Page 28 - MetalForming February 2022 Special Automotive Issue

“We’re heavily invested in training our workforce and in providing it with state-of- the-art stamping and weld- ing technology,” says Josh Forquer, executive vice pres- ident of sales and technical development at Kirchhoff Automotive. We met with Forquer at the firm’s produc- tion facilities in Tecumseh, MI, where it stamps and welds body-in-white struc- tures for several platforms, including the Chevy Camaro and Traverse, then we trav- elled upstate to visit its Lans- ing, MI, welding facility. We started our conversation on the subject of electrification.
“With EVs, the volumes
still are there but they are
across multiple platforms,”
Forquer says. “So, while we
still might have a 200,000-unit plat- form, there might be five variants of it. This means that we have to learn to productively and profitably run those smaller lot quantities and change over more quickly—that’s critical to remain- ing competitive in providing value to the OEMs that we supply, especially in our business where we’re in a very cap- ital-intensive area of the supply chain.”
Committed to Servo Presses
On the Tecumseh 400,000-sq.-ft. plant floor, one-third devoted to stamping including 14 press lines, toolroom and die storage, Forquer eyes servo press technology as pro- viding a sizable competitive advan- tage, particularly for forming advanced high-strength steels, and the facility has commissioned six new servo presses since 2017. In all the facility boasts 14 presses, from 250 to 1650 metric tons, including two new 1650- ton servo presses. The facility produces an average of 50 million stamped parts annually.
Ensuring that the pressroom runs as smoothly as possible falls on the shoulders of plant manager Eric Czarniowski, who took the reins in mid-
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Among the hundreds of stamped parts and assemblies manufactured at the Kirchhoff Automotive plant in Tecumseh, MI, are these truck front-end supports. Stamping these parts and others on one of the plant’s six new servo presses added since 2017 has resulted in a significant productivity gain.
2020 after a lengthy and successful stamping career at an automotive OEM. Along with his newly formed management team consisting of experts in maintenance, manufacturing operations and engineering—"a team with staying power,” he says— Czarniowski already has led the charge to improve the days-on-hand flow to customers and using the plant’s new servo-press technology to improve throughput and quality.
“By using the pendulum motion profile of our servo presses,” Czarniows- ki says, “we’ve significantly increased the run rates of several of our tools. And, I think there are probably several more tools where we can make similar improvements. We’re focused on work- ing with a few key operators on the floor to teach them the process, starting with the presses themselves and then looking at the transfer systems and other automation.”
Training the Pressroom Crew
Czarniowski has been working closely with Forquer and the rest of the Kirchhoff management team to continue to acknowledge the needs of its UAW workforce—some 500-plus—
to better understand how to work to the guidelines prescribed within its Kirchhoff Automotive Production Sys- tems (KAPS) program.
“We’re committed to building trust and stronger relationships between management and the workers on the floor,” adds Forquer, “which we believe will come with our growing commit- ment to training and investing in our employees. One key to that is our recent investment in the METALFORM EDU series of online training modules from the Precision Metalforming Association (PMA). Our HR team is hard at work identifying opportunities to use the 37 PMA-exclusive courses and more than 650 courses in other areas, including blueprint reading, SPC and lean man- ufacturing, to take our operations to the next level.”
Back out on the pressroom floor, a key area of focus for Czarniowski and his team has been on reducing changeover times. Here, “slugs are the enemy,” he says. “We have more than 300 dies that we run regularly here, and slugs consistently remain the enemy as we continue to improve our ability to direct slugs down the scrap chutes— located now in the center of the bolsters