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 Developing
Partnerships
A crucial
component to condensed product development and manufacture is "partnering"
between the customer and Hobbs. This is accomplished by maintaining
routine personal and electronic contact within the developmental
team. The "customer/supplier" relationship must become more of an
integrated team effort for the whole process to flow smoothly and
on schedule. File transfers of solid models and CAD data via the
internet, EDI and personal contact plus appropriate design review
meetings help keep projects on schedule. With this approach, you
truly achieve concurrent engineering. It is in the early stages
of 3D solid modeling where design and manufacturing engineers can
quickly assemble numerous virtual prototypes for examination. Potential
failure modes can be identified by Failure Mode Engineering Analysis.
Both partners can actually see the final product on the computer
allowing them to evaluate tolerancing and fit. Problems can be analyzed
and alternatives can be determined early in the design process.
These technological advances enhance and strengthen the customer/supplier
development effort saving all entities time and money so a superior
product can be introduced on time and within budget.
Evolving From Lean
Producer to a Lean Enterprise
Hobbs' embraced a Lean Manufacturing philosophy in the mid-1990s
and is beginning to institute lean thinking in our support operations
with the goal of establishing a true Lean Enterprise Business System.
This includes ensuring products are designed for manufacturability
with standardized processes that provide consistent quality and
delivery. The organizational approach for achieving the lean concepts
are to establish quality concepts and practices focused on achieving
Six Sigma results, thereby promoting a company culture that is quality
conscious and creating an environment that is focused on ensuring
that manufacturing processes are stable and predictable. A lean
enterprise reacts faster and more efficiently. New designs in as
little as 6 months, 100% delivery to JIT windows, a Six Sigma Quality
level are the goals by which we plan to operate. The rewards you
reap are price stability, faster responsiveness, flexibility of
purchase order changes, concurrent engineering, direct links between
clients' scheduling and manufacturing, and lead time (order-to-delivery)
reductions.
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The
benefit to customers is having a prototype part for evaluation that
serves as an important visual communication tool. Also a mold flow
analysis can be completed on these models to indicate possible problems
in the molding process before the mold is designed. This analysis
is a big advantage for deciding the placement of the injection gate,
rib and radii locations. The solid models, customer drawings and engineering
data can be shared in real time speeding up the whole design process.
Contact Hobbs if you have an application that can support the development
of a custom component.