Pacific Solutions
How Pacific’s High Tonnage Press Helped Automotive Supplier Decrease Scrap Rates, Reduce Cycle Times & Reduce Overall Manufacturing Expenses
Pacific High Tonnage Hydraulic Press
Objectives & Background
A North American Tier 1 Automotive Supplier was looking for a faster, more efficient method of developing their rack and pinion gear set. The client was outsourcing a large portion of this job due to capacity constraints but was seeking to move this work back in-house with the completion of this project.
Pacific experts did a thorough analysis and discovered 4 addressable issues:
- 3 set cycle process – The existing process caused long cycle times (5 minutes), inconsistent results, and high manufacturing expenses.
- Long change-over time for different models -The manufacturer was changing dies multiple times a day, spending up to an hour on each die change. Significant production time and profitability was lost to tooling changes.
- Material feed and handling system – The facility relied on an operator to load and unload the parts manually. This led to excessive material handling, and a bottle neck within the production process.
- High scrap rates – Multiple inefficiencies within the current process created a high scrap rate, driving up the cost per part.
Pacific’s Solution
- Pacific designed a high tonnage press specifically for the customer’s products, providing consistent, more accurate gear formation.
- A robotic material delivery system was developed to load and unload parts in the production process.
- A custom die change system was created, which reduced die change-over time from 1 hour to just 15
Value to the Customer
- The new high tonnage press decreased scrap rates, reduced cycle times to just 90 seconds per part, and reduced overall manufacturing
- The material handling improvements seen in the robotic arm system greatly reduced cycle times (more accurate part positioning), scrap rates, and material handling
- There was a 75% reduction in die change over time with Pacific’s new system, which reduced costs/part, increased output and made die changes quick and easy for
- In total, the new system designed by Pacific was approximately a million dollars. Despite the expense, the efficiencies and improvements seen in the new system enabled the customer to see a return on their investment in just 12 short weeks!
