Posted on Wed, Mar 14, 2012
Milwaukee, March 14, 2012—Vulcan GMS, Inc. (www.vulcangms.com), a supplier of lead shielding products and tungsten radiation shielding, relies on lean techniques for efficient manufacturing. “We have lean initiatives underway at all times,” said Tom Ray, Vulcan’s President. “For example, six months ago our die-cutting department scrambled constantly to keep up with schedule changes. We needed to remove that pressure.”
Plant Manager Joe Galaszewski was tasked with finding a way. “Die-cutting, a critical production step for many parts, was never a bottleneck. Nonetheless, employees were in constant motion responding to fluctuations in demand. For a solution, we turned to process mapping, starting with a clean slate. Since the problem was non-value-added motion, we focused on uncovering the root causes of that,” he said.
Getting raw material was a major source of scrambling, so Vulcan redesigned the work cell to put the six most common material sizes right next to the work cell’s cutter. That resulted in a 77 percent reduction in travel distance and associated travel time.
Getting cutting dies from bins in an adjacent bay was identified as another source of waste. The dies were moved into newly built racks in the cell. That resulted in a 72 percent reduction in travel distance and much less time spent searching for dies, as they were now all right at hand, clearly identified, and positioned for instant retrieval.
Getting required Quality Assurance checks was significantly improved by having the inspector come to the cell. That resulted in a 57 percent reduction in total part travel distance, as the operator and inspector now performed all inspections in the cell.
“By significantly reducing travel in and out of the work cell, we found it took only one operator, not two, to run the die-cutting operation. This freed up a highly cross-trained employee to move wherever there was work in the facility, giving an uptick to overall plant productivity,” Galaszewski said.
Posted on Wed, Feb 15, 2012
Milwaukee, February 15, 2012—Vulcan GMS, Inc. (www.vulcangms.com), a supplier of custom-made lead shielding products, tungsten radiation shielding and non-lead shielding alternatives, trains employees to reject “it-can’t-be-done” attitudes. “Everyone here is expected to contribute to achieving results,” said Tom Ray, the company’s President. “Progress is hard—especially after years of incremental improvements—but that does not mean additional progress cannot be made. It just means we have to work harder to achieve it.”
Quality Manager Steven Imp agrees. “At first, targeting ambitious improvements strikes some people as impossible. This is particularly true after years of efforts produce substantial results. ‘We’ve already done so much. How could we possibly do more?’ is a typical reaction. It is natural tendency to want to rest on our laurels. But that’s a bad strategy. We must continuously set fresh, challenging goals and hold ourselves accountable.”
Plant Manager Daniel Mercado remembers being asked to find a way to cut manufacturing lead-time in his area from 15 to 10 days. Mercado said, “My first reaction was ‘No way!’ The company’s attitude: ‘Find a way.’”
Mercado and his team analyzed the plant looking for ways to boost throughput 33.3 percent. “We couldn’t achieve this goal in bits and pieces. We had to look at the big picture. When we did, we figured out how to do it,” he said.
The solution came in three parts. First, stage all raw material at its point of use. This slashed travel distances 46 percent. Second, conduct another round of Kaizen events for setups at every work center. Setup times dropped 26 percent. Third, cut work-in-process (WIP) inventories through a mix of quality and lean techniques. Result: close to half the WIP was cleared out.
“Six months after kicking off this initiative, we were able to quote 10-, not 15-day, lead times. And we could deliver in that time frame,” Mercado said.
Posted on Wed, Jan 25, 2012
Milwaukee, January 25, 2012—Vulcan GMS, Inc. (www.vulcangms.com), a supplier of custom-made lead shielding products, tungsten products and non-lead shielding alternatives, subcontracts non-core production to achieve the best balance of pricing, production output and profit. “We aim to offer the highest value in radiation protection to the medical- and security-system industries,” said Tom Ray, President of Vulcan GMS. “Subcontracting often adds value. However, if outside prices surge, we ask whether it’s more cost-effective to do the work in-house. When the answer is ‘yes,’ we can protect the pricing customers have based their budgets on.”
Operations Manager David DeJesus said, “The finish machining of non-lead components, prior to lead lining them for certain x-ray protection applications, is one operation we have sometimes outsourced. For a price-sensitive customer facing a subcontractor price hike, we elected to bring the work in-house and made the necessary investments to do so. This decision protected agreed-on pricing. For the customer, it was the right thing to do.”
