Have you ever walked into something expecting to be impressed, but end up being overwhelmed? That is exactly what happened to me when I visited Daman Products, Inc. in Mishawaka, IN. Daman, Machinery Systems and Mazak have had a solid relationship for many years. I always saw Daman as a company never satisfied with their success. Since my last visit, Daman has implemented cell-manufacturing systems more productive than any I have ever seen.

Daman manufacturers hydraulic manifolds primarily in aluminum and steel. I was particularly impressed with one of their "standards" cells. It operates 24 hours, at least five days per week. The people in the cell do everything from ordering their raw material to shipping the finished parts. It operates as a self-contained business unit. Since the cell creates its own demand, it publishes its own schedule, weekly. As the cell ships product from finished inventory, it automatically orders the raw material to replace the shipped parts when minimum order levels are reached. Before the cell was designed, plant work in process was two weeks and the parts traveled 700 feet. Today, a part is in process only five hours and travels just 60 feet. This is a 97% improvement in process flow!

When I visit a company, I always try to understand the heart and soul of their success. I asked Larry Davis, Executive Vice- President of Daman Products, to describe his company in a few words. He said it was "lean and synergistic." It certainly is exactly that. I asked him to describe his main source of pain. He said it is having the patience for his vision to cascade through his organization. I think every visionary shares that same main source of pain. I believe the Daman core competency is that they know how to dissect and reorganize their processes at a level that I have only rarely seen.

The Daman cell organizational structure is a flat matrix. You see the operators moving throughout that cell, crisscrossing and doing many different things. When I asked Tim McIntyre, the cell leader, what he likes most about his cell, he said that he enjoys his role of teacher and mentor. He also felt that he and his team members liked the cell environment most because they control their own destiny; they’re managing their own business.

Larry Davis thought the biggest challenge for Daman management was giving up control to the cell team. Once the vision was established, how long did it take them to design and implement the cell concept?.. about four months. By the way, along with their production schedule comes a weekly preventive maintenance (PM) schedule for all equipment in the cell. Daman has noticed a significant reduction in unscheduled downtime since the implementation of their PM schedule.

As a safety net for their ten CNC Mazaks, Daman has a one person maintenance staff. This person has attended every relevant Mazak maintenance course. His personal goal is to be at the service level of Mazak’s best service technicians. He described a crisis when a spindle went down on one of their horizontals at 6:00 a.m. and by 10:00 p.m. that night a new spindle and main drive were installed and the machine operating. The parts were received from Mazak that same day and installed by Daman.