An auto industry story with a happy ending
| It starts in 1956 and ends on Tuesday at 10.15, local time. In that time, auto industry veteran Kenneth Rooth has seen auto industry tooling go from wooden models and plaster molds to CAD manufacturing and efficient 21st century production.
But just when it seemed that engineering couldn’t get more sophisticated, Kenneth teamed up with Sandvik Coromant to achieve a full 30% reduction of metalworking times on stamping dies.
History being made? Maybe. Money being saved? Definitely. |
Automakers typically manufacture over a third of their stamping dies in-house. Making these tools is time-consuming and, with some 750 of them required to build a car, a major production bottleneck. Today, shorter lead times, more models and tight budgets have made this process even more critical.
Kenneth Rooth | Kenneth Rooth knew that much of this cutting and milling work was done by individual operators, with much manual finishing, something that requires great skill and a good deal of time. The result was not only higher costs, but also lower standardization. The quality and fit of a right door could vary from a left door if two different operators were programming the machines.
Sandvik Coromant was given the assignment of finding a way to bring costs and lead times down and quality up. A new process was developed with new tools and machining processes. The results: machining times were cut by over 30%, manual tool polishing was totally eliminated and other manual machining was reduced considerably. |
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How did they do it?
First, high-speed steel drills were replaced by indexable inserts drills, a simple measure that gave a considerable boost in efficiency. Then, to improve machining efficiency of parts with long overhangs, silent tools replaced traditional tools and a number of templates were developed for future use.
How Kenneth became a hero in cost cutting |
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