Based in Stoke-on-Trent, Accura specialises in prismatic machining up to 1m 3, machining parts for the offhighway market; supplying parts to some of the leading manufacturers in this sector. This involves working in long term partnership with a small number of major customers, producing a wide range of complex parts which have a high added value content. Being able to respond rapidly to changing requirements in this volatile market, with short lead times and small batch sizes is crucial.

Previously, the 60 machine tools in the company were arranged in traditional fashion by machine type.

This resulted in poor flexibility, unacceptably high lead times, and moving bottlenecks across the whole manufacturing facility. Even the most basic forward planning was very difficult.

Ray Bennett explained the new 'process' based concept: "Each of our major customers now has dedicated manufacturing cells to which exclusive capacity is allocated. The individual cells contain the different machines necessary to complete the customer's range of work. The benefit is that raw material, whether forgings, billets or castings go into the cell, and finished components come out. Lead times are a function of the machining time in the cell and are not influenced by other work in the factory.

Additionally, work in progress is significantly reduced and quality is greatly improved."

Once the initial changes were implemented, the next stage for Accura BD was to optimise what was happening in each cell. This involved balancing operations, removing bottlenecks and improving productivity and quality. In some areas, where very small batch sizes were combined with complex setting operations which could exceed the run time for the component, considerable reductions were essential.

Tools such as SMED (single minute exchange of dies) were employed but the solution required something extra. This led Accura BD to consult Pollard for advice and help.

The solution proposed was a 30 station Fastems flexible manufacturing system linked to an existing Mori Seiki SH630. The proposal turned out to be so effective that an additional SH633 was added to the Fastems system.

www.accura.co.uk