lowest cost in the shortest leadtime.” Started in the year 2004, this is the 12th edition of the IMEA Awards.

104 companies were shortlisted and 96 were assessed which comprised of the best manufacturing facilities in India.

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Amara Raja Group partners with GoAP The Amara Raja Group (ARG) and the Government of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP) recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for direct investment in Andhra Pradesh in the fields of electronics, energy storage, automobile components, IT & telecom components, food processing, infrastructure and services. This was announced at the 22nd CII Partnership Summit & 1 st Sunrise Andhra Pradesh Investment at Visakhapatnam.

Under the terms of the MoU, ARG and GoAP have committed to an investment of approximately `5,000 crore, expected to generate approximately 10,000 new jobs over a period of 2-3 years directly, and 20,000 jobs indirectly.

Speaking on the MoU, Dr Ramachandra Naidu Galla, Chairman, Amara Raja Group, said, “We always had the focus on development of the State, this MoU provides us a great opportunity to help The MoU will facilitate provision of necessary create the infrastructure assistance by GoAP for the company for rapid industrialisation.

With the cooperation of GoAP, we are confident that we will be able to make the state an industrial hub and attract investment from both national and global players”.

Geometric announces ‘Machine to the Mean’ capabilities Geometric Limited recently announced the addition of automated ‘Machine to the Mean’ capabilities when working with SOLIDWORKS ® parts and assembly files that contain tolerance—or geometric dimensioning and tolerance (GD&T)—information. These automated mean tolerance calculation capabilities will eliminate the common practice of having to manually calculate allowances when defining CNC tool paths or the need to rebuild 3D models to mean geometry, thus, eliminating potential mistakes, while saving time and money, and streamlining the transition from design to manufacturing.

Available through an upcoming, secondquarter 2016 point release of CAMWorks ® 2016 software, the new ‘Machine to the Mean’ capabilities eliminate long-standing issues surrounding differences between design practices required to tolerance parts based on fit, form and function vs. manufacturing’s need to machine geometry based on mean dimensions and tolerances. “Every part or assembly that has tolerances designed for specific functional requirements—such as slip fits, press fits, etc. require tolerance specifications that have different upper and lower or asymmetric limits,” explained Jim Foster, VP—Global Channel Sales & Marketing, Geometric.

EM | Feb 2016

MARKET | NEWS

SKF India announces solar mission at its Pune facility SKF India has announced its solar mission with the inauguration of one of Chairman & CEO, ReNew Power, said, “We have commissioned this project the largest rooftop solar installations among manufacturing companies in for SKF, which is in line with our highest quality standards and engineering Pune, with 1 MW capacity. The launch capabilities.

Solar rooftop of the project is a part of SKF India’s installations not only help corporates ongoing solar mission across all save on cost of power but also major facilities in the country. enable them to become active According to Rob Jenkinson, Director, participants in reducing their carbon Corporate Sustainability, SKF Group, footprint.” sustainability is a long-term Earlier, SKF installed a rooftop solar commitment for SKF. “Our plant at its Bengaluru facility and environmental strategy SKF along with the Pune plant; the BeyondZero is to create a positive combined capacity is 2.1 MW. impact on the environment, by Additionally, the company has also reducing the negative impact from installed a hybrid solar thermal plant our own operations and offering at its Mysore facility with obtained innovative solutions with improved energy of 120 MwH per year. Shishir environmental performance. The Joshipura, Managing Director & solar mission is directly aligned with Shishir Joshipura, MD & Country Head, SKF India, at the Pune facility’s solar Country Head, SKF India, said, “We our sustainable business goals”, he installation firmly believe that development added. must take place in alignment with The installation in the Pune facility is expected to generate 1.5 GwH units environment needs. Sustainability is not only a responsibility, but also a way per annum. This initiative is expected to reduce the Pune facility’s CO2 of developing our business. Our solar mission is a reflection of our emissions by approximately 1200 metric tons per annum. Sumant Sinha, commitment and aligns with India’s National Solar Mission.”

‘Make in India’ week at Maharashtra Organised by the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce & Industry, GoI & Government of Maharashtra, the ‘Make in India’ week will be held on February 13-18, 2016, to facilitate investment, foster innovation, enhance skill development, protect intellectual property and build best-in-class manufacturing infrastructure in India. It aims to strengthen India’s position in the global supply chain by forging enormous global engagement The event will showcase India’s potential for with Indian industry in the form innovation, design & sustainability of partnerships and investments.

It will showcase India’s potential under the theme of innovation, design & sustainability across focus sectors through a series of highly visible outreach initiatives at the ‘Make in India’ centre and various other locations in Mumbai. The week-long event will be inaugurated by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. The state is also organising state sectoral seminars for MSMEs, textile, Information Technology and energy. To promote industrial growth of the state and to recognise the role of Mumbai in industrialisation, the Maharashtra investment seminar and Make in Mumbai seminar will also be organised.

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Henkel among “Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations” Henkel has been recently included in the “Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World Index” (Global 100 Index) and was rated ‘gold’

by EcoVadis. The company also received RobecoSAM’s silver class award.

Speaking on the occasion, Uwe Bergmann, Head of Sustainability Management at Henkel, said, “These excellent results confirm that we are right on track with our sustainability strategy.” As a member of the ‘Together for Sustainability’ initiative for a more sustainable supply chain, Henkel’s sustainability management was again assessed by the international rating agency EcoVadis. Based on its corporate social responsibility rating, the company was rewarded with the ‘gold recognition level’ in December 2015. With an overall score of 73 points, the company is well above the average of 41.7 and is among the top 2% – both in household and personal care category, and in comparison to all evaluated companies. Henkel also received the silver class award for its sustainability achievements in the Sustainability Yearbook 2016. The list includes the world’s most sustainable companies in each industry as determined by RobecoSAM’s annual corporate sustainability assessment.

EM | Feb 2016

MARKET | NEWS

Introducing Solid Edge into academia The Siemens academic programme is working to give students access to modern CAD/CAM/CAE. “The Siemens Solid Edge software is widely used in industry leading and industry relevant technology with the goal of increasing industry around the world and delivers the very latest in CAD technology in the number of engineering graduates the form of synchronous technology. entering industry. It has two specific Thanks to this ground-breaking aims, first, providing students & technology, students can easily work teachers with the same modern with CAD data from a wide range of software used within engineering, sources and also focus on learning design & manufacturing industries. how to design rather than working Secondly, supporting the teaching & out how to build their CAD model learning of STEM subjects in a crossusing old out-of-date history-based curricula manner with a focus on CAD systems. Siemens Solid Edge project-based applied learning. is perfect for both educators and The Siemens Solid Edge academic students and supports the teaching program is a long-term strategic and learning of the STEM subjects,” initiative aimed at increasing the use he said. of industry-leading engineering and Siemens Solid Edge Student Edition design software at all levels of is available at no cost to all parteducation and equipping students As per Brown, the academic program is aimed at increasing the use of time or full-time students, regardless with the knowledge and experience industry-leading engineering and design software of age. For secondary education, they need for their future.

Siemens Solid Edge High School As per Mike Brown, Director of Academic Programmes, Siemens PLM, the Edition is available at no cost to all secondary schools and provides the main goal of the academic program is to build a strong and sustainable school with an academic site license, enabling them to use Solid Edge on talent pipe-line of graduates entering the workforce, with strong skills in as many computers as required for academic purposes.

Siemens to acquire simulation software supplier CD-adapco

New platform for expert knowledge in production

Siemens and CD-adapco have recently entered into a stock purchase agreement for the acquisition of CD-adapco by Siemens. The purchase price is $970 million. Last fiscal year, CD-adapco had over 900 employees and revenue of close to $200 million with softwaretypical double digit margins.

On average, CD-adapco increased its revenue at constant currencies by more than 12% annually over the past three fiscal years. Siemens expects this business to continue to experience strong growth in the future. “As part of its Vision 2020, Siemens is acquiring CDadapco and sharpening its focus on growth in digital business and expanding its portfolio in the area of industry software. Simulation software is key to enabling customers to bring better products to the market faster and at less cost. With CD-adapco, we’re acquiring an established technology leader that will allow us to supplement our worldclass industry software portfolio and deliver on our strategy to further expand our digital enterprise portfolio,” said Klaus Helmrich, member of the Managing Board of Siemens.

Messe Stuttgart and VDW are to organise a joint symposium with a trade fair on May 30-June 1, 2016, in Teheran. The cancellation of economic sanctions is paving the way for the revival of business relations with Iran.

Great importance is being attached to the entire value creation chain in manufacturing technology. AMB with its international exhibitors and VDW with its German members are supporting the resumption of business relations with Iranian companies. The aim of the two partners is to establish an international platform for manufacturing technology for the Iranian market and neighbouring countries. “AMB in Stuttgart is one of As per Kromer, the association the large industrial trade fair events. is exporting success to the Together with our partners, we are Iranian market exporting this recipe for success to the Iranian market, which is now opening up,” explained Ulrich Kromer, Management Representative at Messe Stuttgart. With AMB, the international exhibition for metal working, Messe Stuttgart has established a leading event for the machine tool and precision tool industry in Europe.

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EM | Feb 2016

MARKET | INTERVIEW

“Look forward to long-term gains” …says Yatendra Kumar, Business Head, MotulTech India, in this interaction with Maria Jerin, during his recommendations on achieving manufacturing excellence. He also details on the present market scenario and his company’s Vision 2020 strategy for the changing demand trends. Excerpts…

What is the impact of the ‘Make in India’ initiative on the Indian manufacturing sector? What are the major changes witnessed this year?

In my view, it is not the justifiable period to measure the success of such initiatives. However, I have seen various positive indicators of ‘Make in India’ at different platforms. People (especially in the highly closed industry like aerospace) are looking towards India to get their work done. Various famous and huge companies like Airbus, Rolls Royce, United Technologies, Claas, Scania to name a few, have put their global sourcing team in India to source various products for their global products and their purchases are growing year on year. I have got inputs from various sources that western world has more trust on Indian supplier rather than the Chinese one. And, we as a country, need to make more robust processes to ensure these positives remain high in future as well.

Brief us on the major trends in the upcoming years, in terms of technology development, advanced manufacturing technology adoption, product lifecycle, collaborative manufacturing, etc.

The global manufacturing is becoming leaner day-by-day and putting more thrust on to safeguard environment. It may be due to the compulsion to adhere to the law of land or selfreliance. In view of the same, we see lifecycle of the product will get reduced and we will see faster change in technologies and hence upgradation of the products. We should see more and more environment-friendly products in India.

How do you plan to align your company’s Vision 2020 strategy with these trends?

We are working in line with the demand in India and following the developments on all the levels very closely. We are ready

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with our future generation products in metal working (specially product like minimum quantity lubrication (MQL), extremely high pressure compatible water soluble fluids and very long life neat oils), food grade (NSF H1 approved) lubricants, bio-degradable and other high performance lubricants, that not only meet all the regulations but also have higher expected performance at a reasonable cost.

We are also adding new products globally as well as in India to cover more and more applications and industry.

What would be your recommendations on achieving manufacturing excellence and sustaining the growth momentum in today’s uncertain market conditions?

Market was and will never be predictable.

It is always uncertain. We need to hit the eye of flying bird, to become successful.

Hence, in my view, our colleagues in Indian manufacturing industry should look forward to long-term gains in each decision they are making in their day-to-day life. One example from my industry could be to find the ways to increase the overall equipment efficiency (OEE) and not the initial cost of the lubricants. I have personal experience where people are losing millions of rupees every year by using wrong product either due to very low initial cost and/or wrong recommendations not only in metal working but also in food grade, machine lubrication.

Many people do not share the right challenges they face in their operations, hence it is very difficult to offer them the optimum solution.

Hence, my recommendations here will be to work closely with your partner (vendor) and take a right decision, which not only help you to save the money in short terms, but also save your organisation from future losses and additional expenditure for new machines and not adhering to the law. ☐

EM | Feb 2016

C O V E R S TO R Y

TECHNOLOGY

TOP 10 AGILE TECHNOLOGIES

For small and mid-size manufacturers

With investment in new technologies, one may see opportunities to reinvent the business processes by deploying it. The barriers to complex industries come down as technology that bridges the gap for complying in these industries and the expertise to help your business penetrate exists. The feature discusses leading 10 agile technologies that help small and mid-size manufacturers meet new challenges.

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EM | Feb 2016

TECHNOLOGY

Manufacturers today are looking for innovative ways to differentiate themselves in the competitive global marketplace.

Understanding customers’ needs in great detail is essential to positioning their company ahead of the competition. One way to gain this understanding is to implement an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. ERP solutions consolidate business operations enhancing your businesses ability to be agile. Not only do these systems deliver on technology that you can boast about over coffee with a colleague, the business advantages are the ability to streamline your organisation’s processes to reduce waste, improve throughput, and ultimately meet your customer’s value stream; improving odds for continued business in the future.

The last two decades have seen a dramatic shift in use of technology to drive improvements in manufacturing operations. Just twenty years ago, many small and mid-size manufacturers relied on paper-based systems to run their businesses. These systems offered little business-wide visibility to aide customer support and required duplication of manual effort many times over. But, today we have a very different story. Applications are built using a serviceoriented architecture (SOA), which feeds off the power of the internet to deliver applications that can run either at your shop or over the internet. We call the latter cloudbased solutions and many times they are available in a new model, which is subscription-based called software as a service (SaaS). The following section discusses 10 leading technologies that today’s manufacturers can’t afford to ignore. These technologies are what Epicor see as real game changes for their customer’s ability to stay agile in the face of change, while executing their business strategies.

