Today's Industrial Products and Solutions May 2019 | Page 26

Optimizing
Tool Life &
Tooling Cost
Containment
JM PERFORMANCE PRODUCTS’ PATENT-
ED HIGH TORQUE RETENTION KNOBS
AIM TO RESOLVE THE TOOLING BUDGET
CONTAINMENT CHALLENGE.
Automotive industry manufacturers have basic re-
quirements from their suppliers– they want on-time
delivery, accuracy, and sufficient available stock.
They want perfect parts, but they want them to be
immediately available at a price they can control.
Automotive industry suppliers need to have the
ability to maintain production volume and quality,
while maintaining a competitive edge through cost
containment.
The big automotive companies hold their suppliers
to very strict requirements relative to quality while
expecting them to be very flexible in response to
fluctuating demand, and still produce parts as eco-
nomically as possible.
Nearly every component manufactured for use in
the automotive industry has CNC manufacturing
involved in its production. Perhaps it’s time for auto-
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TIPS Magazine • May 2019
motive manufacturers to take a giant step backward
and get down to the basics of manufacturing issues
that exist on the production floor, which cost the
industry billions of dollars per year and go largely
unrecognized.
Tooling is a vital and often overlooked process in the
production of automobiles, as every single part of a
new car requires a unique tool. What if an invisible
problem inherent to CNC manufacturing existed?
What if an actual flaw in the tooling was robbing
manufacturers of the ability to produce parts accu-
rately, and interfering with the production rates and
cost containment? One of the major initiatives at
the forefront of today’s automotive manufacturing
community is to answer these challenging tooling
cost containment questions and find progressive
solutions therein.