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During the past five or six years, the countertop industry has experienced immense growth. The spike in demand for natural stone and quartz countertops has increased approximately 20 percent annually every year between 2001 and 2007. During this period, fabricators were primarily focused on increasing their production capacity to meet the demands of customers. To achieve this goal, hundreds of fabricators throughout the country added CNC machinery to their shops.
However, in the flurry of filling orders and implementing new machinery, some fabricators have lost focus on their shop efficiency. Today, more than ever, fabricators need to analyze their shop's efficiency with one goal in mind: How can I reduce my costs so that I can make money in today's challenging economy?
As a CNC owner, focus your time and energy on reducing the bottlenecks that feed your CNC machine. Your shop's bottlenecks didn't disappear by adding a CNC to your shop — they just shifted to another area of your operations. For example, by adding your CNC machine, your bottleneck may have moved from your sink cutout station to the sawing station.
I often share five main tips with fabricators to enhance their CNC productivity: 1) Be prepared to manage through production changes; 2) Become a fully digital shop; 3) Enhance your saw station efficiency; 4) Utilize your CNC machine and software features; and 5) Keep informed of tooling advancements.
Prepare For Production Changes
Production schedules change — that's a reality. Prepare for these changes by completing the CNC programming two to three days ahead of the fabrication schedule. By laying out your production schedule in advance, you are creating a backlog of orders waiting in the pipeline. This time cushion puts you in a proactive mode rather than a reactive mode. If a slab is broken in transit that delays a job from being completed that day, you have another job waiting in queue to be fabricated.
Sometimes the response I get is, "There is no way I can do that!" It can be done and is being done by many fabricators throughout the country. This may be a change from the way your shop has scheduled in the past, but remember the goal is to maximize the spindle uptime on your CNC machine. You may spend additional time shuffling paperwork but you're not letting your CNC sit idle.
Become A Fully Digital Shop
In order to drive your CNC, you need to feed it digital files. You can continue to use the good old luan strips, haul them back to your shop hoping they don't break in transit and convert them to a digital file. However, that process will cost you in money, time and efficiencies. Start the digital process in the field by using a digital templating system. The CAD operator may need to touch up the file by adding overhang, placing the sink and faucet holes and oversizing the part, but this is minimal time compared to the time spent transferring the data from the luan strip system to a DXF file.
Just imagine having the templating team in the field sending electronic measurements back to the shop to the CAD operator to touch up before the team even returns to the shop. Now that's efficiency! If you haven't taken the digital templating leap, you are probably not utilizing your CNC machine to its maximum capacity.
Enhance Your Saw Station Efficiency
An inefficient bridge saw station will likely cause your CNC machine to sit idle. If you are using a bridge saw, you are probably spending more time at the sawing station doing layout than actually cutting. There are great opportunities to increase your bridge saw's productivity by decreasing the time spent templating.
State-of-the-art laser layout stations can accept digital template files. The CAD operator touches up the file and sends the nested, digital images to the laser layout station. The layout station reads the DXF file and projects the laser image on the slab. The sawyer marks the edges on the slab, adjusts the gantry laser and cuts the slab. The decision process is shifted from the floor operator to the CAD operator, which can increase sawing station efficiency immensely!
Or, you may want to consider using a saw/waterjet machine for your sawing process. With this type of system, the CAD programmer receives the digital file from the digital templating system, completes the slab layout, sends an electronic file to the customer to approve and downloads the project directly to the CNC saw/waterjet. The floor operator positions the stone, scans the bar code and pushes the green button. That's simplicity and efficiency at its finest!
By transferring your shop's flow and control to your CAD programmer, you can reduce reliance on skilled labor and increase your quality control process because you have centralized the programming "power" to one centralized location and person.
Utilize Your CNC Machine And Software Features
Understand the full capability of your CNC machine and software. If your machine or software has a specific feature included, chances are there is a good reason.
I encourage CNC owners to fully maximize their table coverage. Use every possible inch of the table to place parts for each cycle run. The more parts you can place, the less time you'll spend loading and unloading projects. With a larger table, you can fabricate multiple pieces in one setup. By reducing your setup time, you are increasing your cycle (spindle) time. Also, a larger table size enables you to fabricate an entire job in one cycle run, which allows the parts to flow through the shop in a group.
If your CNC machine software offers it, make sure to utilize the 3-D part verification feature to catch programming errors before cutting. This quality assurance feature allows the CAD operator to preview layout, cutting paths and vacuum cup placements. By simulating the cutting cycle, operators will be able to see that the correct toolpaths have been selected and are programmed in the correct sequential order.
Use all of your tool holders. The more tools holders you have, the more efficient your CNC will run because you are reducing the amount of time the operator spends loading tools into the tool rack at the expense of cycle (spindle) time.
Also, using an overhead laser projector system can be a good improvement. The floor operator simply pushes a button and the overhead laser projection system projects where the parts should be placed and identifies the size of the vacuum cups and their placement. That's technology!
Don't overcomplicate your CNC system. CNCs can be easy to run and operate. By centralizing your programming power to the front office CAD programmer, you will increase the shop's efficiencies because the floor operator doesn't spend more time than needed to set up for a production run.
Keep Informed Of Tooling Advancements
Remarkable strides have been made in regard to tooling. Fabricators have reported that the new, high-speed tools available on the market today can increase CNC productivity by nearly 30 percent. Regularly meet with your tooling vendor to learn more about the new tools available on the market. Don't try to save a few dollars on tooling. It's not worth the potential loss in efficiency!
Different Economic Environment
It's hard to change old habits, especially if those habits have made you money in the past. Today, though, we are working in a different economic and fabrication environment. Now is the time to challenge yourself and your operations to do things differently. Time is money. Focus your energy on fully utilizing your CNC machine and you'll see a reduction in labor costs and increases in productivity and bottom-line profits.
About the author:
Matt Zink is a sales consultant for Park Industries. Before joining the sales team, his primary role was in training and applications support, where he established 10 years of installation, service and training experience. For more information, contact Zink at Park Industries, 6600 Saukview Dr., St. Cloud, MN 56303; 320-251-5077; mzink@parkindustries.com; www.parkindustries.com.
author: By Matt Zink