TIP TIG Welding is always better quality than TIG and 100 to 500% faster with superior quality than TIG - MIG - FCAW.

Where are the Best Practices and Process Controls?

 

 

A 2005 message from Ed Craig to
Auto / Truck Industry Management.

Has the North American manufacturing industry completely turned it's back on the common sense manufacturing principles that Deming applied for Japanese manufactures over 50 years ago. If alive today and familiar with MIG welding and robots, perhaps Deming might agree with statements like these.

[] Robot and manual weld quality / productivity ownership is a management function.

[] It's the management's responsibility to ensure that their engineers, technicians, supervisors have the knowledge and ability to establish Best Weld Practices.

[] It's the management's responsibility to ensure the personnel in their organizations are provided with the training necessary for engineers, technicians, supervisors and shop floor personnel to establish and maintain Weld Process Controls.

[] Required weld sizes and specifications should come from the company that designs the parts, the methods to weld, process, consumables, parameters, best practices, process controls should come from the supplier of the welded parts.

[] In a time when weld quality focus is typically after the welds are complete, its logical that to control weld costs / quality, a manufacturer should utilize more resources and focus on how to control the process to minimize the opportunity for weld defects.

PROCESS OWNERSHIP, BEST PRACTICES AND PROCESS CONTROLS.
HOW MANY MANAGERS AND ENGINEERS KNOW WHERE THE BUCK STOPS?

It's April 2005. Bob Lutz the Vice Chairman of GM finally speaks out on the expertise of some of his engineers. During a speech to the at the Society of Automotive Engineers, GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz states, that US. auto manufacturers could streamline there design process if American design engineers were trained more like their Asian or European counterparts. Bob continues, "we are actually training our North American engineers to be "managers" while the rest of the world trains them to be doers".

I wonder if the chairman of GM also recognizes the root cause and much greater cost consequences of a more serious engineering qualification issue?

THE LACK OF PROCESS CONTROL EXPERTISE OF ENGINEERS IN THE LAST TWO DECADES HAS HAD A TREMENDOUS IMPACT ON THE PROFITABILITY OF MANY HIGH VOLUME PART MANUFACTURERS FROM JOHN DEERE TO GENERAL MOTORS. GM HAS BEEN A LEADER IN "LACK OF MANAGEMENT / ENGINEERING PROCESS OWNERSHIP" AND OVER THE LAST DECADE IT'S PAID AN EXTENSIVE PRICE FOR ITS PROCESS APATHY.

Of course Bob Lutz is correct on his criticism of engineering expertise, however its a pity that while Bob was giving his speech, he did not place a positive spin on it and recognize the contribution of his companies "technicians and maintenance personnel". Every day these guys have to step up to the plate and provide unique, band aid engineering solutions to compensate for ineffective engineers and managers who simply do not do understand the requirements for automation best practices, process ownership, process responsibility and process controls.


The message should be clear for auto / truck plants. Qualified, key manufacturing management and engineers need to take ownership of the equipment vital to their organization and the first step is, the manufacturing management should have the fundamental ability to recognize the short comings of their engineers, technicians and supervisors. Management should insist when required that these key individuals receive real world best practices / process control training programs.

For those companies that spend money on training programs and they still have nagging manufacturing issues, face the reality, the training programs you provided are not meeting the manufacturing objectives. The message should be clear. Change your training methods.

[] Just imagine the auto plant of the future, a plant where you would find that the parts delivered to the robot weld cells, actually meet the as designed dimensional tolerances.

[] Just imagine in auto plants of the future, where the engineers on the shop floor can actually program robots, lasers and other CNC controlled equipment and even make repairs to that equipment.

[] Just imagine in the auto plant of the future, engineers who can without the aid of a book, salesman or equipment vendor, actually control their manufacturing processes

[] Just imagine the auto plant of the future, a facility where global, uniform manufacturing practices are established, where effective process controls are in place. The welds will be managed by individuals that actually understand weld costs, deposition rates and the requirements to daily attain maximum robot weld quality and production efficiency.