DeJesus said the opportunity to capture a range of benefits helped Vulcan rationalize its decision: “From the standpoint of productivity, we saw we could cut manufacturing time by eliminating the transportation and queue-and-wait time associated with outsourcing, as well as the cost of the outside supplier. This step significantly reduced total manufacturing time. In addition, we removed the risk of potential disruptions outside our control. From the standpoint of expertise, we know lead. When it comes to handling lead and supplying radiation safety products, we are segment leaders. So the more capability we have to support this core business, the more we strengthen our expertise.”
Commenting on other advantages of bringing specialized finish machining in-house, DeJesus said, “In addition to holding the line on costs, we now have complete control of the manufacturing process, with the entire Vulcan team focused on making improvements. The result is continuous streamlining and simplifying, which gives us even more speed and competitiveness.”
Posted on Wed, Dec 07, 2011
Vulcan GMS, Inc. (www.vulcangms.com), a supplier of custom-made lead products, tungsten products and non-lead shielding alternatives, is adding design and development to the scope of its ISO 9001:2008 registration. “We work closely with customers to develop new radiation protection components for medical and security systems,” said Tom Ray, President of Vulcan GMS. “Because we have been providing engineering support during the early stages of projects for close to 10 years, it makes sense to add the company’s design-engineering capability to our ISO registration.”
According to Vulcan GMS Quality Manager Steve Imp, the company has a long history of demonstrating conformance to ISO quality standards. “Vulcan was the first non-ferrous foundry to earn ISO 9001 registration. We also received our ISO 9001:2008 certificate of registration one year ahead of schedule. So we look forward with confidence to our first audit for the design-and-development module,” he said.
Imp said Vulcan is an established provider of lead lining for medical and security equipment. The company’s experience is especially strong in the area of concurrent-engineering during new product development, as well as during upgrades to mature products. “These are both circumstances in which we can draw on our radiation safety knowledge to help customers achieve the targeted level of x-ray protection.”
Imp added, “In a majority of situations involving lead shielding for new x-ray equipment, our long-term customers simply specify the desired thickness of lead lining for their system and leave it to us to design the optimal solution to meet specifications.”
Projects proceed more smoothly when customers adopt this approach, said Imp: “The sooner we have an opportunity to apply our expertise, the sooner we can identify and eliminate potential problems. The result is a supply-chain process that improves product manufacturability and arrives most quickly at an efficient and affordable configuration.”
About Vulcan GMS
Vulcan Global Manufacturing Solutions is a leader in custom-made radiation shielding products manufactured from lead, tungsten, high-density plastics and non-lead metal polymers. ISO 9001/2008 registered, Vulcan GMS is a provider of components and assemblies for some of the world’s largest equipment makers. The company specializes in the medical, security, aviation and explosives industries.
Posted on Tue, Nov 01, 2011
Milwaukee, November 1, 2011—Vulcan GMS, Inc. (www.vulcangms.com), a supplier of custom-made lead products, has hired Katherine Holewinski to take charge of the company’s customer-service operation. “Hands-on, shop-floor experience managing a manufacturing company, combined with an MBA, gives Katherine the background and training to help Vulcan GMS meet its objective to be the highest value supplier in our industry,” said Tom Ray, the company’s President. “Katherine also has a working style that is having an immediate and positive impact on our employees and the first customers to meet her.”
Commenting on her approach to customer service, Holewinski said, “Customers like to know that when there is a problem, there’s someone in the company they can contact whose job it is to listen, understand and respond. Beyond that, customers like open lines of communication and knowing that they will get fast, honest answers to questions.”
Working with the Vulcan team, Holewinski has begun upgrading the communications policies and practices of the company. The team’s first task is to increase the frequency of job-status reporting, as well as expanding the level of detail the reports contain. “Timely, information-rich reports tend to satisfy most customer concerns about job status,” Holewinski said. “Reports also do double-duty when they are automatically available to the sales force. A sales person is typically the customer’s first point of contact. By updating and posting reports in a timely fashion on the company intranet, the latest information is at everyone’s fingertips, available 24/7 for use with customers.”
Ray added, “As Vulcan strives to accelerate the pace at which we improve our processes, Katherine’s second task will be to give us the full benefit of her 20 years of customer service at three different companies. For example, Katherine’s skill using process mapping techniques to find ways to streamline a company’s overall customer-service effort is already paying dividends at Vulcan.”
