September 2006 News Archives

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FNA Day 1: Great Turnout, Great Event

(September 28) - The first day of Furnaces North America was deemed a success by almost everyone we spoke with. Guesstimates are about 1,100 people at the conference with strong technical talks and good traffic through the show. The day ended with not one but two sponsored receptions each with excellent food. Below are a few random snapshots from one of the receptions held just before the evening's highlight, a comedy show sponsored by California Brazing and Nevada Heat Treat.

Some people claim that heat treat is dominated by old guys, but Luis, Rachel and Robert from Steeltech seem out to prove that idea wrong:

Next we have Andy (IHEA) and John and Jim (Eurotherm)

Bob (Chrysler) and Yvonne (MMI) having a good time

And finally our lead sponsor for the evening's receptions, Doug and his wife Mary

Furnaces North America Set-Up Shots

(September 27) - Today was the day for exhibitors to set up their booths for Furnaces North America. We understand that there were quite a few air travel snafus so that the setting up may be going on well into the night. To give you a taste of the exhibit floor, here are a few shots...the first is of the Reno Event Center where the show is taking place (down the street from the host hotel, by the way):

The second shot is just inside the center and shows the entry-way into the show. That's David Pye - heat treat guru - in the foreground. Turns out David and MTI have just put together a nice set of online training videos for heat treaters.

Our third shot is just a shot of the show floor during set-up:

After walking the floor we have to say that VFS took great advantage of their corner location to produce a great booth:

Finally a shot of the Aichelin booth. Austrian-based Aichelin, while not dominant in North America, is one of the "big three" of atmosphere furnaces in China and a big player in Europe:

See You at Furnaces North America!

(September 26) - Time to pack the bags and head for Reno, Nevada for this years biggest US heat treat show, Furnace North America.

Stokes Steel Treating Fire

(September 26) - We missed this one last month, but it appears that Stokes Steel Treating (Flint, Michigan) had a pretty major fire losing 5 batch lines. For a photo click here. Stokes is a 50+ year old family business and the $1 million plus in damages has had some serious impact. At this point it looks like they'll rebuild. Fatman from our forums first broke the story here.

Conrad Kacsik / MSI System at Bodycote Cleveland

(September 25 - midday update) - We just received a few photographs of a new control system installed by Conrad Kacsik at Bodycote's Cleveland plant. The slick thing is that they're doing carbon control, using Marathon's sensors and instruments, in a rotary with a ten foot (yes, 10') sample tube. No details on the sampling system other than it was able to quickly diagnose a problem with the muffle. Here are the shots...

First the unique sampling system pulls a sample from 10' within the rotary furnace:

The sample then runs to a Marathon Piccolo probe:

And then the furnace is controlled using a single-loop controller:

Bodycote's "First Foray" into China? Try Third

(September 25) - One of the 'net's gossip sites has some nice shots from Bodycote's new facility in China up today. There is one significant error in their report, however, in that it says this operation is Bodycote's "first foray" into the Chinese market.

For those who don't know, this recent effort by Bodycote to gain a foothold in China is actually Bodycote's third foray into that market. The other two efforts were not successful, however, they were also not "wholly foreign owned enterprises" (WFOEs).

Like many western companies, Bodycote did not have the best results when working with partnering arrangements (joint ventures and the like). We've read a lot on the subject and our understanding is that the WFOE route is the way to go.

With Bodycote at the helm, we're confident that this newest effort is going to take the Chinese market by storm!

Friday Outage

(September 25) - For those of you who tried to connect but couldn't last Friday it turns out that our web hosting service, NTT-Verio, was the victim of power-outages that outlasted their backup generators. Sorry about that! Anyway, we're back on-line this week.