User-based dashboards Everyone in the business has reports that you run every night throughout the day that offer the the floor, purchases expected for

EM | Feb 2016

them. Those watchdog or morning, sometimes status of production on delivery, quality events,

C O V E R S TO R Y

and more. Without them, we are lost. What if there was a better way? What if we could have this information available to us online and have it live—with the latest information at all times. User-based exception dashboards enable us to do just that. It’s a slice of your data with your applied filters that remove the “data noise” and focuses on the problems, so that you can focus on them too. It might be the “late jobs” or “purchases received today” or “quality incidents today, this week, this month.” It’s really up to you as you can easily configure the dashboards one time, using your data, and continue to use them on a daily basis.

Embedded customisation and personalisation Each manufacturer has developed their own set of personalised business processes that make them unique, and in fact provide a competitive edge in their business.

Some of these processes may be industry driven, customer driven, or driven from within the business based on the goals and strategies of your management team. For example, you might need to track on the order “new information” your customer needs and be able to include it in documentation that goes with the shipment of the order.

This new information can be tracked in the system alongside the other data and used in printing, lookups, anywhere your data is accessed. In using embedded customisation to tailor the system to meet your customer’s requirements, not only are you able to easily fulfill their requirements for data, you can also respond quickly when their needs change. Perhaps they want more data?

Customisation and personalisation provides a technology solution that can bridge the gap here by delivering a tailored interfaced that optimises the time a user is spends on the system. The user can tailor the tab stops (where the system stops as you tab through the application), make a field invisible, modify the colours and fonts of fields, even the positioning of windows so that you can maximise use of the interface to quickly see what’s needed and to get the job done.

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C O V E R S TO R Y

TECHNOLOGY

Understanding customers’ needs in great detail is essential to stay ahead of competition

Grid access There really was only one thing we gave up in the move away from “the green screen” and that was speed in entering and making changes to information. Back in the day, you could bring up a list of line items, make necessary changes to each line in a single grid and process it. You didn’t need to bring up each line individually to make the change, it just worked that way.

With accessibility back in grid entry, systems give productivity power to users by enabling them to make sweeping changes across multiple records more easily. We have furthermore enabled integration with Microsoft® Excel® to enable bringing in multiple rows of data from Excel spread sheets by pasting them into the grid—yes, no retyping. Some great uses of this might include bringing in a materials list or a schedule of shipments.

Purchase suggestions We all have seen the spreadsheets and slips of paper come across the purchasing managers’ desk with handwritten notes to direct timely purchases. Visual cues are great, but what happens when a queue gets missed and a purchase isn’t available when you need it? If your business is like many others, you make a quick purchase that ends up costing more than it should or you risk shipping to your customer late.

This is compounded by the time spent in the purchasing process for these one-off purchases.

Technology exists today that works in tandem with scheduling to help your business make Just-In-Time (JIT) purchases and drive buying power from suppliers on bulk purchases. It does this by providing your purchase manager purchase suggestions that enable them to see what’s needed

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when based on the latest schedule. They can even look into the future to see what demand for a material purchase exists next week, next month, potentially even further out.

The tight tie to scheduling, down to the operational step (related operation), is important because as you already know, schedules change. Whether your customer has changed their mind or you are predicting a demand change, the ability to make the schedule and material purchases mesh up, enables the business to only buy what is needed and save capital for more important initiatives.

Lean production Reducing waste in the shop often requires thinking outside the box and deploying new methods for production management. Many shops today are executing on this strategy using shopfloor visual cues or whiteboards with the 10 or 20 or so parts that they continually have at certain stocking levels. They aren’t executing production orders in the system for these parts as they fall below a replenishment level— rather, when the replenishment gets to a point, they just make more—work orderless.

Technology to support these systems offer lean production capabilities and are designed to manage a work order-less Kanban manufacturing system with electronic replenishment queues-driven from demand (could be customer demand or demand directly from the shopfloor). A Kanban Monitor dashboard keeps it real time and visual so that production knows exactly what needed to meet demand.

True multilevel capabilities Product complexity is exploding at the same time that many OEMs and tier 1 & tier 2 manufacturers are reducing

EM | Feb 2016

C O V E R S TO R Y

TECHNOLOGY

Instantly see the costs posted to date for any job with

Manage and reschedule a multilevel assembly for

the Cost Exceptions Dashboard.

optimum throughput

their supply network. As a result, more manufacturers in good standing are being asked to increase their product complexity, which is driving the need to be able estimate, cost, and build multilevel assemblies.

Let’s start with the estimate and provide a tool for engineering and estimating to be able to quickly see the tree structure of a multilevel component and be able to build/ review the component structure all within a single screen.

What better way to ensure that no assembly is missing or that no step has been omitted. In doing so, we are mistake proofing the estimating process from potential costly mistakes.

In production, the multilevel assembly can be scheduled and monitored as a complete production job and costs maintained at both the final and assembly level. One of the largest benefits of having a single production job is that moving materials and components from one job to another isn’t a concern— because it’s all the same job.

And finally, accurately ship from work in process the final assembly, updating with accuracy the cost of sales of the shipment of the final assembly. If profitability of these assemblies is a concern, multi-level capabilities might be the ticket to understanding where you fall short.

The processes that align the shopfloor with helping to flag quality events as they happen, rather than being caught at the time of inspection can speed identification of events and give your teams more time to respond; do we make more, remake it, outsource it. Also, tracking these quality incidents helps your business identify and stomp out trends and processes that may be off kilter. Perhaps a supplier problem exists. If the information is in hand and being tracked and everyone is responsible for the quality of product moving through the shop, the end result will be more efficient for the business and better received by the customer. It all starts with technology that inherently includes quality in the process flow.

It could be as simple as inspection of material at time of receipt and recording the results with supplier dashboards that indicate the status of a supplier’s quality incidents. It could also mean executing on a root cause analysis that a piece of equipment needs to be retired as it is costing too much to keep on the floor due to poor quality. Armed with the information, your management teams have the data they need to make hard decisions and feel confident in the results.

Embedded quality Quality continues to be a key differentiator for many manufacturers; this includes managing the quality of your own suppliers. As more and more manufacturers continue to focus in this area, a driving theme emerges which makes quality and continuous improvement of processes a part of the culture of the business, rather than an isolated function next to shipping in the shop.

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Access to your data anywhere Access to your business data when you need it, where you need it, is a critical business advantage. It can help you respond quickly to business events and be able to communicate with a higher level of knowledge in front of customers, suppliers, and on the shopfloor in contrast to “I’ll get back to you on that.”

In addition, the young workforce coming into the business today are tuned for mobility and expect that instant

EM | Feb 2016

C O V E R S TO R Y

TECHNOLOGY

Electronic Kanban control keeps inventories accurate and up to date

access to information is available. If creating an environment that is welcoming to these energetic and skilled employees is desired, Anywhere Access to Your Data can help. Below are just some of the scenarios where Anywhere Access can drive business value. t Delivering a secure login for your accountant to review and report off hours, right from their office, when it is convenient t Checking on a critical job while on vacation or before you go into work for the day—did 2 nd shift complete what we needed? t Using your business data to strengthen your knowledge of up-to-date business operations and be able to accurately communicate with customers while you are onsite t Check the status of production flow and what’s expected while out on the shop floor, wondering why a machine isn’t running? t Being able to respond and have the information to execute plan B quickly when needed or to queue purchasing for a hot buy t Check inventory status, perform cycle counts, use mobile workers to deliver what’s needed to production, rather than have operators looking for material, etc. t Perhaps you need to just keep a keen eye on cash and want to know what cash was received for the day—to the minute, hour, day

Business process management You don’t have to leave it to chance. Your sales order person has for the 5th time now, accidently chosen the wrong year for a release date, making you late once again. These are the types of things we can’t predict, but perhaps we can control for the

24

future. Business Process Management (BPM) allows you to put in a rule that can do one of the following things: t Flash a warning message and ask if the operator really wants to do this t Prevent the entry of an order release that far into the future t Send an email to a manager to confirm the order release date This is one example of use of a BPM to control your business processes. Anywhere within the system, when an event occurs, you can put rules around the event that do a check and have an action.

Platform to support business growth As your business grows, it’s important that the technology you deploy is agile and scalable to move to what you need.

With today’s latest technology, editions of functionality provide easy transitions from one level of functionality to the next and provide a seamless experience for end users; same interface, same terminology.

In addition, many manufacturers today are looking outside the box to markets and geographies that offer enhanced profitability. Whether your business is interested in doing business in medical device, aerospace & defense, automotive, industrial machinery, fabricated metals, electronics, and many more manufacturing industries, knowing the technology you deploy can help you meet the needs of the new industry is critical, and can reduce risk and profitability in a new venture. ☐ Courtesy: The article is reproduced from an Epicor white paper titled ‘Top 10 technologies small and mid-size manufacturers can’t afford to ignore’

EM | Feb 2016

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MANAGEMENT | INTERVIEW

“Making sure manufacturing has no ambiguity at all…” …says Brian Thompson, Senior Vice President— CAD Segment, PTC, in this interaction with Maria Jerin, while discussing new enhancements on model-based design enterprise in Creo 4.0.

He also highlights the recent developments in the CAD industry and areas of research at PTC. Excerpts…

Can you brief us on the long history of PTC’s CAD platform since the transition from Pro/E to Creo?

PTC released Pro/Engineer in 1985 that was considered first to market as a commercially viable parametric modeling software package. It took the world by storm and over the years, we have added several capabilities to handle more of the electro-mechanical product development process. But in the late-2000s, we started noticing that CAD revenues across the entire industry were becoming stagnant and we felt like some opportunities in the market place would not be entrapped because we had a single monolithic application.

So, instead of offering a monolithic application that tries to serve many users, we considered a range of applications that serves various roles within a company. With this, customers can buy what we earlier considered the extension technology as a standalone app. Besides, the menu user interface of Pro/E is icon-based, whereas Creo is the first ribbon-based application with a modern UI. Four years later, after the release of Creo 1.0, we converted the entire customer base. Creo’s specific revenue continues to grow as the adoption rate has grown.

26

We guaranteed 100% upward data compatibility, so that the customers can take Pro/E into Creo with no data migration.

How has the CAD/CAM industry evolved over the years globally? What are the recent developments and areas of research at PTC? PTC and its competitors have done a pretty good job over the years by addressing the edges of product development process.

All CAD vendors have improvised in helping mechanical engineers collaborate with electrical engineers. We also got better at supporting more complex manufacturing like 5-axis machining and head synchronisation. We are helping customers use different modeling methods that are more tuned to the concept phase. PTC has an added advantage of a single CAD format that serves both the users at very low end of market, and the enterprise users at high end of market.

At PTC, some major focus areas of research are in 3D printing and in the design of smart, connected products. PTC has spent over half a billion dollars on IoT and to make that relevant to our engineering customers, we intend to connect

EM | Feb 2016

INTERVIEW | MANAGEMENT

“Today, 3D printing integration with design tools is similar to CNC machining integration with design tools that happened 20 years ago” Brian Thompson

their design environment in Creo directly to their products in the field. PTC Creo is already speaking the language of ThingWorx with the Performance Advisor for PTC Creo, which reports important Creo performance and usage statistics to the customer’s private Thingworx dashboard on their support page at PTC.com. With enhanced new features on model- based design enterprise in Creo 4.0, that is yet to release, we are enabling the designers to share the 3D model to their downstream users with no ambiguity at all.

They can make sure that GD&T standards have been applied appropriately to the model including whether their model’s geometry has been fully constrained by the applied GD&T. The term ‘Design for Manufacturability’ is a buzzword in CAD/CAM industry today. What are your thought on this?

There are much process specific ‘Design for Manufacturability’ perspectives like design for turning, injection moulding, milling, etc. There are also certain aspects of design for principles that are easier to detect, for instance, design for mouldability.

Largely, the finite element analysis decides whether you are able to do this. PTC has a good extension that supports this functionality. But processes like Design for Manufacturability for CNC machining is about what machine you are working with, using the software that builds up with NC sequence for that, and estimating the required timing. The CAD industry has to improve on this. Understanding the machining of parts well in advance is a challenge. The more you narrow down the manufacturing process, the easier it is to do the calculation.

Eventually, it comes down to design engineer & manufacturing engineer joining hands as rolling the design process as possible and discussing about what the parts’ and assembly requirements are, along with figuring out different options available for manufacturers to know the best possible approaches.

What are your views on the limitations in the CAD software for Additive Manufacturing? What are the additional enhancements in PTC Creo 3.0 for such challenges?

Customers are demanding parts with the same function that

EM | Feb 2016

comes out from traditional manufacturing, but in a much lighter package with optimised structures like lattices. The challenge is that they have to leave the design environment for doing this. Today, 3D printing integration with design tools is similar to CNC machining integration with design tools that happened 20 years ago. We want to make sure that the design engineers can design the part for 3D printing right inside Creo environment. When he hits the print button to print the part on the 3D printer, he knows exactly how much material is going to use, and how the proposed structure looks like. He is then able to design special structures like lattices, topology optimised designs, without ever leaving the Creo environment.

