Go with the flow: Industry Trends & Analysis

END USER: Great Plains Industries Inc., (316) 686-7361, www.gpi.net. CHALLENGE: Ensure there are no machining issues with a flexible manufacturing system. SOLUTION PROVIDER: CGTech, (949) 753-1050, www.cgtech.com. SOLUTION: Machine simulation and optimization software.

When a company spends several million dollars on a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) to compete with offshore suppliers and revitalize the shop floor, it’s important to make the most of the investment. Above all, there must be assurance it will never crash.

Great Plains Industries Inc., Wichita, Kan., has taken steps to do just that. Beginning in June 2015, GPI kicked off “Project One,” the installation of four MB-5000H Okuma horizontal machining centers equipped with 15,000-rpm spindles and 218- tool matrices, together with an integrated Palletace 60-pallet M-1100 material-handling system built for Okuma by automation provider Fastems, West Chester, Ohio. The FMS includes spindle probing, tool life management, remote monitoring and every lights-out bell and whistle.

Programmer Matt White (left) and Jean Alcala, machine shop manager, with a cast iron part that GPI simulated the machining for using VERICUT. Images courtesy GPI.

Jean Alcala, the company’s machine shop manager, recalled GPI’s situation 7 years earlier. “We’d made a good deal of progress as far as modernizing our workholding and increasing throughput, but there was only so much we could do with stand-alone machine tools. When the shop couldn’t keep up with increasing demand, the decision was made to outsource all our cast iron machining to China.”

However, GPI struggled with quality and supply chain issues when outsourcing, so the company investigated bringing its outsourced work back home.

“The problem with offshoring is that, when there’s a problem, you can’t send it back,” Alcala said. “Then you’re faced with rework and late delivery of products. That’s why we looked at the FMS. We knew having our own in-house flexible manufacturing system would eliminate nonconformance, provide better service to our customers and help optimize the organization overall.”