The Lean "Way Forward" at Ford

(September 21) - Jim Womack is a top-level expert on lean manufacturing and the author of Lean Thinking. The folks at TechSolve - a leading company in the implementation of Lean methods - work with many of our readers and get lots of input from them on how to keep their operations lean. TechSolve recently circulated an email from Womack analyzing Ford's history and their current situation and it's both insightful and useful. Definitely worth a read for business owners and managers. It's very long, but good stuff:

I’ve been reflecting on today’s remarkable headlines about the latest retreat by the Ford Motor Company as part of its “Way Forward” campaign. While reflecting, I have found it useful to think about the history of lean thinking at Ford, going back nearly 100 years. I believe it offers many useful lessons for our current-day lean journey and Ford’s immediate choices. 

The historical record is clear. Henry Ford was the world’s first systematic lean thinker. His mind naturally focused on the value creation process rather than assets or organizations. And he was the first to see in his mind’s eye the flow of value from start to finish, from concept to launch and from raw material to customer. In addition, Ford was history’s most ferocious enemy of waste. (Except, possibly, Taiichi Ohno at Toyota who claimed that he learned what to do from reading Henry Ford’s books.)

 Ford relentlessly emphasized the need to analyze every step in every process to see if it created value before finding a way to do it better. Otherwise the step should be eliminated. (This was Ford’s greatest criticism of Fredrick Taylor and Scientific Management. Why, asked Ford, was Taylor obsessed with getting people to work harder and more efficiently to do things that actually didn’t need to be done if the work was organized in the right sequence and location?) Then, when the wasteful steps had been eliminated, it was time to put the rest in continuous flow.

 By 1914 at his Highland Park plant Ford had located most of the manufacturing steps for his product – the Model T – in one building and had created very nearly continuous flow in many parts of the operation, using single-piece-flow fabrication cells for components in addition to the moving final assembly line. He had even devised a very primitive pull system by using “shortage chasers” on timed routes along the assembly line to check inventories at every assembly point and convey the information back to the fabrication areas. This speeded up upstream processes that had fallen behind and slowed down those that were getting ahead.

 Equally remarkable, Ford had designed his Model T in only three months in one large room with a small group of engineers under his direct oversight. This surely was a high point in lean practice for decades to come.

 Then it gradually fell apart. Ford’s span of management control at Highland Park had been remarkably broad because he could easily take a walk to see the condition of every process, in design, assembly, and fabrication. And he could train a cohort of managers to see what he was seeing and remove more waste. No abstract measures of performance were needed.

 However, as the company grew Ford’s personal management method became impractical. But what to replace it with? Ford himself seems not to have had an answer except to link every step by conveyors – as he attempted to do at the massive Rouge complex completed in the late 1920s. By the 1930s the whole Ford Motor Company was in a sense one linked process. (Ohno, of course, realized that lengthy conveyors governed by a central schedule are a push not a pull system, but this was much later.) Did this mean that in the founder’s mind that the company needed only one manager -- Ford himself -- even as it became the world’s largest industrial enterprise?

 In any case, the system came crashing down in the 1930s as Ford tried to produce multiple products with multiple options in wildly gyrating markets. Only the staggering cash reserves from retained profits during the Model T era kept the company going until Henry Ford II was able to take over in 1945.

 But what management system should he impose on the chaos? Henry Ford II read Peter Drucker’s 1946 classic, The Concept of the Corporation, praising the General Motors management system and quickly remade Ford in the image of GM.

 What a different system it was! Henry Ford had managed by going to the gemba to inspect the value creation process. General Motors executives managed by analyzing financial abstractions. For example, asset utilization (normalized for sales volume), days of inventory, cost of scrap, etc. in the factory. Available engineering hours utilized in product design. Managers were then rewarded for making numerical targets using methods developed by staff experts that managers rarely understood. A good way to make many of these numbers was to make products in large batches in order to achieve high asset utilization and low cost per individual step. The total value creation process from end to end -- which had been so clear to Henry Ford -- was gradually lost from view.

 Soon Ford executives using the financial measures developed by finance czar J. Edward Lundy were even more rigorous in analyzing the performance of their area of control than GM executives. Robert McNamara and the Whiz Kids were the exemplars. And Ford did regain competitiveness as a GM clone, claiming a stable second place in the auto industry.

