Page 24 - MetalForming-Sep-2018-issue

FABRICATION
Cellular Manufacturing Evolves
The term, a buzzword about a decade ago, takes on new meaning
with the advent of advanced software and communication that enables closer tie-in of highly capable machines and material to production needs.
BY LOUIS A. KREN, SENIOR EDITOR
We don’t hear the term cellular manufacturing as much as we did just a few years back. Then, production machinery such as a press brake and laser-cutting machine or welding station, grouped together, perhaps with a robot provid- ing part- or material-handling duties, produced a component or completed a range of production steps in one loca- tion. Following, technology enabled lights-out production within these cells.
Today, advanced communication capabilities, paired with advanced machine capabilities and software that can tie individual machines and process- es to company-wide needs, have pro- pelled cellular manufacturing into the virtual realm. Cellular these days not only means physical proximity, but vir- tual proximity that redirects, sets up and delivers material and parts exactly when and where they are needed.
To explore the issue, MetalForming spoke with Tobias Reuther, director of the Trumpf Smart Factory Chicago, in Hoffman Estates, IL. The factory show- cases fully networked production, high- lighting how people, machines, automation and software interact to produce sheetmetal parts and assem- blies. It demonstrates how manufac- turing in general, and sheetmetal form- ing and fabrication in particular, have made, and will continue to make, tremendous strides in adopting and implementing new technologies to transform mature manufacturing processes.
Reuther describes the various ways that fabricators can, and do, arrange equipment in the new cellular world, beginning with relatively simple layouts.
“Fabricators may want to connect two laser-cutting machines with one storage tower for supply of raw material
or parts,” Reuther says. “Suppose a fab- ricator employs six laser-cutting machines. Two lasers can mate with a single storage tower to yield three indi- vidually managed cells.”
In this scenario, an issue with a single machine does not affect the two other cells, so two out of three continue to run. Redundancy results from this setup, but it comes at a price.
“Floorspace is sacrificed,” Reuther says. “Secondly, to shift orders from one of these cells to another, the stor- age tower must contain the right mate- rial for the shifted production. Alter- natively, connecting all six laser-cutting machines to a large storage system allows more freedom in production. Fabricators can push down an order to any other machine because they all have access to the same inventory.”
It all depends on the production strat- egy, explains Reuther. Many fabricators
22 MetalForming/September 2018
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