B/E Aerospace's fabrications department has met the lean challenge by introducing Wilson Tool International's microtagging system, which has improved workflow and reduced second operations.

If you have ever flown in a Boeing airliner, the chances are that your journey will have been spent sitting in a seat produced by B/E Aerospace. The company has a strong presence in the UK, with factories in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and recently, the English site, at Leighton Buzzard, has responded to the challenge of market demands by instigating a lean manufacturing programme. As part of that exercise, the sheet metal fabrications department has been very closely involved with Wilson Tool International of Swindon to provide valuable technical input on tooling technology.

As a result, the adoption of microtagging, on-machine part marking using Wilson's dot marking system and in-process forming of countersinks are just three initial changes to create important results.

Enhancements to B/E Aerospace working practices have led to significant improvements in work flow, reduced second operation processes and savings of 30 hours of production time a week.

Mark Sutton, cell supervisor for the punching department, commented: 'Six months ago we would punch out a batch of components, wait for them to be deburred and then second operation any countersinks or part marking.

This created a bottleneck; even though we had four people working on deburring they just couldn't keep up.

Now with micro-tagging, we only need two people deburring.

We also have a good work flow which applies to part marking and countersinking.

From a quality angle, we've benefited from using Wilson's Slug-hugger dies as they eliminate any under surface scratching.

Our turn-around on urgent jobs has also improved considerably.' B/E Aerospace is also progressively adopting Wilson's 2.4.1TM tooling system, which enables the effective operational life of its punch press tooling to be doubled.

Wilson's 2.4.1 was originally developed for fixed head tooling applications such as those found on Trumpf, Pullmax and Euromac punch presses.

It has the key advantage of increasing the regrind life of an otherwise standard tool through the use of a precision ground spacer.

The tool system also incorporates direct keying which allows quick and simple loading of punches into the machine without any need for pre-setting.

Mark Sutton explains: 'Wilson's 2.4.1 is one of those simple ideas that makes you wonder why no-one did it years ago.

As we constantly use a lot of slotting tools, this means we are expecting to see a significant reduction in tool costs.' Ed Close, the B/E Aerospace technical engineer involved with the lean manufacturing project comments: 'Although we have purchased tooling from Wilson Tool International for some time, we had never taken advantage of their technical training services.

However, the lean manufacturing project provided an incentive as we were targeting cost reductions through improved methods.' He continued: 'From our involvement with Wilson we learned a lot and have been able to put some of the ideas into practice straight away.

Both microtagging and part marking came directly from their seminars.

But what is important is our longer term thinking because we now appreciate 'cause and effect' in respect of tool performance and how correctly applied tool maintenance benefits tool performance and hence part quality.' He follows on to outline as they now know where to look, they will probably find tooling will last far longer.

'The seminars certainly opened our eyes to what is possible however, we still have to balance these improvements against our re-programming workload.

But most important, we know there is still a large potential for additional savings.' The fabrication shop at Leighton Buzzard is equipped with a wide variety of quality equipment.

The main sheet metal profiling resources are a pair of Trumpf Trumatic 240R punch presses bought in the early 1990s.

Fabrication requirements range from small brackets to large boxes, in batches between 10 and 10,000 and most are dynamically nested on 2 metre by 1 metre standard sheet.

Around 75 per cent of material processed is aluminium, however, some steel and stainless steels have to be machined.

Material thickness ranges from 0.5mm up to 5.0mm, though the average tends to be around 0.9mm and part complexity can require up to 16 bends.

In addition to flat patterns, a number of blanked components are also produced.

While B/E Aerospace has been able to achieve significant improvements through a relatively modest investment in tooling for the 110,000 part numbers that it currently produces, around 44,000 are sheet metal components.

Ed Close acknowledges there is considerable potential for improvement in production methods but is equally sure that a slightly cautious approach is called for.

'Before we go too far, too fast,' he says, 'we need to analyse where we can get the most benefit.

If we substantially alter the way that a component is produced, it can then mean altering or re-writing the part program.

That's obviously going to be more cost-effective if the part is in regular manufacture and produced in large batches.

In addition, because we're making parts for aerospace application, we need CAA approval for any changes in the manufacturing process.

'With that said, we've already seen significant benefits from lean manufacturing initiatives and Wilson's input has definitely assisted us along that path.

There are areas where we could do more on the punch presses.

One is the use of form tools for cold form threading to replace the use of threaded inserts,' says Ed Close.

The company is also considering how certain other components might be more accurately and economically produced by using Wilson developed progressive tooling for use on the punch presses.

For instance, the shop recently completed a batch of 10,000 match-box sized brackets.

These were shaped like a squared-off table tennis bat and the first part of the punching operation entailed using a radius tool to produce six curved external corners.

A similar tool was used to produce two internal corner radii.

'A progressive type blanking tool will cut the time on that part dramatically and we are currently discussing the possible adoption of this technique,' says Ed Close.

The combination of lean manufacturing practices with technical advice from Wilson Tool has worked well for B/E Aerospace.

So far, the productivity benefits have been quantifiable and are on-going.

But, equally important is the effect on morale.

As Mark Sutton concluded: 'We've learned a lot, been able to put significant improvements into practice and have seen the benefits come through quite quickly.

That's encouraged us as a team to try other ideas, which means the lean manufacturing process is beginning to gain its own momentum.'