 In addition, by the late 1940s Ford was one of three U.S. auto companies using the same management system in the same town with the same union. With high investment barriers to entry, a remarkable era of stability was put place, lasting nearly forty years until the transplant Japanese factories succeeded in the U.S. in the later 1980s.

 When it suddenly became apparent at that point that the leading Japanese companies -- Toyota followed by Honda -- were using a different management system, it was very hard for Ford to respond.

 In the late 1980s, as Dan Jones, Dan Roos, and I wrote The Machine That Changed the World, we were able to document that Ford had applied a number of lean techniques in its assembly operations and was making dramatic progress in manufacturing productivity. We took this to mean that at least one American company was applying lean principles and with good results.

 What we couldn’t report, because we had no way to measure it, was the status of the management system. And this was largely unchanged. Ford managers were still manipulating abstractions because the gemba consciousness of the early Ford Motor Company had been lost. Even worse, in the product development and supplier management processes, no change had occurred at all.

 But Ford could still be successful in its home market for another 20 years by developing large pickups and SUVs. These were essentially America-only vehicles, suited to wide roads and low energy prices. They could only be challenged by Toyota and its Japanese emulators if they were willing to design vehicles specifically for the U.S. market and to locate production in  North America.

 In 1997 I got a call from Jac Nasser, who had just taken over Ford’s North American Automotive Operations on his way to becoming CEO of Ford. He matter-of-factly told me that Ford’s Explorer and F100 pickup series were the only Ford products that made serious money and that he calculated that he had four years to become as efficient and effective as Toyota. Otherwise, the large pickups and SUVs would be copied by foreign firms at lower cost with higher quality and Ford would be in terminal decline. “So,” he asked, “how can Ford become Toyota in four years?”

 We sat down to talk over just what this would mean -- dramatically changing the supplier management system, dramatically changing the product development system, dramatically changing the production management system, dramatically changing what managers do -- and he quickly concluded that it was just too hard. So he changed the management metrics, purged the poorest managers according to the metrics, and experimented with selling cars on the web! I was not asked back and had no desire to go back.

 Ford actually survived for five years beyond Nasser’s projected meltdown date – although Nasser didn’t as CEO -- to arrive at its current crisis. But my prescription for new Ford CEO Alan Mulally is the same: Fundamentally rethink the supplier management system. Fundamentally rethink the product development system. And fundamentally rethink the production system from order to raw materials and from raw materials to delivery, with special attention to the information management system. (Much can still be learned from Ford’s Mazda subsidiary, which became an able pupil of Toyota after a crisis in 1973.) Above all, fundamentally rethink what mangers do and how they do it in order to regain the gemba consciousness that originally took Ford to world dominance. In brief, Ford needs to remake itself once more, this time in the image of the company that copied Ford’s original system: Toyota.

 In addition, finish rethinking the social contract as Ford becomes a normal company (not an oligopolist) in a normal town (where labor doesn’t come from one supplier) that must live in a global market. Finally, rethink brand strategy to get rid of hopeless makes that can never make money – Mercury, Jaguar, Lincoln too? -- while refocusing the remaining brands on what customers really want -- sophisticated, hassle-free transportation in every price range. (A hint: Rethink the vast gap between the company and the customer to provide hassle-free mobility on a continuing basis to user-partners rather than selling cars to strangers in one-time transactions.)

 Who knows whether this is doable in the time still available but it is the lean way forward. It will be tragic if the originator of lean thinking is crushed in the end by failing to learn lean lessons from its most earnest pupil.

Jim Womack

Chairman and CEO

Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI)

Feel free to forward this message to suppliers, customers, or colleagues who are implementing lean - or should be.

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Thailand News

(September 20 - midday update) - The big news on the international front is the military coup in Thailand. A number of people are wondering how this will affect the Thai economy and, in particular, heat treating in Thailand. For those who don't know the Thai heat treat market has been booming for several years with large investments from Japan (Toyota, Tohken) and Europe.

