Manufacturer of Military Defense Equipment

Challenge
The company supports an industry that demands superior part quality and incredible turnaround times. Lean manufacturing allows multiple machining processes to occur simultaneously, greatly reducing the start to finish cycle time. The company was experiencing a major manufacturing inefficiency, however, in manual operations such as tool setup and changeover.

Toyoda Solution
After researching and evaluating all solutions to eliminate the problem, the company purchased a flexible manufacturing system from Toyoda Machinery. The automated system eliminates the need for manual setup and removal of fixtures and dramatically improves overall productivity per worker.

Equipment Specs
The flexible manufacturing system automates two FA400 horizontal machining centers and pairs them with eight buffer stations and a rail-guided vehicle. All of the tools needed for each program are stored in the 120 pocket tool magazines of the FA400s. The system’s Mach III Cell Controller software centralizes all of the system’s programming and software into one control station.

Results
The new FMS greatly reduces the direct labor previously invested throughout the manufacturing process, allowing the company’s staff to focus more strategically on overall production processes. The system eliminated the previous bottleneck created during tool changeover and setup, leading to a 30% revenue increase for the company in less than one year.

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