Speed Thrills: Turning Performance

Swiss Automation’s success is based on machining complex parts quickly, accurately and consistently.

It’s easy to think that a parts manufacturer is selling one thing: parts. But Dave Powell, sales engineer for Swiss Automation Inc., pointed out that the Barrington, Ill., job shop is selling two other things as well: expertise and time. “Our approach is, OK, here’s a part and we have to make 5,000,” he said. “How long does it take to make them consistently?”

To produce about 30 million parts a year, Swiss Automation operates around the clock and employs a battery of 115 production machines, with most being CNC Swiss-style machines. The others include CNC multiaxis turning centers. To keep pace with machine technology advancements, the company regularly invests in equipment, spending as much as $4.5 million annually on buying new machines and upgrading existing ones.

All images courtesy A. Richter

Swiss Automation uses an array of Swiss-style machines to produce complex parts for several industries, including mobile hydraulics, medical and defense.

Last year was certainly no exception. Swiss Automation expanded its operations by buying a 33,000-sq.-ft. building in Cary, Ill., and installing 27 machine tools of the same type the company utilizes at its Barrington facility. The expansion was the result of a few customers significantly ramping up their operations. “The only way we felt we could help them was by adding machines and another facility, but not in 12 to 14 months—now!” Powell said. “Buying an existing building allowed us to make parts there within 2 months.”

With space tight at its main facility in Barrington, adding equipment there requires removing an old machine, but “old machine” is a relative term at Swiss Automation. “We only get about 12 years out of our machine tools. They are still good, useful machines at that point, but we trade them in for something better and faster with more bells and whistles,” said Ken Malo, founder and president.

Learn more about Swiss Automation

For more information about Swiss Automation, view a video presentation on www.ctemag.com by scanning the QR matrix bar code on your smartphone (app available at get.neoreader.com) or entering the following URL on your Web browser: cteplus.delivr.com/1cpuh.

Good, useful equipment from other shops won’t find its way into Swiss Automation because the shop doesn’t buy used machines. “We like to have the best,” Malo said. “We find it pays to have the latest and greatest. It also flatters the shop men, knowing they’re entrusted to giving them their best care.”

There are no boundaries to where those machine tools are built. Depending on the job requirements, the company uses a number of Swiss-style machines from Switzerland-based Tornos S.A. and Japan-based Marubeni Machine Tools Co. Ltd., which builds Citizen machines. “Tornos machines are more like racehorses,” Malo said. “They’re speedy and very useful for brass, aluminum and some stainless. We find Citizens are more like Clydesdales; they’re good workhorses. But the Tornos take the metal out quicker due to cutting freer machining materials with smaller stock diameters.”

Having the latest machine tools helps motivate workers to keep those machines in good operating condition. “They know they’re not working on beat-up pieces of junk they can hammer away at and abuse,” Malo said. “They know if it’s a brand-new, out-of-the-box machine, they have to take care of it and keep it maintained, and it returns good parts 24/7.”

In addition to part-producing machines, the company also invests heavily in equipment to inspect and measure those parts. Swiss Automation purchased more than $250,000 worth of inspection equipment last year. “Video inspection is where we’re seeing some big advances,” Malo said.

Mike Merrill, foreman for Swiss Automation, pointed out that acquiring an OASIS optical profile inspection system proved particularly beneficial. “The OASIS is for checking parts on the floor instead of using a comparator,” he said. “Operators checking parts with multiple dimensions on a comparator can take 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the part.” In contrast, inspecting a part on the OASIS consumes about 2 seconds. “It’s all about speed, accuracy and consistency.”

Targeting Tricky

Swiss Automation primarily produces parts for the mobile hydraulics industry, such as for farm equipment, end loaders, graders and lifts, but also for the medical, defense, firearms, pneumatic, automotive and other industries. Regardless of the industry, the parts are not run of the mill.

“We make complex, difficult parts with a lot of features,” Powell said. “We make parts that look like a piece of Swiss cheese using 24 tooling stations on some machines. The most-complex-parts segment is a very small but growing segment of manufacturing, and we’re very good at it.”

Since the company was founded in 1965, Swiss Automation has employed Tornos machines and about 15 percent of the shop’s current lineup is from that builder.

As a result, the company is continually searching for customers needing parts that are challenging to machine. “It’s not cost effective to make a simple, cheap little part on a $500,000 machine,” Powell said. “You have to have the right kind of part.” He noted that the shop’s customer base is comprised of companies typically at the top of their industries, enabling Swiss Automation, which was founded in 1965, to continue being successful. “Our big customers have been able to expand and then sell overseas, and it’s been huge for us,” Powell said. “You have to get on board with successful, hard-driving companies. You take each other along for the ride.”

That ride involves machining parts with tolerances as tight as ±0.0001 ” and surface finish requirements as fine as 8µin. Ra. While part features and tolerances become more challenging, part volumes continue to shrink, limiting the attractiveness of Swiss Automation’s customers sourcing from low-labor-cost countries. “We don’t do five of this and six of that; we can’t make any money on those orders,” Powell said. “But for midrange orders, 500, 1,000 or 5,000 lot sizes of difficult parts, they’re probably not going to shop the world for that, and that’s been a big part of our success.” Swiss Automation estimated sales of $28 million in 2011—a 32 percent increase compared to 2010.

Most Valuable Resource

Swiss Automation understands that the latest and greatest machine tools are only as good as the people running them. The company has 172 employees, including 56 added last year. “It takes a different work ethic and mentality to be able to run these machines,” said Marc Moran, foreman.

But the workers Swiss Automation hires don’t necessarily need a background in Swiss-style or other types of machining. That’s a good thing considering there are probably not that many experienced machinists looking for work in the area. “So long as they’re mechanically inclined and tinkerers and inventors and thinkers,” Malo said about the qualities the company seeks in new employees. And for the first time, it hired several recent industrial-engineer graduates last year. “They’re quicker thinkers,” he said, noting that recessionary job market was offering only 70 percent of their pre-recessionary pay scale.