We spoke at length with our associates in Thailand (whose names we won't use just yet for obvious reasons) and the impact is not actually expected to be that substantial. The reason is the foreign investment into Thailand dried up a number of months back and the Thai economy was already "in the dumps" as a result. Controversy around the Thai Prime Minister and implications and accusations of major corruption on his part had already scared companies away. Many believe that the Prime Minister had passed legislation to benefit his own interests and awarded major government contracts to his family members.

The general feeling in Thailand is that, so long as the generals running the country follow the guidance of the King, all will be well. The King is extremely popular among Thais so allegiance to him is key. The other fear is that the now-former Prime Minister finds a way to get back into the country and rallies generals loyal to him.

Hopefully there will be a quick resolution and a new, democratic government soon.

Bodycote and Dynamet form Alliance

(September 20) - Yesterday's news email blast from Industrial Heating covered an alliance between Bodycote and Dynamet Technology, Inc. You can read the full announcement here.

More Marathon

(September 20) - Here are a couple more shots from Marathon's annual Sales meeting. The first is of Bloom Engineering's Tony Fennell talking about combustion control in steel reheat furnaces:

Today's second shot is of Marathon's annual Partner Awards Dinner held at Cincinnati's famous "Iron Horse Inn." We're told the food was top notch:

Finally, we have a shot of Yvonne Spooner (MSI) and Tiecheng Liu (MMI-China) "reviewing training materials" with Marathon's "heat treat hounds," Oso and Ursa:

Marathon's Annual Sales Meeting

(September 19) - Marathon seems pleased with their annual Sales and Partner Training Meeting:

This week is Marathon Sensors' annual sales meeting. Outside speakers include Rolled Alloys, Conrad Kacsik, Bloom Engineering and ACSI. Attending the meeting are partners and customers from China, Taiwan, Spain, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Venezuela and throughout the United States.

VFS Order from Xi’an Aero Engine

(September 19) - VFS is crowing about a new order in China where they have very strong representation from Beijing Waves Corp. It is interesting to note that VFS is now referring to their company as "VFS, an Ipsen company". We understand from our sources that this change seems to address complaints from former VFS employees that VFS/Ipsen tended to compete with each other even though they were always "on the same side." Probably not uncommon in larger conglomerates that own competitors, but it can't hurt to stop competing with yourself, right? Anyway, great order for VFS:

"SOUDERTON, PA (Sept 18, 2006) – Vacuum Furnace Systems (VFS) Corporation reports the sale of two vacuum furnaces to Xi’an Aero Engine (XAE) in Xi’an China. These are the third and fourth VFS furnaces purchased by XAE and will be delivered in early 2007.The new systems are Horizontal Internal Quench furnaces including a 2 bar quench, molybdenum heating elements, VFS’s exclusive CompuVac supervisory control system and a TruLock autoclave door. Vice president of XAE manufacturing, Mr. Li said, “Our placing of two more furnace orders with VFS for these important projects demonstrates our confidence in VFS’s performance, in their advanced CompuVac controls technology, and in their excellent service and aftermarket responsiveness.” VFS designs and manufactures high performance vacuum furnaces for a variety of thermal processing applications in the metal treating and brazing technologies. VFS also provides advanced supervisory furnace controls, application assistance and installation, start-up and aftermarket support services."

Ethernet for MMI / MSI Instruments - Old and New

(September 14) - The folks at Marathon have jumped on the Ethernet bandwagon by releasing a unit that lets users connect all older and new MMI/MSI instruments to their Corporate Ethernet. It even lets old version of SCADA software (like old version of ProcessMaster) talk to instruments over ethernet. Here's the PR:

Cincinnati, OH - Marathon Sensors Inc. announces the availability of Ethernet connectivity for all current and legacy instrumentation. With this new capability any existing installation can be made fully compatible with Ethernet networking and the most modern data acquisition and supervisory systems.