Many corporate executives are unaware that the majority of their manufacturing plants, including their tier one suppliers have not established effective Global Weld Practices. These plants also will lack the ability to implement Weld Process Controls that can enable consistent, daily weld quality and the lowest possible robot welding costs.

It's a pity few executives recognize the extensive cost reduction savings potential from;
[a] plants which frequently deny weld production issues and hide scrap and weld
rework costs,
[b] plants in which robot weld rework bins are always overflowing.
[c] plants in which robots rarely attain weld production efficiency greater than 70%.
[d] plants in which few understand the cost of a welds,
[e] plants in which too many individuals "play around" with the weld controls.

So as GM's Bob Lutz provides sound logical advise to a few "hand's off designers" who have been responsible for his Wallmart cars. You know this design, it's hard in the Wallmart parking lot, to tell this car from the majority of the other parked cars. Bob may also wish to consider "free advise" from an individual that spent over four decades in high volume, automated weld manufacturing, mostly dealing with apathetic management, hands off engineers and poorly built parts.

Manual MIG Welding on the Corvette

Bob may be interested to know that a few years ago I persuaded some of your inexperienced manufacturing engineers to stop their manual welders using the world's most terrible weld consumables, (Lincoln self shielded flux cored wires wires) that for years produced a weld disaster on the body of your companies beloved, Corvette, (weld picture on right). I then trained your GM workers on how to use the manual MIG Welding process on the Corvette body. To complete the Corvette welding circle I finally got an engineer in your company, Ben Peera to use ABB robots with MIG welding on the same application. In other words Bob, I took you from the dark side of manufacturing into day light. You would not know about the flux cored weld issues on your Corvette Bob, neither would most other managers in your company as welding is rarely discussed in management circles and if it is discussed you typically will have to ensure a salesman / vendor is present to provide advice. Lets face it Bob, few mangers in your organization have ever shown more than a passing interest with the most important process utilized on building your cars and trucks.

Bob, I know its rare for a guy like you to ever visit a web site like this, however if you did my free advice to you would be straight forward and it's applicable to all your global plants. For decades your auto / truck industry has rewarded it's managers for poor to pathetic robot / weld manufacturing performance. If you want to see dramatic cost reductions per welded part produced for each car or truck and you would like to minimize warranty and recalls costs, take a look at the following four points.


[1] Create a mandate in which your plant manufacturing managers and engineers stop passing the robot weld quality / productivity buck.

[2] Ensure your management and engineers understand that before they give the keys to the factory floor workers, they must first take ownership of the manufacturing equipment and processes essential to their organization.

Plant management and engineers would benefit from;

[] more process expertise to be able to differentiate what's BS, what's bells
and whistles and what works,
[] the ability to recognize the root cause of their numerous daily automated manufacturing issues,
[] less reliance on salesreps and vendors,

[3] With robot welds, tolerances are of course critical. Design dimensions are specified for a reason. If your manufacturing engineers cannot build parts to those dimensions, fire your engineers and employ personnel who can rise to the challenge, or change the design dimensions.

[4] Instead of providing global rewards to executives who achieve poor to mediocre robot production efficiency and unnecessary rework, ensure the same executives only receive a bonus when those robots attain a production efficiency of greater than 90% and weld rework of less than 2%.

Bob if you get the point, you know that to enable process optimization and dramatic cost savings in your organization, your training methods are going to have to change. Your first training priority is not with the workers on your factory floor, it's with training your management / engineers so they have expertise in the equipment / processes that impact your profits. When they know what they are doing, the rest should be easy.



JUNE 7.2005: GM CHAIRMAN RICK WAGONER ANNOUNCES THAT GM WILL CUT TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND MANUFACTURING JOBS IN NORTH AMERICA, HE ALSO POINTS OUT THAT MEDICAL COSTS AND OTHER BENEFITS ARE ADDING $1500 TO EACH VEHICLE BUILT IN NORTH AMERICA.

John Lauve a GM shareholder addresses Rick Wagoner during the job loss announcement. John states. "The Titanic sank because directors ignored the warnings."At GM we need management to excel at the basics"

From Ed. While complaining about high labor and benefit costs in North American manufacturing plants, many USA corporations ignore the fundamental cost facts that they have been unable to establish highly "cost effective" Global Weld Best Practices with multi-robot cells and and a fifty year old MIG welding process or the 100 year old resistance spot weld process.

