We have an abnormal amount of re-cut parts. These parts need to be cut for a variety of reasons. Parts moved on the router, the bander operator burned the pieces, builders dropped parts, defects in laminate etc.
What is your system for eliminating the need for this? Also how do you track parts that need to be re-cut? And how do you relay that to the office and how often do you relay it?
From contributor Ca
This is part of a bigger question: What is the protocol in your shop for when things don't go as planned?
From contributor Ca
Interesting video about this topic.
From contributor Ro
Right now we have a sheet that is attached to the drawings for the room that the batch of cabinets is in. That sheet asks all the question needed to remake the part. As soon as you know you need a part it gets written down on the sheet. That sheet gets turned in twice daily to get the parts remade. The office then makes a list that has all the re-cut parts on it.
This doesn't address how to stop the abnormal amount of re-cut parts we have. It is only a way to simply get the parts needed to finish the cab.
From contributor Ca
You have a two part problem:
1) How to get the part back into production as quickly as needed,
2) How to keep the defect from happening in the first place.
You're constrained a little bit on the first mandate because you likely want to optimize the material yield for rebuilt parts. You also don't want emergency work to hijack the flow of other work processes. It seems like under your plan there is a specified time (twice a day) for reporting the need for defect replacement. At least you have structure here.
The problem of abnormal recut levels breaks down into either the need for process improvement or training.
I presume "parts being burned at the bander" means the wrong edge is fed into the bander or in the wrong sequence. If I am correct this points to labeling problems.
The training part might be related to batch size and or lack of structure for when people get trained. A lot of training happens on the job, i.e, on product that belongs to a customer rather than what has been allocated specifically for training purposes. How does your worker learn the consequences of improper loading at the CNC station?
Parts getting dropped probably has something to do with how they are conveyed or the rate of conveyance.
Each one of your problems probably has a unique set of causes. It sounds like your paperwork system will identify which types of problems happen more often. Some of the solutions will be lower hanging fruit than others so should be implemented first.
I would bet that it is training. This points to another question: What is the mechanism for the work to know he is doing it right? What is the mechanism to certify that he knows how to do it properly? Self-certification seems to be the norm in this industry. People seem to be comfortable with the statement that "there are ten ways to kill a cat". This could also mean there is the best way, the 2nd best way, the 3rd best way.....
Why would anybody want to use the 6th best way?
The answer to that is, of course, ambivalence. Which points to another root cause.
Coffee is done now.
From contributor ca
"Parts moved on the router"- we have a 40hp vac pump and we have some slippage. We nest drawer box parts on a freshly surfaced spoil board. On some of the bigger jobs we will separate out a drawer box nest and set up a 1" or 2" parameter around it and onion skin the smaller parts. We sometimes manually move the smaller parts around on the nest sheets placing cabinet ends and decks on the outside of the nest packs. This has eliminated a lot of the problems on this.
"the bander operator burned the pieces"
How ? Does he or she need comprehensive training ? Does he or she know to run test piece first and for most? Is there enough room to work ? Is the housekeeping in order around the bander ?
"builders dropped parts" Seriously ? What is your style of building ? This is a serious and you need to get to the bottom as to why the stuff is being dropped. Same as above. Housekeeping, enough room, etc.
"defects in laminate" Again, we manually move nest packs around to stop this when we get defects, broken corners, etc. We inspect as we go and talk with the cnc operators to get the best yields.
You need a company wide meeting and ask for the problems. Toyota has a great culture for getting to the bottom of all problems and solving them. I ask daily " What are your issues or problems and what can I do to help you solve them ?"
I understand what you are going through, but we have truly addressed a lot of problems with production with employees help. Again, this is serious and it's chipping away at your profits. I hope I have helped.
cabinetmaker
From contributor Za
I am interested in what software and router you are operating with. We have Thermwood right now and have been looking at new software and other brands of routers. With the Thermwood you can go right to screen at the router control and pull up any parts that need to be recut and it nests them and writes the program. You can also print lables with barcodes on them which can be scanned to be recut.
One of my hesitations with a different brand of router would be having to back into the office everytime you need a part recut.
To keep from having parts moving all the time we set up do onion skins and double passes on all parts under a certain size. On most jobs we don't have to recut any parts, but every now and then you will get a sheet that is twisted and might loose a couple parts.
Thanks,
Zach F.
From contributor ca
For us, we are running cabinet vision and a Biesse Rover But we actually do the re-cut parts from the office. When we have to do them.
I mentioned we cut and paste and move small parts around in the nest pack and get them off the parameter, this has helped a lot. The biggest thing for us is to send just the drawer parts in a nest of there own on large jobs and tell the software we want a 2" parameter around all 4 side - this has reduced a lot of reworks. Again this is done in the office.
From contributor Jo
We use software that allows the users on the shop floor to mark a part damaged by scanning its label, selecting it from a list of all parts cut for the cabinet, or selecting it from a rendering of the g-code on-screen.
Within a couple minutes after it is marked damaged the engineer/project manager (depending on settings) gets a little Outlook-like popup in the corner of his/her desktop.
They open our software and it always takes them to the "Home" screen which is a list of action items for him/her (including other things than this). Each job that has damaged parts will appear with a list of the damaged parts. He/she can click a button or two and have just those parts back into our nesting software (S2M Center from Cabinet Vision/Cabnetware) for re-nesting and re-sending.
When the resulting output is imported into our system, it goes right to he top of the work list for the CNC it is assigned to and it shows up in red. The part labels all indicate the part is a recut.
I've always required that recuts be treated differently- that each station have a marked, painted recuts-only space into which recuts are hand-carried by the prior station. That way the CNC operator hand-carries the recuts to the bander and places them in the recuts area, then the bander hand-carries them to the edge boring station then from there they go to the assembly area (of course at each station placed in the marked area). This lets us catch parts up to the rest of their job ASAP. I haven't gotten that in place at either of the 2 manufacturing facilities my current employer has, just due to incrementally rolling out changes but eventually will.
We also scan any cabinet/assembly which is partially built and assign it a status in the software indicating what it is waiting on- sometimes when things are set aside that information can get lost and the assembly just basically gets ignored until it can't be ignored any longer.
We can view the damaged parts on the sheets (rendered g-code with the part layout overlaid) and see if we have particular problems in certain areas, etc.
As far as WHEN to output- I always insist that not occur until after banding/edge boring. The CNC operators of course always want to do it as soon as or before they are done, and at one of our facilities they are winning that battle but I disagree.
Some shops that use my software let the recut outputting step be done in the shop (they just install S2M Center on a computer out there), but I personally prefer it happen in the office.
From contributor Br
If you can't relate to Toyota you might watch this from Fast Cap. A little closer to the cabinet world.