There are too many different pieces of software involved in detecting and modifying part for 3D printing. By the time you get the part and take on 3D printing, there may be two or three formats of the model. All these different pieces of software doing different functions from different vendors are a big challenge. We are focused on helping customers do all of that in a single-design environment. We have partnered with Stratasys for this project.

How are you viewing the demand trends for your products across the world, and in India? What are your future plans for the Indian market?

There are certainly industry specific demand trends. For instance, we get enquiries on mould design from customers in India and China, but not from USA & Central Europe as there are many mould & die shops in India & China. At the same time, we have minor aerospace & defense business here, but a lot from USA and Europe.

We have also got a good foothold in the education space particularly in India. Many students graduating from universities are educated on Creo. We want to leverage that growth more consistently, and in both the channels that PTC uses to resell the product. The long term plan is to leverage growth plans in our reseller channel. India is a big country with a lot of small businesses. So, it makes sense to engage India with the reseller channel & trying to touch all those small businesses. There is a great opportunity for growth in India. ☐

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R O U N D - TA B L E | M A N A G E M E N T

Getting optimal ROI from assets & equipment It’s important to carefully weigh ROI as it determines the payback period for your assets and equipment. The feature discusses various aspects associated with equipment’s true ROI calculation for getting the optimal value from your machine.

In order to be competitive in today’s changing landscape, it is necessary for manufacturers to consider long-term reliability, accuracy and performance of any capital equipment before purchasing it. But, justifying a capital equipment purchase by calculating its return on investment (ROI) can be challenging for many shops. Sharing their views on analysing the total life cycle cost to evaluate the anticipated performance of the equipment are Ramadas P, Managing Director, Ace Manufacturing Systems; B P Poddar, Vice President—Sales and Marketing, Fatty Tuna India

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Maria Jerin Features Writer maria.jerin@publish-industry.net

(FEMCO India); Suresh M K, General Manager – Production Machinery, Makino India; Santanoo Medhi, Managing Director & CEO, Premium Transmission and Tushar Mehendale, Managing Director, ElectroMech.

Planning & management of asset maintenance In the competitive world we live in, there is a strong push to maximise the asset utilisation through improving the overall manufacturing process. Highlighting the same,

EM | Feb 2016

M A N A G E M E N T | R O U N D - TA B L E

“The right kind of investment on products and processes will provide long-term returns to manufacturers” Ramadas P, Managing Director, Ace Manufacturing Systems

Ramadas avers, “The right kind of investment on products & processes will provide long-term returns to manufacturers.

There has been a shift in focus from product to overall process in recent times to enhance productivity. Every aspect of the process starting from identification of assets, their procurement, utilisation, maintenance and their disposal would need meticulous planning and management to obtain best productivity levels.” On the other hand, Mehendale believes that success of any process is dependent on the complex interplay of three main aspects – men, material and machines. He further adds, “If the plant manager is able to take care of the ‘machine’ aspect through proper equipment selection and maintenance, then there is one less variable in the equation to contend with. This enables a fine control on the process, which in turn enables the plant to perform at peak productivity levels.”

On similar lines, Poddar points out that maintenance is inevitable and surely adds to profitability as it brings back equipment to normal working condition. Though, he feels, no one likes to spend for maintenance activities. “Even when successfully completed, no one notices or appreciate the value of maintenance. The attitude needs to be changed from repairing to keeping running,” he asserts. Speaking on the benefits of maintenance, Suresh ideates, “A well maintained asset gives a consistent output, both in terms of quality and productivity. This asset has the advantage of ensuring on-time delivery of parts to their customer.” He believes that reliability of the asset being key factor warranties due to poor maintenance is not an insurance against downtime. “Once production starts, unscheduled downtime can be highly detrimental in terms of productivity and more so, with regard to delivery commitment to customer,” he adds.

Further highlighting on life cycle of assets, Medhi says, “It’s not just the increased life cycle of assets that is important, but efficient utilisation of these assets have also become vital.

To have efficient and effective utilisation of assets, organisation must invest in an efficient planning system which reduces ‘non value-added time’ of the assets. A properly maintained asset does not depreciate, but actually appreciates its value.”

Total costs of ownership For measuring the cost involved over the life cycle of asset, an analysis of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is a

EM | Feb 2016

“A properly maintained asset does not depreciate, but actually appreciates its value” Santanoo Medhi, Managing Director & CEO, Premium Transmission

critical tool in decision-making. Adding its significance, Poddar says, “TCO is utmost important to make adequately balanced procurement decision. Good procurement is achieved with right price, but best value for money is achieved with lowest/least life cycle cost of asset. It becomes imperative to consider TCO in ROI calculations i.e. price, quality, availability and functionality.” Adding further, Medhi opines, “Generally, traditional ROI calculation includes only the purchase price. This does not give the true picture of ROI. In fact, a life time cost of the asset including purchasing price, cost of finance, installation, operating, maintenance, write off/disposal and replacement cost at the end of useful life should be used for calculating ROI.” In determining ROI for new machines, Suresh shares that the manufacturer carefully examines the purchase price.

However, the costs for operating, maintaining and decommissioning these new machines may dwarf the original purchase price. “Factors that impact machine tool ROI extend throughout the life cycle of a machine. Although these factors may not demonstrate immediate ROI, it is important for manufacturers to realise that a bottomline impact will be felt,” he adds. Adding his thoughts on the same, Ramadas says, “Manufacturers purchase new equipment to enhance their capacity with the shortest possible ROI. On this, typically they consider only the acquisition costs of the equipment. However, they tend to ignore the possibly high operating costs or maintenance costs, which may skew the ROI calculations in reality.”

Highlighting the effects, Mehendale says, “An inefficient equipment having a lower upfront cost, might end up having an extremely high running cost on account of heavy requirement of consumables or spares or repair services.

Similarly, end users should also consider the consequences of

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R O U N D - TA B L E | M A N A G E M E N T

“To make a lease vs. buy decision, ROI should not be the only metric to be taken into consideration” Tushar Mehendale, Managing Director, ElectroMech

the downtime of equipment. A longer life leads to a lower actual depreciation in the equipment value. Thus, typically if one were to consider the ROI, then the ‘I’ should be arrived at as the net present value of the equipment upfront cost, the future cash outflows related to the maintenance and breakdowns, the future cash outflows on account of possible consequential losses and the terminal value of the equipment.

Savant decision makers typically arrive at their buying decisions in such a manner.”

Hidden cost Many a time, purchasing decision while acquiring an asset is driven only by the asset price at the time of acquisition without considering the hidden costs. This can alter ROI drastically. Speaking on this, Suresh says, “An asset’s purchase price is only a tip of iceberg. What we miss is a multitude of hidden costs, which are not blatantly seen at the time of acquiring the asset and ROI calculation.” On similar lines, Poddar signifies that upfront price paid for purchasing equipment is just tip of iceberg. Invisible are the series of hidden costs of ownership. He further avers, “Analysing ROI is not always as simple as it sounds or as straight forward as it looks. The major aspect often neglected is confusing cash & profit. If profit is misunderstood for cash in ROI calculations, one is likely to get/show better returns than reality.”

Analysing the factors for hidden cost, he adds, “Hidden costs are mainly related with operational cost component of TCO. Repair costs, unplanned downtimes, maintenance, consumables, energy, utilities are hidden aspects of ROI.” On similar lines, Ramadas adds, “Tangible hidden cost includes installation cost, repair and maintenance cost. Intangible hidden cost includes poor productivity due to the human factor, production loss due to unplanned downtime, waste disposal, de-commissioning costs, re-deployment costs, and tooling selection.” Medhi signifies that the hidden costs are generally cost of finance, write off/disposal and replacement costs. “Most organisations use only purchase price & installation costs, while some use additional cost of operating and maintenance. Very few organisations use all these costs mentioned,” he shares.

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“Reliability of the asset being a key factor warranties due to poor maintenance are not an insurance against downtime” Suresh M K, General Manager— Production Machinery, Makino India

Automation as a part of ROI calculations In the current highly-competitive world, it is inevitable to find answer to ‘how to produce cheaper, better & faster for sustainable profitability’. Answering this, Poddar says, “Automation costs are coming down and automation is becoming smarter with capabilities. However, integration/ implementation of automation is more strategic based on long-term and not short-term goal of survival, rather long term goal of growth.” Discussing the aspect of including automation in ROI calculation, Ramadas says, “Automation should be a part of ROI calculations. It may add to the asset value and enhance productivity significantly, thus, improving the machine ROI. The major advantages of implementing automation include reduction of labour costs, improvement in productivity, consistency in output quality, and uninterrupted working during breaks.” Moving ahead, Suresh believes that automation can improve machine utilisation by over 95% because machines are kept in cycle. “The moment one part completes, next part goes into production, sometimes running 24/7. Faster parts turn around results from eliminating direct setups on the machine. This can result in businesses purchasing fewer machines to achieve desired production volumes.”

The other side of the coin says that organisation makes the mistake of selecting the machine first and then selecting automation. On this, Medhi opines, “In doing this, one may end up with a sub-optimal solution, which will lead less effective and efficient utilisation of the asset and ROI. If the machine and related automation is considered as one and decided at one go, it may lead to less-priced machine requiring less CapEx, which again leads to better ROI. While considering adding automation to existing machines for ROI calculation,

EM | Feb 2016

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R O U N D - TA B L E | M A N A G E M E N T

“Good procurement is achieved with right price, but best value for money is achieved with lowest/least life cycle cost of asset” B P Poddar, Vice President—Sales & Marketing, Fatty Tuna India (FEMCO India)

one considers life time cost of automation and adds the remaining life time cost of the machine. It would be a useful exercise to check the ROI of a new machine with intended automation as one optimal machine with ROI of adding automation to an existing machine.” Mehendale also believes that automation, wherever it is implemented, automatically becomes an integral part of the process. He further opinies, “Effective automation will enhance the returns, while ineffective automation will lead to only increase in the cost without commensurate returns.”

Leasing vs buying in ROI Making the right purchasing decision, which will give the best value for money depends on various factors contributing in decision making. Emplacing this, Poddar says, “Every financial option will have some advantages & disadvantages.

This makes the job more complicated and careful evaluation is absolutely necessary.” Speaking on financing options, Ramadas shares, “Leasing of equipment can be a good choice for manufacturers where the products would need to be upgraded in few years or for users with limited finances. On the contrary, buying the equipment can be a better choice for established manufacturers with sufficient financial strength or for equipment that stay usable for a longer period of time.

From an ROI point of view, there may not be a significant difference between leasing of equipment or buying it from lent money.”

Also, when buying an asset, it is critical to consider the long term costs of ownership, such as maintenance and downtime that can mount when a company holds on to an asset over time. “Through leasing, a company can improve its cash flow, while obtaining better equipment and ROI. Leasing gives flexibility in capacity and financing as company can add machines based on customer/market needs. It can either return at the end of the lease term or purchase,” opines Suresh.

On similar lines, Medhi believes that ROI will vary depending on the interest rate (cost of finance). “Many times, lease option is explored not because of ROI, but because of cash flow conditions of the organisation. However, leasing provides an easier way to upgrade machines at a more

32

frequent interval than outright buying” he adds. According to Mehendale, “To make a lease vs. buy decision, ROI should not be the only metric to be taken into consideration. One should also consider other aspects like business variability and future technology trends.”

Run-to-failure strategy Under run-to-failure strategy, machines/equipment are deliberately allowed to operate till they breakdown. At this point, it becomes reactive maintenance. On this, Poddar says, “Here, it is utmost important to have spare parts and skilled manpower immediately available to bring back machines into operations.” Furthermore, Ramadas emplaces that ‘run-tofailure’ is old school thinking with SMEs, which is fast changing with the informed user segment. “With this old strategy, customers spend significantly on maintenance, servicing and productivity losses. Upgrading to newer equipment with better technology will allow enhanced utilisation of resources and may prove to be more productive in nature,” he adds.

Adding his thoughts, Medhi believes that run-to-failure is prevalent not only with the SMEs, but with many other bigger organisation. Whether this strategy yields a better ROI depends on few factors such as changes in operating cost with aging and cost of repair/maintenance v/s replacement cost.

Further, he suggests that this is not a very effective policy to enhance ROI. “Organisation should weigh the ROI using the total life cycle cost and compare the cost of replacement, while deciding on this matter. Now-a-days, there are equipment designed to last a fixed period with zero maintenance and needs to be replaced after this fixed period,” he adds.

As a recommendation, Suresh concludes, “End users have to be careful in understanding the equipment’s functioning and the maintenance needs. A poorly maintained asset can become a huge liability for the business with low productivity levels and huge costs over run to bring back the asset on track. Hence, they need to weigh ROI calculation more carefully looking at the hidden costs, the product mix they need to make and flexibility of the asset to take care of market needs.” ☐

EM | Feb 2016

Long range Automation for alternative

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The name ifm electronic stands for a wide range of different sensors and systems for automation technology. For forty years the company has been researching, developing and producing with the aim of optimising technical processes and conserving resources. ifm electronic successfully provides system solutions that are both innovative and economical. From an individual sensor and matching accessories to a complete system solution.

www.ifm.com / in 路 +91 / 231 / 267 27 70 ifm electronic India Pvt. Ltd Plot No. P-39/1 路 MIDC Gokul Shirgaon Kolhapur 416234 路 Maharashtra State e mail:- info@ifm-electronic.in

LASER CUTTING | FOCUS

Fine laser cutting for medical applications Fine laser cutting is an ideal technology for specialised cutting requirements found in the manufacturing of medical tube tools and components. Here, the term ‘surgical precision’ aptly applies to the need for sharp edges, contours, and patterns within edges found in tools and devices in this burgeoning field.