Marathon's new MMInet hub allows users to seamlessly interface multiple instruments to industry-standard IP addresses. These instruments can then be accessed over a virtual serial port on a control computer using a simple driver. Up to 15 MMI-protocol instruments or 247 Modbus instruments can be attached to a single MMInet hub.

"Plant managers and Maintenance managers need to be able to access their equipment from wherever they are and now they can access even legacy Marathon instrumentation for a very low cost," says Yvonne Spooner, Vice President of Marathon Sensors. "It is important to service and update legacy equipment as Marathon products last so long and remain reliable for longer than most people own their cars! This is just one more reason to come to us for your heat treatment needs."

MMInet is simple to install - simply assign IP addresses and wire your RS-485 connections to the hub. The hub is then connected to your LAN and addressed by your SCADA system using a virtual serial port driver that makes the networked instruments appear to be on a local serial port. This means even legacy software systems can now be made Ethernet capable. Contact Marathon for installation and promotional details. 

 

Items For Sale in the Forum

(September 13) - There are quite a few new items for sale in the forums these past couple days. Ken Hinckley is selling a hydraulic press, Lindberg charge car, wheelabrator and sand blast cabinet while someone who goes by "spiro" is selling brazing furnaces and some other gear over here.

Downward Pressure on Gas Prices Continues

(September 12) - Today's Industrial Heating email news blast mentions a ramp up of gas production by Air Products at its Pryor, Oklahoma facility. What's interesting is that Air Products says this will allow its customers to "significantly increase production of natural gas." This looks like a win-win for heat treaters with industrial gas supplies increasing right along with natural gas supplies. With natural gas down to under $5.80/MMBTU it's looking like it could go even lower. If you watch our daily-updated graphs Nickel is also dropping (though still at all-time highs). Perhaps a return to better margins is coming for heat treaters.

Today is Patriot Day - Remembering What Happened Five Years Ago Today

(September 11) - Today the US and the world remember the events that changed all of us five years ago today. Today has been declared Patriot Day in the US with all flags to be flown at half-staff.

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/09/11/bush.memorials/index.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5333646.stm

New "Cool Plus" Process from Schmetz

(September 11) - BMI-Fours is crowing about their sister company's new cold treatment system the "Cool Plus" here's their PR:

The *COOL PLUS* process developed and patented by our sister company SCHMETZ is available as an option on the whole range of BMI hardening and tempering furnaces (www.bmi-fours.com).  

This “sub-zero” treatment process, particularly suitable for treating stainless steels, high-speed steels and tooling, comes between the hardening and tempering cycles.  

The cold treatment is carried out at the end of the hardening cycle and offers several advantages. *COOL PLUS* reduces the residual austenite content while increasing the hardness and dimensional stability of the processed parts, which also retain an exceptional shine. 

Apart from the good results, because of the increased hardness at the end of hardening and the “sub-zero” treatment, the *COOL PLUS* process among other things permits a reduction in tempering cycle times and so costs, hence increasing competitiveness.  

This process is characterised by an injection of liquid nitrogen at -185°C. Once injected into the heating zone, the nitrogen changes phase and becomes gaseous.  

Vaporisation leads to a considerable increase of the volume of the nitrogen (x700) which is brought in a constant and homogeneous manner into contact with the parts to be treated.

With regard to customers’ inherent needs and the different types of trades we encounter, the temperatures required and observed on the surface generally vary between -60°C and -150°C. 

This totally automated and controlled process (thermocouples) is fully reproducible.  As an example, thanks to *COOL PLUS* a type X20Cr13 steel hardened at 1035°C and reduced to -100°C, at the end of a tempering cycle at 150°C, will have a hardness of 690 HV as opposed to 640 HV without “sub-zero” treatment. 

For more information, write to us at infos@bmi-fours.com, stating: COOL PLUS/infos in the subject line. 

Two Orders for SMS Meer

(September 7) - Industrial Heating is reporting that SMS Meer has received orders from both Steel Dynamics' Structural Rail Division and Indian Seamless Metal Tubes. Read the full release here.

