Page 32 - MetalForming February 2022 Special Automotive Issue

Future Success in Supplying the Auto Industry
comprising herself, the plant’s main- tenance and human-resource man- agers, and two from the skilled-trades ranks. Developed through the Michigan Department of Labor and Lansing Community College, two individuals already are enrolled in the program.
At the same time, Smith exudes pride when discussing recent efforts to opti- mize worker safety, noting the plant recently passed the 3-yr. mark without a recordable lost-time incident.
“That’s because we’re proactive when it comes to safety, not only reactive,” she says. “Every employee out on the floor is tasked with completing two ‘safe- ty observations’ per month, randomly observing work centers and looking for any safety-related issues, such as failure to wear PPE or lack of sufficient guard- ing. They then interact with the team, congratulate them on a job well done or suggest changes on the spot.”
Any significant safety-related changes then are entered into the Kirch- hoff Automotive global best-practices database, called Go Bench. “We use Go Bench,” explains Forquer, “for cross- facility benchmarking—any competitive advantage or process development/ eureka moments that we have anywhere in the company reside in this global database. These process enhancements then become available to anyone on our engineering team anywhere in the world. And, if our management team labels a process enhancement as a glob- al standard, every facility must budget to implement that process to improve their performance.”
Quality Record Enhanced, Too
In addition to her plant’s impressive safety performance, Smith also points to another recently enhanced key-per- formance indicator—quality.
“We of course have scorecards with the customers,” says Smith, “and also are proactive here. We worked with the management team at Tecumseh and developed what we call the Operational Quality System Enhancement Audit. This audit comprises 11 or 12 questions that our salaried people ask at each work center on the floor, and can be
completed in just 15 to 20 min. The goal is to ensure that all of the operators understand their process and work instructions, and help us identify any gaps. It’s really helped to develop the teams out on the floor, and it also gets our management team to interact more
with the teams on the floor.
“We presented this program to our
supplier quality engineer at our cus- tomer,” adds Smith, “and he loved it. We also added it to Go Bench and all of our other U.S. and Canadian plants now conduct these same audits.” MF
Crash Management in EVs
A core competency of Kirchhoff Automotive is developing and producing lightweight yet crash-proof complex metal and hybrid structures for body-in- white and chassis. And, this work continues with the move to EVs, where the lack of an engine block typically means a shorter front end. That has the firm’s design and manufacturing teams working on new crash-management systems (CMS), which Kirchhoff Automotive showcased recently at the IAA (Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung, or International Automobile Exposition) 2021 event held last September in Munich, Germany.
Detailed in a description of its exhibit at the show, key features of its innova- tive new CMS include:
• Load paths and components matched to central load introduction.
• Continuous energy absorption over long intrusion paths without complete failure.
• Use of pre-galvanized steels for the greatest level of corrosion protection, joined using a gas-metal-arc-welding process optimized to ensure minimum porosity and good paint adhesion.
• First-time use of a fully laser-welded CMS.
• Economical lightweight design through optimum use of aluminum and steel components (see the accompanying photo of a hybrid cross-car beam).
• Use of steel in the driver-side area to meet the highest stiffness require- ments in tight installation spaces.
• Use of aluminum in the center and passenger areas to meet lower stiffness requirements, more favorable installation space conditions and maximum light- weight design potential.
As noted in an internal enewsletter article, the CMS developed by Kirchhoff Automotive for the new BMW iX (i20) electric SUV weighs just 26 kg and fea- tures a novel crossmember design constructed from two horizontal webs and a front and rear cover plate, notably different than a more conventional deep- drawn hat-shaped cross-
member and a strike plate. To assemble the new sec- tions, the firm calls on a hybrid arc- and laser-weld- ing process and uses seam tracking to help ensure accurate laser-beam posi- tioning. This work kicked off at the firm’s plant in Iserlohn, Germany, in July 2021.
Kirchhoff Automotive has developed this innova- tive IP support in a hybrid design combining steel and aluminum.
Forquer describes yet
another core competency for
Kirchhoff Automotive: edge
welding using the gas-
metal-arc or laser-welding process, which, he explains, the company developed originally to allow for shorter flanges and more robust weld joints on cross-car beams, and now uses to fabricate battery cases, bumpers and CMSs.
“We have some proprietary processes for bringing our stamped parts into our welded assemblies,” Forquer shares, “to ensure that we optimize edge-welding conditions. And, we have welding Ph. D.s on staff to ensure that we’re ahead of the curve, particularly with welding of new materials. In fact, we recently were awarded an ultra-high-strength B-pillar programs, stamping and welding 3rd Gen steels.”
30 MetalForming/February 2022
www.metalformingmagazine.com