From surgical instruments used in cutting and biopsy, to needles containing unusual tips and side wall openings, to puzzle chain linkages for flexible endoscopes, laser cutting provides higher precision, quality, and speed than traditionally used cutting techniques. In addition, new laser cutting technologies are now coming on the market, including a 5-axis motion package that gives the designer freedom to cut more challenging geometries in one pass.

A key to successfully using the technology is properly

34

Dr Geoff Shannon Manager—Advanced Technology Amada Miyachi America

integrating the system’s components into a process flow that works. The motion, laser, software, and tooling must all work together to get the desired end product.

Laser cutting benefits Laser cutting is ideal for working on small tubes that must be cut to high dimensional accuracy because the laser light used does not have any physical presence, and makes no

EM | Feb 2016

FOCUS | LASER CUTTING

Fibre laser cutter with gas assist

contact with the material. It does not push, drag, or impart force that might bend a part or cause flex that would have a negative impact on process control.

It also results in minimal thermal input, with fine control over how hot the work area gets. This is important, since small parts heat up quickly and might otherwise overheat or deform.

Laser cutting is highly focusable to about 15 microns, which is about one-fifth the width of a strand of human hair.

This makes it feasible to remove the minimum amount of material to make the cut, resulting in extremely high precision and high accuracy.

The laser cutting technology has an extremely fine control of pulse width, power, and focus spot size. Because the laser cutting tool does not rely on touching the part, it can be oriented to make any shape or form. Not limited by physical cutting geometry, laser cutting can be used to make unique shapes.

The technology frequently used to make medical tubes and components is fibre laser cutting with gas assist. This means that the laser is ‘assisted’ with a coaxial gas, typically oxygen (O2). This technology is used for stainless steels (300 and 400 series, 17-4, 17-7); MP35N (cobalt-chrome steel alloy); and Nitinol. The method can be used for both on-axis (90º to surface) and off-axis (angled to surface) cutting.

A highly focused laser (down to 12 micron spot size) is used to melt a thin sliver of material. While the material is still molten, a 0.02 inch diameter gas jet nozzle that is coaxial with the laser blows away the molten material. The desired features are produced using this continual cycle of melt, then melt ejection with part motion. Distance between the laser

EM | Feb 2016

and the material needs to be maintained precisely.

The O 2 actually serves two purposes – it blows away the molten material and it also serves as a heating element, because the heated material reacts with it and heats up. The heat reaction caused by the presence of O 2 adds about 30 to 50 per cent more heating energy to the cutting area. The gas assist is a key factor in increasing cut speed and cut quality.

Laser cutting with gas assist produces the highest cut quality and high resolution cut paths, a key requirement of makers of medical stents and hypo tubes and components.

Dimensional accuracy is key to measuring cut quality – does the part match the print? Other considerations include surface roughness (better than 12 micro inches) and the absence of thermal damage.

Cut width can be extremely small with laser cutting, less than 0.001 inch, and dimensional accuracy is extremely precise, nominally around ±0.001 inch, and even better in some cases. This accuracy is very useful for producing small cut features on stents and hypo tubes as well as the jagged teeth used in some cutting tools. Dross or burr left on the underside of the cut (which can become attached and resolidified) is minimised, significantly reducing the amount of post-processing needed. The recast level layer (a small amount of material that doesn’t get blown away during the process) is less than 0.0005 inch.

Compares favourably with other technologies Laser cutting’s speed and precision compares favorably with that of the chief competing technology, electro discharge machining (EDM). To obtain the same high quality cut as a

35

LASER CUTTING | FOCUS

Cut quality comparison of EDM (left) and laser (right). The smooth sharp edges in the cut made by the fibre laser equipment

laser cutting machine, EDM requires up to 4 passes, which With ECM, the electrolyte used must be disposed in slows down processes considerably. On the plus side, EDM accordance with OSHA as hazardous waste, and some allows multiple parts to be processed at once. electrolytes produce hexavalent chrome when cutting steels.

The width of cuts produced by a laser cutter is as small as Finally, ECM’s use of hard tooling makes it much less flexible 0.001 inch, while that of EDM is around 0.004 inch. Feature than laser cutting. sizes are limited with EDM and sharpness is not as good, compromising cut resolution.

New laser and motion technology The EDM process is also limited by the fact that it works The stent market has been established for some time, and best with certain geometries, for example tubes with a symmetrical profile. Problems arise if there is a hole in a tube demand continues to grow. The largest growth is in the field that does not go through both sides. The process is analogous of hypo tubes, where an explosion of new non-invasive to the ubiquitous cheese cutter that uses a wire to slice surgery tools has given rise to some unique and innovative through a block of cheese. All is well with symmetrical shapes. Fibre laser technology, used with low mass high features, but the wire cannot handle complex geometry with acceleration stages and new digital controllers, offers a new compound angles and is limited to certain internal radii. For level of cutting speed, quality and geometry. The ability to non-symmetrical features EDM requires a two-step process; keep a part in a machine and make intricate cuts gives both wire and sinker EDM. Re-tooling between these designers freedom, enabling them to cut more challenging geometries in one pass. processes increases cycle time and labour significantly.

The new technology is offered by Amada Miyachi A final issue is floor space, especially for factories where space is at a premium. A typical EDM machine can be as America in two configurations: a 4 axes stent and tube cutter large as 10 to 12 feet square, while a laser cutting system is and a unique 5-axis laser cutting machine. The integration and coordination of the hardware is handled by software 5 to 6 feet square.

Another technology available is electro chemical grinding controls developed in-house, with operator-designed (ECM), which removes electrically conductive material by interfaces that provide a system for efficient production and grinding with a negatively charged abrasive grinding wheel, practical operation.

The 4 axes stent and tube cutter is an all direct-drive an electrolyte fluid, and a positively charged work piece. ECM is a fast cutting method that gets quality similar to EDM. system, which includes low mass stages to enable the small

36

EM | Feb 2016

FOCUS | LASER CUTTING

movements that optimise fine feature cutting. This system also has best in class acceleration rates that minimise cycle time.

The 5-axis motion also consists of all direct drive stages using 3 linear axes and 2 rotary axes. The unique small footprint setup allows system engineers great flexibility to choose the best axis configuration for a particular cut; they are not limited to where they are on the part.

The key to success with laser cutting Laser cutting for medical stents, tube tools and components has many benefits, but actually achieving them depends in no small part on successful system integration. Designers need to develop an entire system in which the motion, laser, software, and tooling all work properly and are integrated into a whole that supports the desired process flow.

Putting the pieces together can be a challenge, and one

that is exacerbated by the fact that many integrators do not have a good understanding of the laser cutting tool. When, or if, there is a problem with the laser, or if changes are needed to adjust to a new product, the integrator is in no position to fix the system.

By contrast, Amada Miyachi has addressed this issue by expanding in-house laser cutting capabilities and knowledge of the cutting process. While not a manufacturer of cutting lasers, Amada Miyachi purchases the laser from an OEM and integrates it into a complete system with motion, software and tooling. As part of the machine production, Amada Miyachi’s in-house applications labs enable the application to be delivered and guaranteed as a system. Adding laser cutting to its already significant laser welding and marking/engraving capabilities offers designers a one-stop shop for system integration. This includes running samples of the entire process in-house, ensuring that it does the entire job as specified, and answering in-depth application questions. �

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S H E E T M E TA L W O R K I N G | T E C H N O L O G Y

Redefining metal forming systems As per recent studies, lifting and shifting large metal sheets in metal forming plants is one of the rising concerns. The article discusses the new automation technologies such as metal sheet stacker and loading/unloading machines that are employed in the shopfloors to meet such challenges.

In recent times, we have witnessed the rise of innovative technology and its widespread acceptance at diverse manufacturing units across the globe. The fundamental factor of success for any technology lies in its ability to mitigate users’ chronic problems. At the end, the one which suffices the purpose satisfactorily makes the way to the multiple markets. On that note, it becomes inevitable to have a glance at a few cutting edge systems, which are designed to address the common complications for many domains. These systems are metal sheet stacker and loading/ unloading machines, accounted for instantaneous productivity boost at many facilities.

Automation is the technology, which has gone beyond contemporaries and empowered countless industries. The term automation signifies the self-operating diverse procedures, which otherwise used to be executed through the human efforts. The motive of the automation is to transcend the existing manual manufacturing procedures into the self-controlled process. By minimising human

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intervention, it aims to reduce the rate of error and significantly standardising the process. Though the technology has been there for quite a while, the widespread use of this technology has begun couple of years ago.

Automation as a business advantage Automation is basically a blend of various control systems for operating tools such as machinery, processes in factories, boilers and heat treating ovens, switching on telephone networks, steering and stabilisation of ships, aircraft and other applications with minimal or reduced human efforts. Some processes have been completely automated. The biggest benefit of automation is that it saves labour; however, it is also used to save energy and materials and to improve quality, accuracy and precision.

The term automation, inspired by the earlier word automatic, was not widely used half a century ago when General Motors established an automation department. It

EM | Feb 2016

S H E E T M E TA L W O R K I N G | T E C H N O L O G Y

The sheet stacker is effectively compatible with any sort of metal forming system likes of laser cutting, turret punch, water jet, etc

was during this time that the industry was rapidly adopting feedback controllers. Automation has been achieved by various means, including mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, electrical, electronic devices and computers, usually in combination. Complicated systems, such as modern factories, airplanes and ships typically use all these combined techniques.

If we focus on industrial automation, it essentially deals primarily with the automation of manufacturing, quality control and material handling processes. General purpose controllers for industrial processes include programmable logic controllers, stand-alone I/O modules, and computers.

One trend is increased use of machine vision to provide automatic inspection and robot guidance functions; the other one is a continuing increase in the use of robots.

Energy efficiency in industrial processes has become a higher priority. Semiconductor companies like Infineon Technologies are offering 8-bit micro-controller applications, for example, found in motor controls, general purpose pumps, fans and e-bikes to reduce energy consumption and, thus, increase efficiency.

computers, which are frequently used to synchronise the flow of inputs from (physical) sensors and events with the flow of outputs to actuators and events.

Human-machine interfaces (HMI) or computer human interfaces (CHI), formerly known as man-machine interfaces, are usually employed to communicate with PLCs and other computers. Service personnel who monitor and control through HMIs can be called by different names. In industrial process and manufacturing environments, they are called operators or something similar. In boiler houses and central utilities departments, they are called stationary engineers.

Automation in metal forming applications

The age of modern technology has brought great accuracy, speed and convenience to the manufacturing industry and has enhanced various procedures from the roots. The sheet stacker is effectively compatible with any sort of metal forming system likes of laser cutting, turret punch, water jet, etc by installing sheet data into the software; machine accurately recognises the sheet by their thickness measures from the inputs and makes the inventory Rise of controllers tasks smoother. The sole purpose of the machine is to add a Engineers can now have numerical control over few jewels to the premises. automated devices. The result has been a rapidly expanding The sheet stacker transforms your factory into an range of applications and human activities. Computer-aided efficient storage space. It esthetically manages diversified technologies now serve as the basis for mathematical and metal sheets, which leads to an accurate inventory organisational tools used to create complex systems. Notable management. The operation panel has been designed examples of computer aided technologies include computer- considering user-friendliness and while developing the aided design and computer-aided manufacturing. The panel, the whole emphasis was on enabling the machine improved design, analysis, and manufacture of products users to operate machine in no time, regardless of their enabled by computer-aided technology have been beneficial adequacy. for the industry. Information technology, together with It is marvelous in its weight carrying capacity, which is industrial machinery and processes can assist in the design, 4000 kg per pallet with being fascinatingly energy efficient. implementation and monitoring of control systems. One Customised stocking options such as 10, 15, 20 floors make example of an industrial control system is a programmable it really compatible at regardless of manufacturing facility, logic controller (PLC). PLCs are specialised hardened at huge warehouses and factories, it demonstrates remarkable

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EM | Feb 2016

T E C H N O L O G Y | FSOHCEUEST | MLEATA S ELR WCOURT KT I N G

space management. Elevator with dual linked chain allows strong holds over the sheets while transportation. A sophisticated space management leads to the streamlined process and inventory management and ultimately saves humongous area cost.

With the personalised software interface, it enables a holistic integration with software such as ERP and SAP. Apart from splendid usability, the machine has significantly low service and maintenance cost, thanks to highly durable pallet transfer system, which makes it righteous long-term asset worth possessing.

process as it gets along with multiple technologies. Though, the speed can be attained at the cost of high number of errors that is not the case with loading/unloading machine. The less time a process takes, the more

productive it becomes eventually and with loading/unloading machine, it turns out be extremely easy by being fast as well as productive without actually disturbing the quality. �

Courtesy: Sahajanand Laser Technology Advt

Enhancing shopfloor productivity Lifting and shifting large metal sheets in metal forming plants is one of the rising concerns as per the latest study. The loading/unloading machine is introduced to eliminate the trouble causes in lifting and shifting the metal sheets. The fully automatic machine executes loading and unloading tasks effortlessly, and it reduces a lots human efforts and time consequently.

