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Blackhawk de Mexico, S.A. de C.V. Santa Catarina, Nuevo Leon, Mexico
"Guided by a clear product strategy, Blackhawk de Mexico utilizes effective team problem solving, a regimented costing system, flexible production processes, a customer focus, and an open management style to create a plant worthy of global note."
Intermet PCPC Group Stensville, Michigan, U.S.A.
"Intermet Stevensville is best-in-class plant-wide, with overall equipment effectiveness obtained through good lean manufacturing principles, disciplined process engineering controls, effective preventive maintenance activities and consistent operational practices."
MODERN CASTING annually partners with the American Foundry Society Plant Engineering Committee to select the Metalcaster of the Year. The statements printed above encapsulate why these two facilities were selected for the yearly honor from the more than 2,000 other metalcasters throughout North America.
The following pages offer further insight into how these facilities have evolved into the standards of excellence they are today.
Intermt Stenville Auto-Mates
Intermet's Stevensville PCPC plant uses automation and lean manufacturing to remain a healthy automotive supplier.
During a February tour of Intermet's Stevensville plant in Stevensville, Mich., Fred Sanders, general manager, stopped the group at a trim press cell. The area had once been the site of eight workers hand filing parts and performing 100% Brinell hardness testing. Over the previous 12 months, it had become a one-person operation working on an automated trim press. The mountains of castings that used to be the norm were long gone. The group watched the single individual operate the trim press for several minutes before moving on with the tour. Afterward, when Sanders was asked about the trim press, he admitted the area had gone through at least four iterations before reaching its current form. After a bit, Sanders added that watching it in operation for a few minutes that day reminded him there is still room for improvement. He had spotted some more waste.
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"That's really the eye opener [when watching a process]; no matter what you've observed or done in the past, there's so much more you can do," Sanders said.
Intermet Stevensville has seen its share of iterations. Originally a diecasting facility founded in 1971, it took on a new process--pressure counter pressure casting (PCPC)--for a new application (aluminum knuckles) and switched its customer base from almost exclusively nonautomotive to 90% automotive. With the facility fully transitioned from diecasting to PCPC in 2001, plant management began tweaking the process for better properties and improved plant flow. Most recently, Intermet Stevensville has focused on automating its finishing cells by implementing robotic sawing, trimming and x-ray inspection. Now, the casting facility is undertaking the installation of robots to handoff and direct transfer castings from the PCPC casting cells to the finishing cells, further streamlining piece flow.
It is because of these automation efforts, along with the marketing of the unique PCPC process, that Intermet Stevensville has been named one of MODERN CASTING's 2009 Metalcasters of the Year.
Continued Adjustments
Acquired by Intermet in 1998, the Stevensville diecasting plant was at the time nearly 100% nonautomotive. In a couple of years, that would completely reverse.
"We begged for the opportunity here at the plant," said Dave Patterson, engineering manager. "We wanted the PCPC process for survival. Diecasting is a dog eat dog world."
An R&D cell was developed at Intermet Stevensville in 1999. By January 2001, the plant made a full conversion from diecasting to PCPC. By September 2001, it was delivering 9,000 pieces a day for a specific GM product line.
Developed by Intermet, the PCPC process enables the manufacture of aluminum structural components at lower cost, higher productivity and improved performance characteristics than other aluminum casting processes, such as diecasting or sand casting. Using a combination of pressure and counter pressure to control filling of the permanent mold, the PCPC process ensures metal-flow uniformity, prevents gas entry into the metal and promotes directional and uniform solidification.
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The PCPC process was developed in large part to meet a new demand for strong automotive knuckles made in aluminum rather than the typical ductile iron or steel.
"PCPC translates to a real savings for the customer, making the parts lighter and stronger," Patterson said. "It also opens up design possibilities because engineering isn't constrained by the need to make sections thicker."