Posted on Mon, Oct 31, 2011
Milwaukee, October 31, 2011—Vulcan GMS, Inc. (www.vulcangms.com), a supplier of custom-made lead products, has hired Jay Klubertanz to head up the company’s engineering department. “Jay is a mechanical engineer with extensive manufacturing experience and an M.S. in Engineering Management,” said Tom Ray, President of Vulcan GMS. “A veteran of new-product-development campaigns at many industrial companies, Jay brings critical skills to Vulcan at a time when customer reliance on suppliers for engineering support is rising.”
Ray said that Klubertanz’s experience aligns with what customers are looking for, as well as with the company’s strategy for becoming the highest-value supplier for each of its customers. “Our customers want quotations that are accurate regarding costs, manufacturability and delivery. They also want suppliers that are responsive. Jay has the process knowledge and professionalism to lead the engineering department in meeting those expectations,” he said.
Klubertanz said that the greatest lesson he has learned as an engineer in manufacturing is the value of being proactive in the earliest stages of quoting work or participating in new-product development: “The key is developing an approach to engineering tasks that seeks and finds opportunities for doing things better. Every potential problem you can anticipate and avoid, whether it’s in the process, material or design area, eliminates waste that would otherwise be incurred.”
In order to improve effectiveness in meeting expectations, Vulcan GMS is reorganizing a number of departments, Ray said: “We are in the process of co-locating our sales, estimating and engineering functions in expanded office space at one location. This was done to put everyone with a role in front-end processing in close proximity. Now, just by taking a few steps, all the front-end team members can talk to each other face to face. This change is speeding up communications and building a working environment that makes it easier to have and share good ideas.”
Posted on Wed, Sep 21, 2011
Milwaukee, September 21, 2011—Over a four-year period, Vulcan GMS, Inc. (www.vulcangms.com), a supplier of custom-made lead products, has followed a corrective-action checklist that reduced the cost of poor quality as a percent of sales by 73 percent. “When we fix a problem,” said Tom Ray, President of Vulcan GMS, “we don’t ever want that problem to recur. For this reason, we have trained ourselves to stick to a method that corrects problems the right way, the first time.”
“Working too fast because there is never enough time—but being forced to make time to fix mistakes—is the problem we wanted to eliminate,” said Ray. “To do this, we established a CAPA [Corrective Action/Preventative Action] system designed to make our process as error-free as possible. This is a useful goal, as well as a test of the organization’s ability to develop a critical discipline that delivers high value to customers.”
According to Vulcan’s Quality Manager Steve Imp, “Vulcan focuses ‘binocular vision’ on problems. The team keeps one eye focused on the big picture, the other on the smallest details in every corrective-action process. The big picture is behaviors and procedures that add value for customers and Vulcan, such as overall speed and low scrap. The small picture is all the details that get in the way of doing that. You’ve got to keep an eye on both.”
Managers will not listen to solution ideas until the corrective-action team demonstrates that all factors contributing to the problem have been identified and evaluated. “If you rush problem solving, you are likely to overlook details that will return you to square one,” said Imp. “We must always focus on finding the actual, as opposed to the apparent, root cause.”
After four years using this checklist, Vulcan employees have made the principles behind “binocular vision” second nature. A copy of Vulcan’s “8 Keys to Solving Problems Permanently” is available for downloading on the company’s website. Click here
Posted on Wed, Aug 17, 2011
Milwaukee, August 17, 2011—During the first quarter of 2011, Vulcan GMS, Inc. (www.vulcangms.com), a supplier of custom-made lead products, experienced pressure for faster delivery from radiation shielding customers. “Manufacturing time at Vulcan is among the fastest in our segment,” said Tom Ray, President of Vulcan GMS. “So we had to look elsewhere to increase responsiveness. After assembling a multi-disciplinary team, we attacked the problem by applying a technique we developed for our quality system.”
“The technique is quite simple,” said Vulcan’s Materials Manager Curt McAteer. “Set an outsized goal, in this case acknowledging customer orders within 24 hours, and then eliminate or correct everything that gets in the way of that goal.”
The good news was Vulcan uncovered a major improvement opportunity. McAteer said, “It existed in the window of time between receipt of an order and the moment that order could be officially acknowledged. “For many reasons, the front-end process was taking five to 10 days between order receipt and acknowledgement. But that much time was needed only if we wanted to cling to suboptimal practices. It was clear we had to close that window,” he said.