The aforementioned machine comes with vertical and horizontal alternatives, which fit into the premises exactly as per the requirements. It standardises the processes at the facility and decreases the rate of errors.

The loading/unloading machine can be synced with any sort of metal forming systems such as laser; water jet, etc and the machine swiftly load/ unload the sheets with all of those diverse systems. The mighty suction cups lift the metal sheets and places them on the machine as per the position exactly required.

By its immense power, loading/ unloading machine can add the much vital momentum in the metal forming

EM | Feb 2016

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GRINDING | TECHNOLOGY

Bringing the science to shopfloor manufacturing Traditionally grinding process is treated as something very complex and known only to a few with many years of experience and with specialised skills in the shop floor.

A portable diagnostic tool and interpreting the process signal is changing the situation and helping to reduce such challenges faced in grinding.

Grinding process plays a major role in controlling the quality requirements of components in terms of dimension, form, finish and surface integrity. Apart from these requirements, the cycle-time and grinding costs are also important for the effective use of grinding as a manufacturing process. Traditionally grinding process is treated as something very complex and known only to a few with many years of experience and with specialised skills in the shopfloor.

This view is being challenged by a compact, portable diagnostic tool developed at IIT Madras. The signals obtained using this diagnostic tool together with suitable analysis

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methods can be used to study the performance of the grinding process. The grinding process is influenced by the grinding wheel, component geometry and material properties, machine tool features as well as grinding process conditions all working together as a system. No one person has expertise in all of these areas. But, using in-process signals together with suitable analysis techniques is enabling engineers with only a few years of experience to study and solve a wide range of grinding process problems in the field. This technology transfer for industrial use is being driven by Micromatic Grinding Technologies Ltd (MGTL), a machine tool company that insists

EM | Feb 2016

TECHNOLOGY | GRINDING

Figure 1: Schematic arrangement of a portable diagnostic tool for grinding processes

on finding new ways to support the customer process needs.

Figure 1 shows a schematic arrangement of a power cell to monitor the power drawn by spindle motor and a displacement sensor (LVDT) to measure the infeed of wheel head during grinding of a component in a cylindrical grinding machine.

The output of the power cell and LVDT are analog signals.

They are converted into digital form with a data acquisition (DAQ) unit. This data is then analysed using LabVIEW software. Figure 2 shows a typical signal captured using this diagnostic device connected to the grinding machine. This signal represents the signature of grinding process while grinding the component. In figure 2, a series of sections are identified, which represent the approach (Sections 1 and 2), rough grinding (Section 3), semi-finish, finish, spark-out and retract (sections 4, 5, 6 and 7 respectively) portions of a typical grinding cycle.

Signal analysis and inferences The variation of power in different stages of a grinding cycle over time can be used to infer the drift in grinding process behaviour. During grinding, the grinding wheel undergoes changes such as grit wear, fracture of bond, loading of chips into pores due to which the power shows an upward trend. This also reflects the increase of forces during grinding. Conversely, bond erosion and fracture and falling out of grains expose new grains leading to lower grinding power. This decline in power may be good or bad depending on the part quality requirements and process economics! All of these have impact on the quality of parts produced, interval between skip dressing and the process economics.

EM | Feb 2016

The effectiveness of diagnostic tool in assessing the performance of the grinding process can be demonstrated through a set of simple experiments. Figure 3 shows the variation of power in different stages of cylindrical grinding cycle with fine and coarse dressing the grinding wheel prior to grinding. In both cases, the grinding cycle used is the same as seen from the plot showing the same displacement graph or infeed during the grinding cycle. The power drawn by the spindle motor in different stages of grinding cycle clearly shows that the power is consistently higher in the grinding cycle with fine dressed wheel. Visually recognising the variations in the signals and making decisions based on them is called as feature recognition. “Further analysis of the signals and explaining the variations in terms of the microscopic interactions that occur in the grinding zone, brings the science of grinding to the shopfloor,” according to Dr K (Subbu) Subramanian, President, STIMS Institute Inc, USA. He has been mentoring this work at IIT Madras and its subsequent transfer for industrial use. This work at IIT Madras has been carried out as part of a larger project, “Development of Next Generation High Precision Grinding Machine Tool,” funded by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India. Prof Ramesh Babu is the principal investigator of this project along with his students at IIT Madras. MGTL, an industrial partner in this project is commercialising this mobile diagnostic tool as Grind TrakTM. According to MGTL, this mobile diagnostics can be used in three ways: Solve process problems, which are otherwise seen as a constant fire-fighting on the shopfloor with endless trial and error effort; Improve the processes to achieve better quality or faster cycle time or both; Audit the process to check and see

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GRINDING | TECHNOLOGY

Figure 2: Signature of the grinding process

Figure 3: Effect of coarse vs fine dressing

if the actual performance on the floor are consistent with the process engineering specifications and look for opportunities for improvement based on process science.

unwarranted spike in the power signal is always associated with excess heat generation that the part has to absorb, resulting in the work piece burn. There could be several causes for this power spike in the middle of a grinding cycle such as unexpected changes in machine slide movements, CNC program error, momentary shifting of the coolant line, etc. With the location of the power spike during the grinding cycle as the reference, we can now systematically address the source of the problem. “It is like using a torch light in a dark ally. Once the light of the signal shines, we can see the path more clearly and easily,� states Dr Subramanian.

Inconsistency in surface finish of the ground component represents an unstable grinding process. Such inconsistency could be due to the grinding wheel specification selected, improper grinding cycle, dressing process or parameters used, unstable grinding system or combination of all. Analysis of grinding process signals with the system knowledge helps to breakdown the reason behind the inconsistency and solve the problem with minimum of trials, according to the MGTL engineers. They have used in several other applications Grind Trak TM for the process signature along with their education in the System Approach for grinding processes to analyse the signals: Reduce or eliminate roundness issues and improve size holding; Eliminate inconsistent or random variations in part quality; chatter and problems associated with poor incoming part quality, etc.

Problem solving There are several specific problems that occur during grinding like burn, chatter, inconsistent process, etc. In general, solving such problems needs very good understanding of the grinding system. Even after such understanding, it needs a lot of trials to identify the element/ process parameter/exact portion of the grinding cycle causing such problems. Grind Trak TM signal can be used to identify such element/process parameters causing the problem directly or with minimum of trials. Few examples are given here to demonstrate such use of Grind Trak TM. Burn can be characterised by excess heat generated during grinding. When it is retained in the work piece, results in visual burn, surface cracks or subsurface damage. Unlike traditional trial and error method, Grind Trak TM signals can be used to determine the exact location during the grinding cycle causing the burn on the component as shown in the figure 4. The grinding cycle consists of three parts: roughing, semi-finish or finish and spark-out. It is noted that there is a spike in the power signal at the beginning of the semi-finish portion of the grinding cycle. Such unexpected and

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EM | Feb 2016

GRINDING | TECHNOLOGY

Figure 4: Grinding process signal showing a power spike associated with burn

Process improvement Bringing science to shopfloor need not be only to better manage the existing process. It can also be to improve the process to achieve better quality, more capacity or throughput, which permits meeting new production demand, without the cost and time associated with installation of new capacity thanks to Grind Trak TM signals. In a recent example, a grinding process was the bottleneck operation, limiting the production of the entire line. By looking at the signals obtained and analysing them, it was determined that the cycle time for this operation can be reduced resulting in a net increase in line throughput of 40%, without the need for any additional investments.

In some cases, parts require long and complicated grinding cycles. It is nearly impossible to visualise these details. But with suitable process signals such cycles can be studied and improved.

Process audit There are many opportunities for problem solving and process improvement: percentage of motor power consumed, very short cycles where one or few seconds can make a huge difference, dressing process and inappropriate skip dress slowing down the production rate, etc. These problems and/or

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opportunities must be identified and prioritised first through suitable auditing, to establish the priority and the most economic benefit achievable, according to MGTL engineers.

Looking into the future Auditing the current production critically and targeting the right problem to solve using science and engineering for maximum impact is part of the System Approach training offered in the past three years through a program offered by IMTMA. This year IIT Madras will offer a week long course on System Approach for Precision Grinding Processes as part of their GIAN initiative on June 6-12, 2016.

MGTL together with STIMS Institute have developed a joint program called Grinding Process Solutions (GPS). The idea is to bring the science of grinding to the shopfloor through a small team of well-trained young engineers, equipped with such mobile diagnostic tools to achieve near term results of improvement in cost, quality and productivity for the end users. “Next generation of manufacturing will require smart and well qualified people using portable diagnostic tools and techniques very much like the medical field. In this regard, the Grind Trak TM will serve as the stethoscope and thermometer for this new generation of grinding professionals�, asserts Dr Subramanian. �

EM | Feb 2016

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A Company of the SWAROVSKI Group www.tyrolit.com

M A N U FA C T U R I N G I T | T E C H N O L O G Y

Enabling connected manufacturing As technology is emerging towards cloud-based IoT solutions, ERP solution also found its way to the web. Today, web-enabled ERP solutions are the most effective solutions available in the market. The article highlights the seven ways in which IoT based ERP implementation is fine-tuning the Indian manufacturing sector.

Manufacturing is pivotal for economic progress of any country and in India it contributes about 16% of our gross domestic product (GDP). As India is poised to be a manufacturing hub primarily due to its growing domestic demand, with foreign players venturing into the Indian market, there will be great demand for both liquidity and talent. There is the vast domestic market with surging wages, as well as uncertainties and cost economics from global angles that guide this preference. Backed by policies and plans by the government of India’s promise as a pivotal manufacturing destination have witnessed a massive upswing.

However, in order to remain competitive in the global arena, Indian manufacturing sector has to really gear up as competition is intense and low cost destinations are always around the next corner. The challenge however is integration

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Ajit Vichare Head, LoB — Manufacturing Practice Invenio Business Solutions

of IT and to train and enable an optimum man-machine interface which convinces management and employees to adopt new systems and processes and support smooth roll-out of the same.

ERP is changing the competitive landscape for manufacturers across sectors. From SMBs to established manufacturing companies are benefiting from a fully integrated solution designed to reduce costs, improve customer service, increase margins and generate new revenue streams. Further, manufacturers are able to improve business performance with a deeply functional, yet easily affordable ERP solution. As the technology changed, ERP solution also found its way to the web. Today, web-enabled ERP solutions are the most effective solutions available in the market.

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T E C H N O L O G Y | M A N U FA C T U R I N G I T

Industry trends There is now a widespread acceptance of the gains that ERP can bring to businesses. Manufacturers continually consider improving their ERP software because it gives the company a competitive edge and an opportunity to realign its business processes to leverage IT and help them compete effectively with larger competitors. Manufacturers have realised that although an ERP solution is a resource-consuming investment in terms of both time and revenue, the returns are rewarding.

The Internet of Things is a game changer for the manufacturing industry. IoT can generate a lot of value for every industry - be it manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, or even agriculture. It is helping enterprises not only reduce costs, energy consumption and machine downtimes, but also significantly improve efficiency and customer service.

IoT enables informed manufacturing organisation, which contains four elements: informed products, processes, people and infrastructure. These essential elements of manufacturing are converging like never before, creating a more automated, intelligent and streamlined manufacturing process. t Products: Advanced sensors, controls and software applications work together to obtain and share real-time information as finished goods make their way down the production line. Informed products will enable machines to take autonomous action. t People: By connecting people across all business functions and geographies, and providing them with relevant information in real-time, “informed people” will provide intelligent design, operations and maintenance, as well as higher quality service and safety. t Processes: By emphasising bi-directional informationsharing across the global manufacturing value chain— from supplier to customer—informed processes lead to a flexible and adaptable supply chain. t Infrastructure: Using smart infrastructure components that interface with mobile devices, products and people, informed infrastructure will better manage complexities and enable more efficient manufacturing of goods.

EM | Feb 2016

The pervasiveness of connected devices is not localised to certain industry segments or value chain processes; rather, this concept is finding applicability across multiple segments of manufacturing and logistics, throughout the value chain across various industries like transportation and logistics, energy and utilities, automotive, connected supply chain, plant floor control automation, remote monitoring and management of critical assets, energy management and resource optimisation, proactive maintenance.

How is ERP evolving in the Indian manufacturing sector?

ERP systems solve a number of challenges and provide invaluable benefits to manufacturers seeking to reduce costs, manage growth, streamline processes and gain a competitive advantage. The system enables the manufacturers and distributors to function promptly, which will be able to improve the volume of production and fulfilment of orders while reducing costs. By optimising manufacturing and distribution operations with ERP, the companies are also be able to focus on new business opportunities. Here are the ways in which IoT based ERP implementation is fine-tuning the Indian manufacturing sector: Streamline processes: As manufacturers grow, their operations become more and more complex. ERP manufacturing software automates all business operations, providing accurate, realtime information.

Cost reductions: With one source of accurate, real-time information, ERP software reduces administrative & operations costs. It allows manufacturers to proactively manage operations, prevents disruptions & delays, breaks up information logjams and helps users make decisions more quickly.

Flexibility: Modern ERP software systems are robust, flexible and configurable. They are not a one-size-fits-all proposition, but can be tailored around the unique needs of a business. ERP systems also have the ability to adapt with the ever-changing needs of a growing business.