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Currently, Intermet Stevensville operates eight PCPC cells with an additional four cells in storage ready to be installed when capacity is needed. The cells operate along a single line, which is fed by exchangeable crucibles that travel up and down the cell line on a track. The eight cells are divided into pairs, and each pair feeds a finishing cell--three of which are robotic with a fourth robotic cell currently being constructed. In the automated finishing cells, gating and risering is removed, and every casting is x-rayed by a robot, which is programmed to capture 5-16 views. The system can analyze each image view in 1.5 seconds, resulting in a typical cycle time per part of 10-20 seconds.
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According to Sanders, next on the capital improvement agenda is a robotic hand-off between the casting cells and the finishing cells. The first robotic hand-off (one robot for two PCPC machines and a single finishing cell) will be installed this summer, and another is planned for installation in a few months.
Surviving the Auto Industry
In 1999, Intermet Stevensville was eager to take on a new casting process in order to escape a tough diecasting industry, but today the business is in a precarious position. It mainly produces rear and front knuckles for the automotive industry, and 70% of its sales are from two customers, General Motors and Chrysler--struggling American companies recently emerged from bankruptcy. Suppliers to the automotive industry have been closing their doors monthly, while others have issued large layoffs and enacted temporary shutdowns.
Intermet Stevensville has not been immune; production has been cut to 60% capacity, and the plant has eliminated its third shift in an effort to cut costs. Its parent, Intermet Corp., Fort Worth, Texas, also went into its second bankruptcy in four years in August 2008 and sold its assets on July 20 to Cerion LLC, Detroit, and its parent Revstone Industries LLC, Paris, Ky. (which also recently purchased the struggling diecasting group Contech LLC).
Despite these pressures, the Stevensville plant's current performance has been encouraging to its employees. Intermet launched nine new products in the fall of 2008 and tallied a profit in the first quarter of 2009.
"A year ago, we saw this [recession] coming," Sanders said. "Even as business was growing for our company, we were able to prepare."
Part of the company's recent success stems from winning a job for new customer Honda beginning in 2005. In 2008, the Asian automotive maker accounted for 20% of Intermet Stevensville's sales. The aluminum caster also benefits from working on automotive platforms for historically strong-selling cars, including the Chevy Impala, Dodge Ram pickup and Honda Civic.
The aluminum knuckles Intermet produces are conversions from ductile iron, but most knuckles on cars and trucks today are still produced in the ferrous material. This leaves plenty of opportunity for growth. However, casting a knuckle in aluminum costs more than ductile iron when the material is factored in, so further conversions must be justified through weight reduction needs or total system cost savings.
Conversions from ferrous material aren't limited to automotive knuckles. Ten percent of Intermet Stevensville's business is nonautomotive, including a new job producing conduit benders for Klein Tools Inc., which are conversions from steel and iron. Sanders said the initial success of converting the benders to aluminum has opened up the possibility of adding more nonautomotive applications to Intermet Stevensville's operation.
Lessons From Honda
Gaining Honda as a customer was a turning point for Intermet Stevensville. The romancing took nearly two years, but the payoff has been invigorating. "We love working with Honda," Sanders said. "They are very tough. It's hard to get in with Honda. But once you are in, they treat you like family."
Honda brought a different management method to the customer-supplier relationship, which Sanders attributes to its Japanese roots. "Lean has been under discussion in the U.S. for 20 years, but Americans just don't get it," he said. "Americans want to buy a bigger, faster machine and keep it running 100% of the time. But that's wrong. It's okay to have a machine waiting on a person. The key is to have the people fully engaged and comfortably utilized. Robots are there to help the person, not to replace them."
Intermet Stevensville was accustomed to cost-cutting demands from its American automotive customers. Honda, on the other hand, partnered with the casting facility to help figure out ways to match production and cost reduction needs. Honda's ordering system, which demonstrates its lean manufacturing philosophy, dictates that it orders the exact number of parts or material it requires for any given day. If a supplier produces or ships defective material and causes a downstream operation to fail to meet that number, Honda will adjust the schedule for one day, one time. Then they will discuss with the supplier why the scrap occurred and how to prevent it.
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