While manufacturing executives complain about medical costs and the overhead costs that are added to every car / truck built in North American plants, perhaps the same executives could place their focus and energy on cost reduction and examine with process expertise, the wonderful, global cost reduction opportunities available in almost every auto / truck, weld shop, paint and press shop.


AUTOMATED MANUFACTURING COST OVERHEAD WILL RARELY BE A BURDEN IF THE PLANT MANUFACTURING PROCESSES ARE OPTIMIZED.

To attain dramatic cost reductions with equipment and process automation requires managers focus on the human requirements for process and equipment optimization. It can be as simple as this. While auto companies look for ways to save pennies per part, when a plant single robot produces 240 robot welded parts per shift and needs one workers do the weld or part rework, at average North American labor / overhead rates of $60 / hr, two dollars are added to each part. This site is full of annual cost savings on specific parts from two hundred thousand to twelve million. By the way in my experiences in auto / truck plants, I have to add that the best quality was typically found at GM plants and Ford and Chrysler were often completely out of control.

So for those companies looking for healthy manufacturing cost reductions to compensate for their ever increasing cost overhead please note: I have been in over 1000 manufacturing facilities in twelve different countries. In over ninety percent of these plants, in a few hours I would increase the the robot weld production in the range of 20 to 40 percent and eliminate the weld rework from 20 to 40% to zero.





AT FORD MOTOR COMPANY, SHOULD MANUFACTURING FUNDAMENTALS
COME BEFORE CORPORATE INNOVATION?

Bill Ford, the chairman at Ford Motor company likes to state "INNOVATION IS OUR MISSION". If Bill would take an interest in his common processes and their critical manufacturing issues which have extensive influence on his bottom line, he would only have to go a few blocks from his office and visit the Ford Dearborn plant.

As Bill enters the Dearborn plant and goes by the large sign that states "Quality is Job One" he should stand at the end of the frame lines and witness something Henry Ford would never have put up with, "automated welding chaos" On the frame lines he could have watched the robots try to throw pathetic MIG welds on sad looking frames with many of the weld joints dimension out side those as specified in the design. Then Bill should find out where most of the frames end up, stacked on top of one another at the end of the plant. Here the frames will sit gathering dust, waiting for manual worker to come in at overtime rates on the week ends when the hunting season is over. It's always enlightening to watch unqualified weld personnel put poor quality manual welds on top of the poor quality or missed robot welds.

While Bill is emphasizing his companies enthusiasm for "innovation" he would do well to remember that due to his companies common apathetic engineering practices, Ford will annually looses hundred of millions of dollars on unnecessary robot weld rework and extensive loss of daily robot weld production from a two control fifty year old weld processes.

 

Let's not forget to stop the buck with the chairman at Chrysler. With this company what you don't see on the underside of the car is often a good thing as the robot welds made on too many Chrysler parts will look like they were made in the local high school weld shop.

A few floors down from his glass and stainless enclosed corporate perch, the chairman of Chrysler will find his corporate weld engineer, a man who for more than a decade has promoted the world's worst welding consumables "self shielded flux cored wires" This engineer has cost his company and suppliers millions of dollars annually on unnecessary weld rework and loss of robot weld production, and god knows what he has done to the health of the workers who are close to the obnoxious and sometimes carcinogenic fumes. The sad reality the Chrysler senior management and his peers have been aware of this for more than a decade and done nothing about it.

Click here to find out how you can loose millions of dollars on one robot application.

I don't get much work from those I criticize, it does not stop me I was born this way and I am an optimist and believe that one day America will again develop managers who will have pride in the products they produce. Are you are one of those rare auto / truck managers that visit this site and you have thick skin, a sense of humor and are not upset by constructive criticism? If you are dissatisfied with your welds, you may wish to take a look at the following MIG resources or call me at 828 658 3574. In less time than it takes to get your ulcers under control, I can have best practices and process controls in place in any global facility.

Links of interest Bad welds Auto Industry and Management and Robotic Welding

Back to Ed Craigs Welding Projects