Competition: ERP systems may require an investment, but there’s also a cost to do nothing. Manufacturers cannot afford

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M A N U FA C T U R I N G I T | T E C H N O L O G Y

The pervasiveness of connected devices is not localised to certain industry segments or value chain processes; rather, this concept is finding applicability across multiple segments of manufacturing and logistics

to put off an ERP implementation while their competition invests in ERP and starts reaping the benefits.

Greater efficiencies in material planning, supplier management and reduce logistics costs: Established uniform processes are based on recognised best business practices that streamline processes and workflows with a single integrated system. Also, it reduces redundant data entry and processes across the department.

Improved compliance: ERP solutions provide organizations with enhanced record keeping capabilities, assuring that industry specific compliance regulations are being followed and documented.

Social, mobile, cloud: More organisations are considering moving their operations to the cloud, in part because of the immense complexities of technology today. Implementing these solutions will drive improvements by combining business processes and analytics with social, mobile and cloud collaboration tools, thus allowing organisations increased interactions across an entire enterprise.

The above ways can be explained with the case study from one of the world’s largest providers of food processing equipment, as the company has just announced its intent to use the SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service solution, cloud edition, to help its remote service technicians monitor the status of machines located at its customer sites and identify unusual trends or machine behaviour in near realtime. Key things to note about this announcement are that the service technicians can monitor equipment remotely without having to be on the customer site.

This makes monitoring and maintenance practical even when equipment is located in inaccessible places, and it enables more efficient scheduling of local service providers.

The other thing to note is that the analysis happens in near real-time, which makes it possible to predict maintenance problems and optimise maintenance in ways that minimise the impact on normal business operations. With this

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capability, it plans to offer new kinds of services agreements and make new commitments about machine performance.

With the cloud-based system, the company can easily expand the program to cover more equipment.

The way ahead...

Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most talked about technology trends today. However, there are some voices that warn IoT is today overhyped, and it will take a few more years for the real use cases and benefits of IoT to become visible. IoT has reached a level of maturity where the major challenge seen in its adoption is not the cost involved or the ROI but infrastructure constraints and scalability. However, India cannot afford to miss this IoT wave which is essential to the future of the country. But, this is the time for India to focus on hardware and software “products� in addition to services and manufacturing. There will be tremendous opportunities to innovate from components to devices to systems to data centres to software analytics to services.

While the challenges can be overwhelming, the following steps can help organisations jumpstart their IoT journeys and build competitive differentiation. t Analyse sensory architecture. t Create an IoT vision tailored to the organisation. t Initiate engagement and employee communication. t Focus on application development and infrastructure. t Rapid deployment, monitoring and modification planning. t %FWFMPQJOH QSPEVDU GFBUVSFT BOE FNCFEEFE TFOTPST It is imperative that companies continuously incorporate new technologies that will dramatically improve their business operations. In order to ensure IoT is effective in India, we need a strong collaboration and coordination between government and the industry to provide IoT products, solutions and services. �

EM | Feb 2016

COMPOSITE MACHINING | TECHNOLOGY

What can lasers do with composites?

The part-two series of the article discusses different applications of lasers in processing CFRP composites and the recent work on laser welding of thermoplastic composites The widespread use of advanced polymer composites in the aerospace industry is leading to their increased use in other industries, most notably in the automotive industry where weight reduction is of increasing importance. Composites are by nature entirely inhomogeneous and hence their physical properties change significantly over very small areas. In the case of carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP), the most widely used employed composite material, the physical

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Dr Tony Hoult Applications Manager IPG Photonics thoult@ipgphotonics.com

properties of the fibre and the matrix are hugely different; carbon fibres absorb all light wavelengths very efficiently and conduct heat very rapidly whereas the epoxy matrix absorbs and conducts far less well. However, pressure from both the aerospace and transport industries to improve cycle times is moving the composites industry towards thermoplastic composites, and reviews show the prospects here are brighter with lasers already in use for material consolidation.

EM | Feb 2016

TECHNOLOGY | COMPOSITE MACHINING

Lasers in processing CFRP composites

Recent progress in thermoplastic composites

Paint stripping: A great deal of research has gone on over many years on this topic and there are now several commercial systems available for laser paint stripping of metals employing both CO2 lasers and continuous wave (CW) and pulsed fibre lasers. Applying this technology to stripping paint from composites is of real and increasing interest to the aviation industry in particular as decidedly environmentally unfriendly chemical techniques are still widely used. There are two subtly different but both very promising approaches to paint stripping from composites, both use fibre lasers but in one case a CW fibre laser is used and in the other a high average power q switched fibre laser is employed. These lasers now appear wellpositioned to change the economics of this application as they have in many other fields of laser processing and commercial prospects are now finally looking excellent after many years of development.

Improving adhesive bond strength: There are two other laser and composites related processes currently being investigated; the first employs ultraviolet (UV) 355 nm lasers or 308 nm Excimer lasers for cleaning and enhancing composite surfaces prior to conventional adhesive bonding techniques. The costeffectiveness of using UV lasers for surface treatment when compared to conventional surface preparation techniques such as simple mechanical abrasion or plasma treatments needs to be carefully considered-improving mechanical keying of the adhesive onto the composite surface alone may not be sufficient to justify a costly laser process.

Localised repair of damage in composites: The second technique being investigated is to use a pulsed laser to assist with solving another serious problem with composites, repair of localised damage. The proposed solution which shows promise uses lasers to ablate the damaged area with a subsequent injection of adhesive and a localised cure but as in the previous application, the economics of this process when compared to a conventional adhesive bond repair needs to be closely examined.

Thermoplastics are melt-processable; they can be melted and solidified a limited number of times without deterioration in their properties whereas thermosets undergo a permanent irreversible chemical cross-linking reaction on solidification and subsequent exposure to high heat will cause the material to degrade, not melt. Contributions to this changeover to thermoplastics are made by their improved fracture resistance, recyclability and repairability, chemical resistance and most importantly reduced processing time and cost.

PolyEtherImide (PEI), PolyEtherEtherKetone (PEEK) and PolyPhenyleneSulphide (PPS) are the most widely used matrices and the same range of carbon or glass fibre reinforcements can be used.

Work is underway on developing laser cutting and drilling processes for these materials in and although the problematic differences between the physical properties of the matrix and reinforcement still exist, the thermoplastic nature of the matrices holds out hope that improved quality may be achieved after laser processing. But it is the thermoplastic nature of these materials that allows consolidating or thermal welding of composites by lasers where real progress has been made.

EM | Feb 2016

Laser consolidation of thermoplastic composites In the same way that lasers are replacing heat lamps in other industries, near infra-red fibre lasers are now being used for consolidating pre-preg in Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) machines for thermoplastic composites. The laser is becoming a key component in highly advanced tape laying machines. These machines are allowing high speed manufacturing of complex 3D components and the spatial and temporal control of the laser beam allows more accurate closed loop temperature monitoring and improved control over the melting and consolidation processes. Laser Heating Systems (LHS) are now being offered as upgrades to legacy Hot Gas Torch (HGT) heating systems for AFP work cells and this is

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COMPOSITE MACHINING | TECHNOLOGY

ATP head in use

clearly a trend that will continue, multi-kilowatt fibre lasers have been selected for this application.

Additionally, there is a great deal of interest in upgrading thermoset AFP machines using laser heating. Most existing AFP machines use IR heating currently to increase the tack of the thermoset pre-preg prior to fibre placement but the broad spectrum light interferes with IR pyrometers preventing real time temperature control.

Laser welding of thermoplastic composites Many advanced structural applications require the joining of a thin sheet of woven glass-fibre composite to a thicker carbon-fibre or glass-fibre composite stiffener. Typical applications include stiffened panels for aircraft interiors, aircraft control surfaces, and helicopter rotor blade trailing edges. For most applications, the stiffener may function as a doubler (such as may be necessary to increase local bearing loads) or as a stiffening member (to limit deflection/buckling of the facesheet under load). For thermoset composite applications, the thin facesheets are typically adhesively bonded to the thicker stiffeners. For thermoplastic composites, the facesheets may either be adhesively bonded (like thermosets), or fusion welded. Adhesive bonding of large structures has severe limitations with regard to process repeatability, hence the current interest in developing a more automated reproducible laser bonding technique.

A selection of results is presented below from a program of trials performed to assess the feasibility of and determine

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preliminary mechanical properties of joints between thermoplastic composite components. The principle goals of the trials were firstly to produce composite components that have the required combination of fibres and matrices to achieve mechanical strength and cosmetic requirements for typical aerospace applications, and secondly to correlate fibre/matrix properties with laser transmission welding processing parameters. The final trials reported here produced laser welded joints between two PolyEtherImide (PEI) matrix composites components, 0.25 mm thick white pigmented (WP) S2-glass reinforced facesheets were welded to 1.0 mm thick S2 glass fibre reinforced white pigmented and also to black carbon fibre reinforced U section stiffeners.

Using carbon fibres in the lower component of the joint is well known to provide excellent absorption but long fibre reinforcement of both upper and lower layers with many different possible weave patterns and fibre types all affect the transmission and absorption of the laser light and hence complicate the process. Typically, un-pigmented or natural glass-fibre thermoplastics are laser welded because of greater transparency to IR wavelengths than pigmented matrix material. In this case the end application required an aesthetically pleasing white finish; hence new techniques were required for welding these pigmented fibre and matrix combinations.

The welding technique is essentially a transmission laser welding technique, although the difference here is that because of the higher absorption of the composite facesheets, in particular the TiO2 filled white coloured facesheets, melting

EM | Feb 2016

TECHNOLOGY | COMPOSITE MACHINING

took place through the full thickness of the upper layer of the joint. However, these melt zones were almost invisible to the naked eye especially in the case of the white coloured facesheet materials.

The key feature of these trials was to incorporate 3 levels of carbon pigment into the white stiffener substrate in a highly successful attempt to improve the joint strength above that of the natural to black composite joint.

A 4.2 mm diameter multimode collimated laser beam from a 1.07 µm wavelength continuous wave beam from a fibre laser was used in all trials.

Continuous wave average power up to 170 W was used; a Cartesian XY motion system was used for relative motion between the laser beam and target. A ¼” thick uncoated borosilicate plate was used to clamp the joint components together.

Although the weld lap shear strengths were generally lower than the adhesive lap shear strength, the weld strength will not drive the design as long as the weld width is sufficient. The scalability of fibre laser power will allow a wide range of weld widths at the correct power density with appropriate optics.

In another separate development, and interesting joining technique known as LAMP, (Laser-Assisted Metal and Plastic) direct joining is currently being studied. Joints between a range of metals and engineering thermoplastics such as polyamide (PA), polyethyleneterephthalate (PET), and polycarbonate (PC) using infra-red lasers have been produced although development is still at an early stage and joint strength and durability needs to be investigated further.

being made. It still remains to be seen whether the capital and running costs of both shorter laser wavelengths and ultra-short pulse lasers and laser systems will decrease to the point at which widespread deployment of lasers will be cost effective for cutting and drilling thicker (>3 mm) structural polymer

composites. Developments in fibre laser technology are helping to introduce new laser processes into composite manufacturing. The increased usage of thermoplastic composites has already led to a new laser consolidation process and increases the likelihood of other laser processes being introduced. ☐ Advt

Conclusion The inhomogeneous nature of composite materials is presenting major challenges for ablative laser processes to overcome although some progress is

EM | Feb 2016

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S U P P LY C H A I N M A N A G E M E N T | T E C H N O L O G Y

New productivity levers for shop floor Over decades, the bulk of Indian industry has allowed itself to settle into a low-cost, low-productivity model of operation. Low-cost manufacturing, unfortunately, was also a low quality and low reliability model of manufacture. The article explains how high quality manufacturing can be achieved by focusing on supply chain design, planning and logistics.

Indian manufacturing is much discussed in today’s world.

Some significant promotion by the Prime Minister, supported by a set of policy changes make it easier to do business in this country. However, while the Government can change the external regulatory framework, that alone cannot create competitiveness. To become globally competitive, the manufacturing industry has to do a lot of work.

Over the decades, the bulk of Indian industry has allowed itself to settle into a low-cost, low-productivity model of operation. This model of ‘low-cost’ manufacturing,

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Alagu Balaraman Partner & Managing Director CGN Global – India alagu.balaraman@cgnglobal.com

unfortunately, was also a low quality and low reliability model of manufacture. In order to gain global competitiveness, there has to be a focus on productivity – producing more goods of higher quality using fewer resources.

A high quality manufacturing requires an appropriate mix of man, material and machine. In the work we have done in shopfloors across industries, we find that while there is a lot of emphasis on selection of capital equipment and suppliers, there is far less attention given to supply chain design, planning and logistics. As a result, factory after factory suffers

EM | Feb 2016

S U P P LY C H A I N M A N A G E M E N T | T E C H N O L O G Y

from productivity losses because of the poor availability of one of the three factors – man, machine or material. This need not be the case, given that there are some powerful tools that are available and can overcome these challenges.

Implementing simulation applications The cost of computers have crashed and many sophisticated software tools have become commonly available, if not freely available. It is possible to test different models of operation and study their impact on material flow, inventory consumption and machine usage patterns without shifting a single machine or re-training a single worker.

