February 2021 Volume 3

AUTOMATION

Reasons for Automation Manufacturers of all sorts have had to deal with the skilled labor shortage for years. “Automation is definitely needed now,” said Ron Bochat, sales engineer for Innovo Corp. “The workforce just isn’t there.” The era in which a young man worked in a factory six long days a week to support a wife and children aren’t gone completely, but other career choices, many that are less arduous, have sapped the labor force available to manufacturers. Dealing with the worker shortage is especially daunting considering the sheer volume of manufactured goods that are made and sold in the U.S., which has the third largest population in the world and the seventh highest per-capita income. Relative to most of the rest of the world, the U.S. is a large and wealthy country, one with a nearly insatiable appetite for manufactured goods. “When you look at all the products available in the big box stores, you realize how badly the manufacturers need suppliers that make vast amounts of intermediate goods to keep up with demand,” Bochat said. “A fabricator often needs automation to keep up with the demands of an OEM customer,” agreed Matt Phillips, automation president for Tooling Technology Group. Speed is the key in nearly every industry, but especially automotive, one of the company’s primary markets. Depending on the industry, automation helps to deal with two simultaneous trends that work against fabricators: rising demand and falling profitability. “In the automotive supply chain, suppliers are always squeezed to get more for less,” Phillips said. “You can drive down raw material costs only so far. Then it’s a matter of faster production with fewer defects to drive out excess cost.” Finally, automation can help combat two of the main issues regarding manual work. “If a manually produced component or an assembly is complicated, quality can vary quite a bit,” Phillips said. “It depends on what’s on the operator’s mind that day. If a part is simple and repetitive, it’s a good candidate for manual processing, because the operator can master it. The downside is that this can lead to repetitive stress injuries.” ■

diagnostics. Similar concepts are already in use by fabricating equipment manufacturer TRUMPF in its Smart Factory, a showcase of connected technology for metal fabrication in Hoffman Estates, Ill. Extensive use of Industry 4.0 technology assists uninterrupted production—automatically guided vehicles bring raw materials to machines when they are running low, and RFID technology allows the company’s system to track the progress of every bin or cart of raw material or work in process as it makes its way through the factory. Better still, any customer with access to WiFi can log in from anywhere in the world to track an order. Industry 4.0 can be an integral part of automation, but an automated system doesn’t require Industry 4.0 capability to be successful. A system can run just fine without the ability to digitize reams of data. That said, designing machines that are ready for Industry 4.0 integration isn’t a bad idea. The key is to include an application programming interface (API) in the system’s design and construction. “We don’t ship anything without an API these days.” Stokes said. Job Killer or Job Saver? Equipment builder T-Drill Industries Inc., Norcross, Ga., has been making great strides in automating its collaring and cutting machines. Built to form collars in copper pipe for making manifold systems, its machines traditionally were manually loaded and operated. When a mechanical contractor approached the company about a programmable and automated system, T-Drill readily invested countless hours in developing a system with substantial capabilities. Fed information from CSV files, it cuts pipes to length, applies QR labels, and uses a diverter table to segregate the parts into various bins. An operator uses a hand-held unit to read the QR labels for subsequent processing. “On the day the machine was set up in the shop, one of the workers put a banner that said ‘Job Killer 5000’ above the machine,” said Applications Engineer Carroll Stokes. That didn’t last long. When the workers realized they’d no longer have to go through stacks of part prints, use a tape measure to mark pipe lengths, use a chop saw to make the cuts, run the collaring machine manually, and apply labels by hand to the pipes, the view of the machine changed dramatically. Making parts in the shop faster than before—six times faster than before—meant they would spend proportionally more time doing the work they were trained to do, installing plumbing systems in the field. Several months later, the company implemented a plan to move to a new building. A T-Drill team decommissioned the machine and prepared to move it to the new location, but the company hit a snag that took several weeks to resolve. According to Stokes, many of the workers took an extremely keen interest in knowing when the machine would be up and running again. It was apparent that they didn’t want to do their jobs without the machine formerly known as a job killer.

Eric Lundin, Senior Editor FMA Communications Inc. 2135 Point Blvd, Elgin, IL 60123 Phone: 815-227-8262 Email: ericl@thefabricator.com

This article first appeared December 15, 2020 in THE TUBE&PIPE JOURNAL on www.thefabricator.com. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved by FMAC.

FIA MAGAZINE | FEBRUARY 2021 23