Improvements hailed in India

27 January, 2021

Improvement, it’s a continuous quest for manufacturers and businesses in any field. That’s why there are various, defined approaches for productivity and process improvements. One of those approaches is called Kaizen, which is Japanese for “improvement” or “changing for better”. In many countries, there are yearly awards handed to companies that have made great efforts to improve their productivity. Our colleagues of IGW Involute in India were recently recognised by the CII (Confederation of Indian Industry). The CII presents Kaizen awards nationwide and in December 2020, IGW Involute was announced as runner up in the stream Productivity and Delivery.

 

The Kaizen theme for which we were awarded the runners-up position was “to reduce setup time and to increase machine utilisation. Indeed, the setup time before the improvement process was around 90 minutes. A second challenge that our Indian colleagues faced was a change of the jaw set during every set-up change. Also, to maintain the run-out, jaw turning was needed. Thirdly, when, in the specific machine, hard parts were turned, there was a longer set-up time compared to other machines in which soft parts are turned.

To fix those problems, our Kaizen team (Vinod Chavhan, Mohan Suryawanshi, Santosh Kambale, Suresh Pathak, Rajendra Mahajan) wanted to replace the regular jaws with a collet type chuck assembly. The actions taken to implement this idea were threefold. First, we identified the hard turning parts to be processed only in the machine in question. Next, we purchased an 18-part collet system instead of a jaw set. Finally, we also purchased a quick change mechanism chuck that we mounted onto the machine.

Pleasing results

 

As our second place for the kaizen awards suggests, the results we obtained were greatly satisfying. For starters, we are able to save a significant amount of money by not having to buy new jaw sets. A second important benefit is that we have reduced our set-up time to 30 minutes rather than 90 minutes.

 

Our Kaizen team, then, fully lived up to their name as they have markedly improved our efficiency and productivity. We are already eagerly looking forward to further future improvements!