Another Very Nice Order for Solar

(September 6) - LSomeone once told me that if I were interested in where vacuum was heading to just 'watch Bill Jones' Solar Manufacturing'. And is sure looks like that someone knew what he was talking about:

"Souderton, PA. Solar Manufacturing announces the receipt of a contract to build up to four large vacuum brazing furnaces for an HVAC component manufacturer located in Northeastern USA. The contract value is in excess of several million US dollars. The first two furnaces are set for delivery in the spring of 2007 with the second two furnaces to be released as scheduled by the customer.

Each of the new Model HFL-7472-2EQ’s high vacuum pumping systems will include 20" Varian diffusion pumps to allow the furnaces to operate in the 10-5 Torr range. These furnaces will feature a high efficiency, graphite insulated hot zone consisting of 2" thick high grade graphite felt with a hot face of FlexShield. The maximum operating temperature will be 2500ºF. The furnaces will have a work load capacity of 5,000 pounds. Thin, curved graphite heating elements will heat work loads rapidly and uniformly.

The improved 2-bar external gas quench system will consists of a 150 HP motor, a Robinson radial fan wheel, diffuser and a variable speed drive to allow precise control of the quench. Improved, large diameter, tapered graphite gas nozzles will focus quench gas directly on the work load for optimum cooling.

Also featured on each furnace will be the SolarVac 3000, an advanced control system developed by Solar Manufacturing to monitor, control, and display information graphically to enable an operator to quickly understand the status of the furnace. The SolarVac 3000 consists of an interactive, Allen-Bradley PanelView operator interface utilizing a 15" color touch screen combined with a Eurotherm Graphic Data Acquisition Video Recorder and an Allen-Bradley programmable logic controller."

Ford CEO Steps Down. Boeing Exec Steps Up

(September 6) - Long-time CEO and Ford namesake, Bill Ford (great-grandson of Henry Ford), has stepped down as CEO of the ailing US automaker and has been replaced by Alan Mulally who has headed Boeing's commercial airplane unit. Ford will stay on as Chairman. This comes only a day after Ford first mentioned he might step down. Analysts have speculated that Ford wanted help to push ahead with restructuring the company.

Nathan and Kyle Hook Up

(September 5) - The big "news" on Gord's blog today is that Kyle Favors and Nathan Wright are teaming up to form some sort of alliance between their calibration and service companies. For those who don't know, Nathan's company is Tru-Cal and has a presence in the Midwest whereas Kyle's company is called Heat Treating Services Unlimited and has its primary presence in the Southeastern US.

The interesting thing is why this is news at all since the two companies ran a joint advertisement in Industrial Heating's annual Buyer's Guide about two months back. My guess is that the ad didn't generate the buzz they wanted.

As to why they would need an "alliance," there is one particular company that competes strongly with both Nathan's company and Kyle's company and that's Conrad-Kacsik Instrument Systems. We know the folks at Conrad-Kacsik are having a strong year so that might be the driving force behind this "alliance." Conrad-Kacsik has a presence throughout the US.

Process-Electronic & Hansen Transmissions

(September 5) - Looks like Process-Electronic (Nitrex sister company) has won a nice new order:

"Process-Electronic GmbH.(www.process-electronic.com) supplied Hansen Transmissions with new furnace controls and a plant floor automation upgrade for its gearbox manufacturing and assembly plant in Edegem, Belgium. The order includes a Protherm 300 controller for automatic process control of a new carburizing pit furnace and its implementation into the existing Protherm 9000 plant supervision and automation framework. This is the 12th furnace integrated in recent years to the company’s totally automated production site for treating heavy gears. At the same time, the Protherm 9000 was upgraded with a hot standby system to provide fail-safe back-up protection if the primary production server fails. In anticipation of such a failure, the system will automatically switchover to a redundant server, circumventing potential disruptions and costly production downtime. Protherm 9000 employs a scalable structure, which can accommodate an increase in the number of heat treating equipment that Hansen Transmissions adds to its network."

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