The bad news was eliminating suboptimal practices would involve reorganization, relocation of personnel, revamping of procedures, policies and paperwork, plus a mindset change regarding how managers and employees involved in the front-end process would do their jobs.
“To meet the goal of delivering the highest possible value to customers, we had to go beyond delivering a quality part at a good price. We had to move work faster than we ever had before,” said McAteer.
After three months, Vulcan cut front-end processing time in half. McAteer has put together a checklist of the specific steps Vulcan took to address customer demand for shorter cycle times. A copy of the checklist, “Vulcan’s 5 Steps to One-Day Order Entry” is available for downloading on the company’s website. (Click here.)
Posted on Wed, Jul 13, 2011
Milwaukee, July 13, 2011—Vulcan GMS, Inc. (www.vulcangms.com), a supplier of custom-made lead products, has published a six-point checklist describing ways to reduce the cost of purchasing radiation shielding. “The first way to get significant savings is to specify a lead alloy,” said Tom Ray, President of Vulcan GMS. “By a wide margin, lead delivers the best balance of low cost, high performance and material workability. No other material even comes close.”
Ray said safety concerns about lead present few challenges to organizations with deep expertise in handling, processing, safely encapsulating and recycling lead materials. “Non-experts may have problems. Experts don’t.”
“The second way to save on x-ray protection components is to avoid over-designing,” said Ray. “This is an area that may require a shift in thinking in a customer’s engineering department. Design engineers who spend a limited amount of time working on components for lead shielding sometimes resolve complicated design issues by over-engineering. This can be a decision that adds unnecessary cost to the final product. Over-engineering translates into increased raw material, transportation and installation expenses as well as longer manufacturing time. Subsequent maintenance and repair costs can also be unfavorably affected by poorly designed parts.”
According to Ray, customers seeking the highest value stop after identifying the radiation levels and the area where the x-ray shielding must be placed, leaving the design of the shielding products to Vulcan. “We know the science, industry standards and government regulations surrounding lead and radiation-protection products, so we can provide an optimal manufacturing solution. Once radiation safety is achieved, an over-engineered part adds no extra margin of safety, only extra cost.”
Vulcan’s checklist “Six Ways to Save When Buying Radiation Protection Components” is available for downloading on the company’s website. (Click here.)
Posted on Wed, Jun 22, 2011
Milwaukee, June 22, 2011—Vulcan GMS, Inc. (www.vulcangms.com), a supplier of custom-made radiation protection and lead products, today reported that the company’s extrusion department has produced an average of 120 tons of parts per month in 2011—a 96 percent higher rate than the same period last year. It is also a higher rate than any time in the company’s history. “Because we reward employees for thinking like entrepreneurs, we capture work we might otherwise lose, especially when we get busier, as we have in 2011,” said Tom Ray, President of Vulcan GMS. Ray points to a customer that wanted more competitive pricing and planned to split the business among multiple suppliers to achieve that goal.
According to Director of Operations David DeJesus, “This situation was a challenge. The customer supplies the raw material, so our pricing is based only on machine time and labor. We had to show we could provide the highest value.”
Extrusion operators and process engineers sought ways to cut the cost of lead extrusions. The proposed solution the company acted on came from the operators, who suggested increasing the extrusion rate until the material neared its melting point. The faster rate freed up an operator, who moved to an area where overtime was high. Recalculating costs after reengineering the process enabled Vulcan to offer more competitive pricing.
“Process owners know ways to raise productivity, but this in itself does not guarantee breakthroughs,” said DeJesus. “It is the willingness of employees to think like business owners that makes the real difference. At some companies, employees stretch out work in the mistaken belief that means the work will always be there. Just the opposite is true. Our employees know being more productive makes us more competitive. It lets us keep offering customers better value. Employees know this to be true because they see the results of this approach in their profit-sharing checks.”
About Vulcan GMS
Vulcan Global Manufacturing Solutions is a leader in the manufacture of custom-made radiation shielding products made from lead, tungsten, high-density plastics and non-lead metal polymers. ISO 9001/2008 registered, Vulcan GMS is a provider of components and assemblies for some of the world’s largest equipment companies. The company specializes in the medical, security, aviation and explosives industries.