Hampton Machine Shop retained Northrop Grumman as a customer by instituting lean practices in its job shop to satisfy the shipbuilder’s certification requirement. HMS built parts for the aircraft supercarrier, the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush. Photo courtesy Northrop Grumman.

Hampton Machine Shop Inc. faced losing a major customer, Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding, if it didn’t have its operations reviewed for needed changes, implement procedures to bring about those changes and have its operations certified by a third party.

A Newport News, Va., job shop, HMS avoided losing Northrop Grumman by implementing several lean principles to improve its manufacturing operations.

HMS’ situation wasn’t due to the Hampton, Va., shipbuilder being dissatisfied with the shop’s work. “I believe they were happy with us, but we needed to make improvements,” said Diane Beilharz, HMS senior vice president.

Northrup Grumman wanted to reduce the number of its vendors and wanted all remaining vendors to meet standards established by the Virginia Applied Technology & Professional Development Center. The center is part of Old Dominion University’s engineering school and works with the A.L. Philpott Manufacturing Extension Partnership, which is the Virginia center for the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership.

HMS’ work with VATPDC started in October ’04 and ended in March ’06, when the center certified the shop. The certification amounted to a stamp of approval for Northrop Grumman.

Starting the certification process, the center reviewed HMS’ operations, identified two main problems—on-time deliveries and first-pass quality inspection—and said lean manufacturing could help solve those problems.

HMS was skeptical, though, about lean for its operation. The shop turns, mills, drills, bores, grinds, plasma cuts and welds, but it doesn’t do much production-type work or many repeat orders. “We’re a job shop,” Beilharz said.

The shop’s attitude wasn’t unusual for Michael Cory, a principal consulting engineer for VATPDC. He said the center sometimes encounters job shops whose variable environments lead them to doubt that they can benefit from lean principles because “We are different.” He said his reply to those shops is: “Yes, you’re different, but you’re similar to everyone else.”

HMS decided to try lean, and it helped solve the shop’s two main problems. “Our on-time deliveries have greatly improved,” Beilharz said. She added that first-pass quality inspection has also improved noticeably, though it’s not easy to measure the improvement.

To increase on-time delivery, HMS instituted production sequencing, a procedure in which jobs are released into a shop based on their due dates and ensures a continuous, steady flow of work rather than a flood of work that may exceed a shop’s capacity and create bottlenecks, compelling the shop to determine how to expedite all the jobs to get them done on time.

To improve first-pass quality inspection, HMS established a VATPDC procedure in which operators performed quality checks during or at the end of each operation in a job’s manufacturing process. This replaced HMS’ procedure of inspecting a part’s quality at the end of its process.

The new procedure allows HMS to be aware of any quality issues right away and to ensure that each part, from the beginning, is made to the quality standards in its blueprint. The procedure minimizes wasted effort in producing parts and reduces the number of parts that might need rework.

HMS produces a number of parts for Northrop Grumman, but it can’t discuss many of those parts. “A lot of the items that we do for them are classified,” Beilharz said. However, she was able to talk about one product, HMS’ ladders for aircraft carriers.

“There are ladders everywhere on an aircraft carrier,” Beilharz said. “We’ve made hundreds, and we’re still making them.” For example, HMS manufactured ladders for an aircraft supercarrier, the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush, which was christened Oct. 7, ’06.

HMS made many of the supercarrier’s ladders, but they weren’t all identical. Groups of three or four were the same, but between the groups, the number of rungs differed as well as the type of tread on them, depending on where in the carrier the ladder was located, such as on the flight deck or in the engine room.

Also, it wasn’t just Northrop Grumman that benefited from HMS’ adopting lean principles and delivering more products on time. “All of our customers are definitely happier,” Beilharz said. “We are, overall, more efficient.”

—CUTTING TOOL ENGINEERING, May 2008

Toolmex’s quality assurance laboratory in its Natick, Mass., headquarters. Photo courtesy Toolmex.

Over the past 35 years, Toolmex Corp. has evolved from a Polish metalworking products distributor to a private, U.S. company targeting new markets for growth. As part of its growth strategy, in April the company launched a line of solid-carbide endmills and opened a new quality assurance (QA) laboratory at its Natick, Mass., headquarters.

Toolmex was founded in 1973, with cooperation from Fred V. Fowler, to sell and distribute workholders and cutting tools in North and South America. Ten years ago, the company was taken private and is now controlled by majority owner Ark Kielb, and also distributes Electrim electric motors, long-bed lathes and CNC toolroom lathes.

The Bison workholding products line has been the company’s mainstay, but Toolmex began marketing carbide inserts in the 1980s and in 1998 introduced TMX indexable tooling, now the company’s fastest-growing product line. The company sells its tooling products through a network of over 1,000 distributors and sales/service partners in North and South America. Toolmex Corp. has more than 18,000 tooling products and $12 million in inventory.