In an auto component manufacturer, injection-moulding production was being done in a batch mode. Each workstation layout required space for the different designs of trolleys to hold input material and the produced component. Manpower could not move across stations easily and the total direct and indirect headcount was high. It was proposed that this be shifted to single-piece flow, to simultaneously reduce headcount, space requirement and response time of the line.

Since the design was radically different, the shop management wanted to be convinced that this could actually work out. To help with evaluating the new design, a virtual model was created on a software showing the movement of material, time that each machine was utilised and idle, the total inventory and the response time. This was done for different levels of loading. Then, a second model was created with single-piece flow and run with the same load pattern. The comparison showed the dramatic improvements that were possible – WIP dropped by 60% and average manpower reduced 27%. Based on this, the plant decided to implement the changes on the shopfloor. The difference between what the model proposed and the actual performance when implemented was only 6%.

Forecasting – preparing for the unknown While earlier, manufacturers could sell pretty much whatever was produced, customers have become more demanding. They not only want products of higher quality, they want those products now without waiting. It requires manufacturing companies to become more flexible. They must cater to what the market demands, whenever it demands it. As anyone who has played the beer game will know, variations at the end of the value chain flows back up to suppliers and gets accentuated at each level. So, back-end

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machine shops sometimes face wild fluctuations in demand.

Flexibility, therefore, is essential.

Flexibility can be introduced at different levels. It can be built into the product design using modularisation. It can be built into the manufacturing process through re-designing manufacturing processes (as we saw earlier) and increasing automation. Finally, and the easiest to implement, is to build it in with appropriate inventories.

The question then is, how much inventory should I hold?

Of what? When is it needed? This requires more sophisticated forecasting. Forecasting should not be viewed as a crystal ball that tells us the future perfectly. That is not possible. Instead, it should be approached as preparing for unknown that is a form of the contingency planning.

Forecasting was traditionally based on a historical data.

This would be adjusted for projected growth rates, seasonality and cyclicity to give a prediction of demand.

There are many factors that make this inaccurate.

Competition is one, impact of consumer trends based on advertising and word of mouth is another.

In one case, working with a retailer, we developed a forecasting module that looked at traditional historical parameters, but also added algorithms to study competitive intensity in the market, consumer behaviour trends and sentiment analysis. In a proof of concept exercise, six months data was used to forecast the seventh month, which was already passed. The forecasted inventory levels would have resulted in a 9% increase in sales had it been available earlier.

Towards making the change The nature of managing a manufacturing shop is getting more complex. Managers are expected to adapt to circumstances that are changing very quickly. Trying to do this only with the tools that worked in the past is unlikely to work. So, shopfloor managers need to get more closely involved with how to plan for uncertain demand and how to bring about greater flexibility in their operations.

These new tools are not new science. Most of the tools have been around for several decades. The difference is that what was earlier only in the reach of large companies that had the resources to use these tools, is today accessible to much smaller organisations.

In our experience, the main challenge is not a technical one. Rather, it is a learning problem. The skills are different and they take time and effort to acquire. Once acquired, they become very powerful tools in manufacturing management. ☐

EM | Feb 2016

Blaser product in action

Ever since our company founding in 1936 we have increased the productivity of our customers.

www.blaser.com

Blaser Swisslube India Pvt. Ltd.

Gurgaon, Pin – 122002 Phone 0124 – 4994000, india@blaser.com

High-quality metalworking fluids.

E N G I N E E R I N G M AT E R I A L S | S P E C I A L F E AT U R E

Alternative materials for automakers Vehicle lightweighting drives fundamental changes in how cars are designed and built.

The article highlights the challenge in reducing vehicle weight and how the lightweighting strategies drive a shift towards considering the use of alternative materials for automakers to not only redesign vehicles, but also to rethink their engineering processes, manufacturing methods and software technology.

To meet stricter regulations aimed at significantly reducing emissions and improving fuel efficiency, automotive companies must drastically rethink the way vehicles are engineered and manufactured. Lightweighting has been identified by the industry as a critical way to comply with these government regulations. The impact of fuel economy regulations on car design is already evident in vehicles such as the 2015 Ford F150 truck, in which the use of riveted and glued aluminium has replaced a large percentage of the traditionally welded steel structure. These changes are removing barriers to entry for even more weight-efficient materials, such as composites, which cannot be easily introduced into a welding assembly line.

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Lightweighting strategies will drive a shift to alternative materials and assembly methods radically different than those used in current steel-welded Body in White (BIW) structures.

This seismic shift is unlike anything that the industry has seen in more than 50 years and is causing a fundamental change in vehicle designs. Automotive engineers will be forced to rely more on engineering tools than experience as these new materials and assembly processes are adopted.

Despite being seen as a top strategy for meeting the fuel efficiency regulations, lightweighting vehicles is also clearly viewed as being one of the most difficult strategies. In fact, the top strategy for achieving fuel efficiency and emission standards is reducing vehicle weight.

EM | Feb 2016

S P E C I A L F E AT U R E | E N G I N E E R I N G M AT E R I A L S

Weight reduction targets will require designing for lighter weight from the start

The spiral impact of decreasing weight Reducing vehicle weight will be a challenge with respect to many parts of the vehicle, especially highly structural parts such as the BIW, which constitutes a significant portion of the overall weight. Weight reduction strategies cannot independently target individual components because optimal weight reduction can only be achieved with a systems approach to lightweighting. In addition, meeting weight reduction targets will require designing for lighter weight from the start.

Weight reduction of the BIW has a spiraling impact on overall vehicle weight reduction. When companies design for lightweighting, they can take advantage of the weight reduction spiral in which a lighter body results in a lighter chassis, which requires a smaller engine, less battery power or reduced fuel tank capacity, which in turn requires less braking, resulting in additional body weight reductions. Consider the redesign of Ford’s F150 truck with an all-aluminium riveted chassis. Ford was able to find a 450-pound reduction in the BIW, which helped result in a 750-pound reduction in overall vehicle weight with a corresponding 25% increase in fuel economy.

Making the case for composites When considering alternative materials for lightweighting, carbon fibre composites is a very appealing material because it has low corrosion properties, is naturally light in weight and requires less material to achieve stiffness requirements and meet impact resistance needs, to name just a few of the benefits. But at the same time, there is uncertainty about designing and manufacturing new components with composites. Risks include the relative expense of carbon

EM | Feb 2016

fibre, lack of composites design and manufacturing knowledge and long manufacturing cycle times for composites parts.

The use of composite materials is expected to grow over the next decade and, by 2025, automakers expect that 60% of their vehicles will be comprised of at least 20% carbon fibre.

The challenge of using composites If properly designed, carbon fibre composites can offer significant improvement in performance-to-weight ratios compared to both aluminium and steel. For many years, the composite performance advantage has made it the preferred material in many aerospace applications, as recently demonstrated by the Boeing 787. Now automakers are either considering, or have started to develop the use of composites to help them meet their goals to reduce vehicle weight.

However, the application of composites in high-volume automotive applications is significantly different from the way that composites are used in the aerospace industry.

Tight packaging requirements in automotive applications drive up part shape complexity relative to those encountered in the majority of aerospace applications. The shorter automotive product time-to-market means faster design cycle times and increasing the frequency of design changes.

In addition, a greater variety of material forms and manufacturing processes, including forming, pultrusion and braiding, are also being considered to reduce cost. It is this combination of complex shape, material and process choice coupled with frequent design changes that make the engineering of composites especially challenging in highvolume automotive applications.

To meet such design challenges for automotive composite

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E N G I N E E R I N G M AT E R I A L S | S P E C I A L F E AT U R E

Multi-material mix model

applications, a tighter coupling is required between analysis, design and manufacturing engineering. A bi-directional interface between the software tools used by analysts and design engineers is needed to facilitate the exchange of information, such as laminate configuration and fibre orientation. This will allow for the efficient assessment of the impact on part performance of changes to part shape material configuration and manufacturing methods.

Considering alternative materials One of the most obvious ways to remove weight from a vehicle is to consider alternative materials that are lighter, yet strong enough to withstand the impact of a crash. Consequently, it is not surprising that 88% of automakers either have strategies or plan to develop strategies for using new materials.

When considering alternative materials for lightweighting and related material strategies, most companies are considering using a mix of materials. Whether it is an individual hybrid part combining plastic, metal and composites, or a mixed material assembly, a trend for the future is a BIW consisting of some combination of high-strength steel, aluminum, magnesium, plastics and composites.

Complexity of mixed materials Such a mixed material strategy will also have an impact on engineering tools because software will be required to conduct part assembly complexity tradeoffs, helping determine appropriate joining methods, as well as assessing the balance needed between performance, cost and manufacturability.

As an example, consider a part/assembly design tradeoff

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in which a single all-composite part is used versus a mixed material assembly. Making the part entirely out of composites may not be feasible due to the complex shape geometry because composite material cannot conform to the shape without wrinkling. Alternatively, the simpler areas of the part could be made from composites, while the more complex portions may be made from metal. However, this comes at the expense of the added complexity of a new joint being added to the assembly process.

Appreciating the value of engineering software tools Leveraging software to provide insight and guidance on design and manufacturing tradeoffs can save significant time and cost. The impact of joining method choices is critical with a mixed material strategy, and understanding the tradeoffs of joining methods is not insignificant. Consider that when using a single material you may have two or three joining options. If you have five or more material choices available, the potential joining method choices increase to 25 or more! The appropriate joining methods for a particular application will depend on the materials being joined, the relative cost, performance and structural requirements.

In the end, a new generation of engineering software applications that are tightly integrated with existing engineering applications will be required to help select the appropriate mix of materials, joining and assembly methods. The optimal choice will depend on how much a company is willing to pay for performance at a lighter weight. If high performance at a lightweight and high cost is tolerable, then the right choice may be unidirectional hand-laid prepreg composites, such as

EM | Feb 2016

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E N G I N E E R I N G M AT E R I A L S | S P E C I A L F E AT U R E

Engineering software applications are required to help select the appropriate mix of materials, joining and assembly methods

those used in F1 racing applications. If cost is the main design driver, and reducing weight is less of a consideration, then a traditional steel-welded structure may suffice. However, the appropriate material mix for applications between these two extremes will be more difficult to determine, but no doubt the next generation of engineering software tools will be invaluable in helping users figure that out.

may also eliminate the need for painting of some parts, resulting in a reduction of space required for the paint room, which can be a significant portion of a factory.

These changes will affect a variety of engineering software applications used from the earliest stages of analysis and design to detailed design, as well as to the tools used for manufacturing, simulation and PLM.

Understanding the impact of vehicle lightweighting

Conclusion

Vehicle lightweighting drives fundamental changes to how cars are designed and built. As alternative materials are adopted for lightweighting, the impact will be felt not only in design, but across all disciplines, from earliest definition to the factory floor and beyond.

Vehicle repackaging with alternative materials will take place, such as in the BMW i3, in which the use of composites enabled a production design without a B pillar. New materials will have an impact on part manufacturing because new methods of part fabrication will be considered. A significant effect on assembly and joining will also occur because welding will be replaced by ‘no sparks’ joining methods, such as gluing, riveting and specialty fastening systems. Software technologies will have to evolve to help you analyse and simulate structural, crash, noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) and durability behaviours of structures that utilise alternative materials and joining methods.

The greatest change may be in the factory. Consider the possibility of a 50% reduction in floor space requirements resulting from more compact fabrication methods made possible by using materials such as composites. Composites

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The automotive industry is facing a period of unprecedented change. New fuel economy and emissions standards are driving significant change across the industry. Producing lighterweight vehicles is one of the top strategies to meet these regulations, but it is also the one that is most challenging.

New material strategies, including the use of carbon fibre composites, will be critical for taking weight out of vehicles.

The promise of lightweighting vehicles will only be fully realised if automakers adopt innovative manufacturing and engineering tools and processes that enable them to take full advantage of mixed materials, including composites.

Engineering processes and the supporting software applications must evolve to enable engineers to efficiently make the optimal design choices required to deliver costeffective, lighter, more fuel-efficient products to market in a timely manner.

In the end, the optimal choice will depend on how much a company is willing to pay for efficiency and performance at a lighter weight. These considerations will help automotive companies achieve the success they need to meet upcoming regulations, creating a competitive advantage. �

Courtesy: Siemens PLM Software

EM | Feb 2016

TECHNOLOGY | NEWS

5-axis universal machining centre

Additive Manufacturing & multitasking machine

Haas Automation expands its line of universal machining centres with the UMC-750SS, a super-speed version that offers high performance and speed for quickly machining 5-sided (3+2) and simultaneous 5-axis parts.

The UMC-750SS is a 5-axis, 40-taper universal machining centre with 762 x 508 x 508 mm travels, 30.5 m/min rapids, and an integrated high-speed, dual-axis trunnion table. The machine is equipped with a 15,000-rpm inline UMC-750SS direct-drive spindle, a high-speed 40+1 tool side-mount tool changer, and the company’s powerful highspeed machining software. The UMC-750SS’s high-speed, roller-cam trunnion table offers 150 deg/sec feedrates to quickly position parts to nearly any angle for 5-sided (3+2) machining, or provide full simultaneous 5-axis motion for contouring and complex machining. The trunnion provides +110 and -35 degrees of tilt and 360 degrees of rotation for excellent tool clearance and large part capacity, and the 630 x 500 mm table features standard T-slots and a precision pilot bore for fixturing versatility.