The company wants to move from being a niche business to a global player in the metalworking industry. “In the past, the company considered itself a manufacturer’s rep for mainly Polish manufacturers, selling whatever the factories in Poland made,” said Kielb. “Today, we are repositioning the company by offering targeted products and services designed to increase customer productivity.” The company has doubled in size over the last 5 years, to sales of $41 million in 2007.

One of Toolmex’s new services is the QA Lab, dedicated during a ceremony April 11. “We needed the lab to support product development and we intend to expand it significantly to support an increasing number of the products we carry, most of it coming from ISO 9000 certified vendors,” said Alex Lorenz, general manager of Toolmex’s Tooling Division.

Toolmex invested approximately $100,000 to build the lab. The temperature-controlled, 12'×20' room includes state-of-the-art measurement and inspection equipment that will enable Toolmex to test virtually any aspect of tooling precision, durability and performance including hardness, outside and inside dimensions, chuck runouts, thread accuracy and dimensions and other criteria. “We are running samples of product lots through the QA Lab to confirm that we are meeting specifications on tooling manufactured at our facility in Poland,” said John Edinburg, product manager.

Toolmex also launched its new SharC line of carbide endmills in April. The Mako family of tools are for nonferrous materials with a changing helix along the length of the flute; the Tiger family are TiAlN-coated multipurpose tools with two indexable helix teeth for slotting, roughing and finishing ferrous materials; and the Megamouth family incorporate a TiAlN coating and 5-flutes for semiroughing and finishing difficult-to-machine materials. The SharC line is for aerospace, medical and power generation applications.

Edinburg noted that the global market for solid-carbide tools is projected to grow 24 percent between 2007 and 2011. Because they can operate at higher speed and feeds than HSS tools, solid-carbide tools are continuing to replace HSS ones in many applications. Edinburg said solid-carbide endmills are also replacing indexable inserts in some applications. With an indexable milling cutter with large inserts, such as ¾" or 1" diameter, there are restrictions with a lower axial cut. It might take the indexable cutter three passes to get the required DOC, while it might take the solid-carbide endmill only one pass.

Products in the SharC line cost about twice as much as conventional endmills, but more than pay for themselves with productivity gains, according to Edinburg. For example, SharC endmills minimize chatter, operate at faster speeds and feeds than conventional endmills and eliminate the need for hand finishing in some applications, he said, adding that cycle time improvements range from 50 to 200 percent or more.

Education and training will be a key part of the product launch. “We’ve found that customers may have the right tool, but are using the wrong speeds and feeds or are using the wrong toolholder,” said Edinburg. “Also, the toolholder has to have a rigid fit with a high-performance endmill so that when you meet resistance, the tool doesn’t move. That’s the only way to get a precise cut. If you give the customer the right tool and show them how to use it correctly, they can be more productive and get longer tool life.”

—CUTTING TOOL ENGINEERING, May 2008

U.S. manufacturing technology consumption totaled $308.73 million in January, down 4 percent from the $321.50 million reported for January 2007, according to AMTDA, the American Machine Tool Distributors’ Association, and AMT–The Association For Manufacturing Technology.

Also, the January ’08 total is 26.1 percent less than the December ’07 total.

The data for metalcutting machine tool is only slightly less negative. The January ’08 total includes $294.76 million from the consumption of metalcutting machine tools. That amount is 3.5 percent less than the January ’07 amount of $305.40 million, and 24.9 percent less than the December amount of $392.59 million.

“Despite the publicized concerns about the U.S. economy, we anticipate that first-quarter machine tool consumption numbers will improve as manufacturers start to implement 2008 capital budgets and use the potential savings available from the new economic stimulus package,” said Peter Borden, AMTDA president.

The report’s information is based on data from companies participating in the United States Manufacturing Technology Consumption program, a joint program of AMT and AMTDA.

—CUTTING TOOL ENGINEERING, May 2008

The worldwide machine tool market is expected to have sales of more than $68.8 billion by 2010, according to Machine Tools: A Global Strategic Business Report, newly published by Global Industry Analysts Inc., San Jose, Calif.

A market research company, GIA said that to reach that figure, the global machine tool market would need to maintain a compound annual growth rate of 7.2 percent for 2001-2010.

According to the report, metalcutting machine tools are the largest part of the worldwide market, having an estimated 2007 share of 58.53 percent. GIA added that this part should have a CAGR of 7.6 percent for 2001-2010.

U.S. machine tool consumption increased 5 percent in 2006, so the country remained among the top three consumers of machine tools.

The auto industry consumed the largest part of the world’s machine tools at an estimated 42.78 percent in 2007. However, GIA predicted that the electronics/electrical machinery and equipment applications for machine tools would be the fastest growing part with a CAGR of almost 9 percent for 2001-2010.

According to the report, the more subdued demand for machine tools among developed countries is being somewhat offset by greater demand among Asian countries.

The countries building the most machine tools are Japan—which leads with more than 22 percent of total global production—followed by Germany, China and Italy. Also, China is the largest consumer of machine tools at more than 20 percent of total consumption, followed by Japan and the U.S.

—CUTTING TOOL ENGINEERING, May 2008