IBARMIA has incorporated laser cladding capacities in the 5-axis multitasking machines, giving birth to the ADD+PROCESS product family. Additive manufacturing is a reality that is drastically changing process in various fields and sectors.

The machining process of pieces obtained by additive methods has only been approached by a few world leading companies so far. IBARMIA decided to join this exclusive group with the introduction of Additive Manufacturing and multitasking machining in the same machine.

In these machines, once the raw geometry is obtained by addition, the pieces are machined ADD+PROCESS in the same machine and even in same set-up.

This way the machine becomes an autonomous production unit, generating finished pieces from nothing. The process is applicable to prototype and single piece manufacturing as well as recovery/repair of pieces of high value. The machines working area can fit the Additive Manufacture of pieces of considerable dimension and value. A 3 kW laser source is used for the additive process.

Haas Automation | Navi Mumbai Email: tmiranda@haascnc.com | Tel: +91-80-8090-2412

Energy tube

IBARMIA INNOVATEK, S.L.U | Spain Email: ibarmia@ibarmia.com | Tel: +34-943-857-130

Laser processing machine

igus introduced energy tube series R2 with 40 millimetre (R2.40) inner EWAG introduces a new laser processing machine, the LASER LINE height, which offers the right solution for compact installation spaces such PRECISION for modern tool as in machine tools. Chip-resistant manufacturers to get started in energy chains, so-called energy tubes, laser technology. The latest offer cables protection from external short pulse fibre laser technology influences in dirty environments or inside used in the green wavelength processing areas. Like its big brother, range (532 nm) offers highly R2.75 with 75 millimetres interior height, efficient machining results for the new energy tube provides users with the commercially available protection against chips, dust and dirt. At diamond cutting materials such the same time, it is easy to open and as CBN, PKD and CVC-D. close, making assembly work very Rotationally symmetrical tools of simple. Constructed on the basis of the up to 200 mm diameter and up cost-effective E2-principle (two parts to 250 mm length as well as indexable inserts from 3 mm inscribed per chain link) made of tribologically diameter and up to 50 mm circumscribed diameter can be machined Energy tube R2.40 optimised plastics from igus, the R2 without force with the LASER LINE PRECISION. The unique and patented series also offer, in addition to the ‘Laser Touch Machining’ process offers excellent surface quality, even on advantages of lubricant and maintenance free operation, protection from tools with complex or delicate geometries. Any cutting contours, clearances external dirt accumulation and flying chips. The contours of the lid of the and 3D machining of chip breaker geometries can be performed in one R2.40 energy tube are smooth and their curvature and tight manufacturing clamping operation. The resulting flue gas and the vapourised material are tolerances guarantee that chips do not accumulate between the stop dogs. suctioned away and carried to a corresponding suction/filter system. igus India | Bengaluru Email: Harish@igus.in | Tel: +91-80-49127809

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United Grinding India | Bengaluru Email: prabhakar@grinding.ch | Tel: +91-99-8013-8897

EM | Feb 2016

NEWS | TECHNOLOGY

Coolant through the tool feed units

Lathe chuck

Suhner has introduced new ‘coolant through the tool’ application for quill feed drilling units. Optimising the cooling and lubrication effect to help increase chip removal, tool life and performance requires the coolant-lubricant mix in direct contact with the cutting edge of the tool. In the past, the application of an internal pressurised coolant- Suhner quill feed unit with coolant lubricant mix, especially for quill through attachment feed units, presented challenges and complications. A new approach engineered by REGO-FIX ® is called reCool ® where the coolant-lubricant mix enters the collet from radial direction and then passes through the tool. It is very simple and effective.

Based on this idea, Suhner adapted the reCool ® principle and designed attachments for the application of internal coolant liquids for its MONOmaster and MULTImaster families of quill feed drilling units.

Drilling with coolant through the tool application typically allows for a 20% increase in surface cutting speed, which results in higher chip removal rates and drastically reduces the machine cycle time.

SCHUNK offers quick-change chuck, ROTA NCX for lathes with short stroke cylinder. It pays off very quickly for turning smaller and medium-sized series.

After the success of the SCHUNK ROTA THW plus wedge bar power chucks, the company transfers the principle of the fast jaw change to CNC lathes with short stroke cylinders. The universal SCHUNK ROTA NCX power chuck can replace conventional lathe chucks without jaw quick-change system 1:1 without any conversion on the machine. It minimises the effort for set-up, and extends the productive machine running times. Within ROTA NCX 60 seconds, a new jaw set is retrofitted with a repeat accuracy of 0.02 mm. The ROTA NCX is suitable for finishing, and volume metal cutting. For ensuring maximum operational safety, it is equipped with a jaw locking system, and a jaw presence monitoring. Due to the individual base jaw system, it is particularly interesting for users who do not yet work with a jaw quick-change chuck.

Suhner India | Bengaluru

Schunk Intec India | Bengaluru

Email: automation.in@suhner.com | Tel: +91-80-2783-1108

Email: info@in.schunk.com | Tel: +91-80-4053-8999

Bearing housings SKF through its SIBCO brand offers SIBCO SNI bearing housings designed for maximum reliability and minimal maintenance. Bearing housings are critical as they help to support the bearing, transmit the loads and also protect the bearing and lubricants from contamination.

Bearing housings play a key role in maximising the performance and service life of the incorporated bearing. SIBCO SNI housings SIBCO SNI housings are split plummer block housings primarily designed for self-aligning ball bearings and spherical roller bearings mounted directly on cylindrical shafts or on adapter sleeves. The design of SIBCO housings provides different options for the selection of bearings and methods of mounting.

All standard SIBCO SNI housings are made of grey cast iron. However, SKF also manufactures a range of SIBCO housings of SNI design in spheroidal graphite cast iron and cast steel. The dimension of the SIBCO SNI plummer block housings conform to ISO 113 standard. SIBCO brand offerings cover a wide range of industrial applications.

SKF India | Pune Email: lovina.raymond@skf.com | Tel: +91-20-6611-2500

EM | Feb 2016

Multiple Machining Tailor-made and standard multi spindle heads for drilling and tapping in tight spaces and in shortest cycle times.

SUHNER INDIA PVT LTD Bangalore - 560 099 +91 80 27831108 automation.in@suhner.com

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NEWS | TECHNOLOGY

Solid carbide end mills

Technical documentation software

Seco Tools has expanded its comprehensive line of Jabro-Solid end mills to include new capabilities for significantly higher feed rates and metal removal in advanced roughing applications as well as a broader selection of longlength tools for processing aluminium. The company added JS554-2C universal solid carbide end mill to achieve the highest possible feed and metal removal rates in advanced roughing applications. Featuring advanced SIRA coating and a stable tapered-core design, the JS554-2C can run high-radial engagements, this capability reduces the number of required roughing passes and helps shorten overall part processing cycle times. The JS452-L solid carbide end mill additions (length index 3) are designed to bring high stability to long-overhang, needed to perform in thin-wall applications involving aluminium workpiece materials. The tool also makes it possible for users to machine at extremely high speeds. The JS452-L encompasses 54 long-length options with diameter ranges from 8 mm to 20 mm Jabro-Solid2 end mill and corner radii from 0.2 mm to 6 mm.

2

Seco Tools India | Pune Email: Bharati.Sawant@secotools.com | Tel: +91-2137-667406

QuadriSpace offers software, cloud services and apps that enable easy reuse of 3D for documentation and collaborative communication. The company’s software package allows users to easily create technical illustrations, animations and documentation, such as a parts list or a bill of material. It allows Solid Edge users the ability to import their 3D model into the software and quickly Documentation prepared in create technical illustrations and QuadriSpace Pages3D documents. The metedata or Solid Edge properties are imported with the 3D model. These packages utilise the metadata (properties) of the Solid Edge model to do the following: Publisher3D—technical illustration software, allows you to create highquality images, 3D PDF documents and cloud-ready illustrations from your 3D models. Pages3D—technical document software is an easy-to-use technical document authoring software application that enables authors to embed 3D models directly into the document creation environment.

Share3D—cloud service, allow you to securely share your 3D with team members and privately loop in outside participants as needed.

QuadriSpace Corporation | USA Email: info@quadrispace.com | Tel: +1-972-359-6700

Tool setter for CNC machining centres Renishaw has introduced Primo™ LTS (length tool setter), a single-axis tool setter which allows users to set tool length, check for breakage, and compensate for thermal growth on a CNC machining centre. The Primo LTS eliminates the need for time-consuming, error-prone manual tool length setting Primo LTS which can lead to scrap, rework, and reduced productivity and profit levels. Automated onmachine tool length setting with Primo LTS is up to ten times faster than manual methods, resulting in immediate and significant cost savings. It is suitable for use on small to large CNC machining centres and helps guarantee ‘right first time’ parts, reducing waste and increasing profits.

During a machining process, dimensional accuracy is dependent on a number of variables, including tool length and tool breakage. The Primo LTS monitors these variables automatically, enabling users to compensate for variations which may occur. It provides an accessible solution for increasing the productivity and profitability of a machine tool.

Renishaw | Pune Email: samina.khalid@renishaw.com | Tel: +91-20-4900-1589

EM | Feb 2016

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H I G H L I G H T S | C O M PA N Y I N D E X | I M P R I N T

Highlights - Mar 2016 IMPRINT Publisher / Chief Editor Shekhar Jitkar shekhar.jitkar@publish-industry.net Features Writer Megha Roy megha.roy@publish-industry.net

» Die & mould Changing customer expectations and rapid model changes requires a fast turnaround in the manufacture of dies & moulds.

Presently, production demands require the ability to react to frequent product changes, shorter production runs, lower inventory levels and higher productivity.

To meet these challenges a host of new technologies have evolved over the years.

The next issue takes a look at the trends that would lead to rapid manufacturing growth of toolings.

» High-speed machining Developments in high-speed machining can be understood by examining the main application fields and the technological advancements arising out of the requirements in these fields. The topic will be discussed in detail in the next issue of EM. » Milling machines Milling covers a wide variety of different operations and machines, on scale from small individual parts to large, heavy-duty gang milling operations. The next issue takes a broader look at the latest trends and technology advances in the milling machining segment.

» Welding & assembly Like most technologies, welding is developing steadily over time, allowing new benefits in terms of what can be achieved, and in terms of process economics. It is clear that progress is being made, and this should lead to improved quality and greater reliability.

The assembly process combines different manufacturing components using welding.

The next issue summarises significant recent developments in both traditional and emerging welding processes.

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DIEMOULD INDIA 2016 Tool and Gauge Manufacturers Association – India (TAGMA-INDIA) announces the next DIEMOULD INDIA 2016, the 10th Biennial Die & Mould International Exhibition on April 6-9, 2016 at Bangalore International Exhibition Centre (BIEC), Bangalore, Karnataka, India.

The next issue of EM will feature an event preview of this exhibition.

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COMPANY INDEX Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page Ace Micromatic Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 AFM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Altair Engineering India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Amada Miyachi America . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 Amara Raja . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Ace Manufacturing Systems . . . . . . . . . . .28 Autogrip Machinery Co. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 Blaser Swisslube. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 CGN Associates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 CII . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65 Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion 10 ElectroMech Material Handling Systems 15, 28 Epicor Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 Ervin Junker Maschinenfabrik Back Inside Cover Fatty Tuna India (FEMCO) . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 28 Forbes & Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 Geometric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Haas automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 Hannover Messe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 Henkel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

Features Writer Maria Jerin maria.jerin@publish-industry.net

Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page Hyundai WIA India . . . . . . . Front Inside Cover IBARMIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 ifm electronic India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 igus (India) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 66 IIT Madras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 IMTMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68 Invenio Business Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . .48 IPG Photonics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 Janatics Pneumatic India . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Jyoti CNC Automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Kim Union Industrial Co . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71 Makino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 Micromatic Grinding Technologies . . . . . . .42 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 MMC Hardmetal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 MotulTech India. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 PMT Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 Premium Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 PTC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 QuadriSpace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71

Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page Renishaw. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71 Royal Precision Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 Sahajananad Laser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21, 38 Schunk Intec India. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69 Seco Tools India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71 Siemens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 Siemens PLM Software . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 60 SKF India. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 69 Suhner India. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69 TaeguTec India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Back Cover TAGMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 Taiwan External Trade Development Council 57 Toyota Kirloskar Motor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Tyrolit India Superabrasive Tools. . . . . . . . .47 United Grinding India . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 66 VDW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 VR Coatings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 Wendt India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 YG1 Cutting Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 17

Board of Directors Kilian Müller (CEO - Worldwide) Hanno Hardt (Head - Marketing & Business Development) Frank Wiegand (COO - Worldwide) Shekhar Jitkar (Publisher / Chief Editor) Subscription Cover Price: `100 Annual Subscription Price: `1000 em.india@publish-industry.net Tel: +91-20-6451 5754 Printing Kala Jyothi Process Pvt Ltd, S.No: 185, Kondapur, R R District, AP 500 133, INDIA Copyright/Reprinting The publishing company holds all publishing and usage rights. The reprinting, duplication and online publication of editorial contributions is only allowed with express written permission from the publishing company. The publishing company and editorial staff are not liable for any unsolicited manuscripts, photos and illustrations which have been submitted.

Internet http://www.efficientmanufacturing.in Digital edition http://issuu.com/publishi/docs

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EM | Feb 2016