by Joe Romanowski
Chairman & CEO
Machinery Systems, Inc.

Imagine this!  You are a manufacturing engineer and you were assigned the task of significantly improving the throughput of several parts critical to the success of your company.  You worked very hard and were able to improve the lead time from 15.5 months to 2 months on one of the parts and from 18.7 months to 2.5 months on the other.  You reduced the first part operations from 38 to 2, and the second part operations 41  to 2.  Would you feel pretty good?  I think so!  What I described was not some fantasy or a slick sales presentation.  Northstar Aerospace (www.nsaero.com) in Bedford Park (Chicago), IL has accomplished these incredible productivity improvements on their drive shaft products for military rotorcraft (helicopters). 

Tom Pahlas (video link) the Manufacturing Engineer responsible for these quantum leap results explained, “Scheduling used to be a nightmare for these parts.  With all the operations required and the machines to do these operations scattered throughout the plant, we were always moving the parts around.  Wait time was a huge issue.  The Mazak Integrex e-650H allowed us to slash five months of wait time from each process.” 

I asked Tom what Northstar Aerospace did that was special or different in the rotorcraft drive shaft industry.  Without hesitation, he replied, “We are the only company in the world certified in the Vasco Heat Treat process, and we are one of only a few companies in the world certified to heat treat other aerospace specialty materials.  We also have decades of experience in manufacturing aerospace gears and drive systems.”

Northstar is a union seniority based environment.  I know from experience that  it can be extremely difficult to introduce a culture changing multi-tasking machine like an Integrex in a union environment.  It automatically implies “labor reduction.”  I asked Tom, “How did you do it at Northstar?”  He responded, “The workforce was in my corner, as a team we developed a process that is sustainable.”  I then asked, How did you get them in your corner?  He answered, “We assured them that no one would lose their job, and I told them that if we don’t do this, we just won’t have jobs”.  I was lucky too, some great guys bid for this cell.”

Tom is a classic champion.  He has a warm, engaging personality, he obviously  works well with people, is a phenomenal process engineer, innovative and willing to work very hard.  I asked him to describe his role in the Integrex implementation.  He said matter of factly, not boasting at all, “I gave my life up for this — 20 hours a day. I like to tackle projects that nobody else has been able to do.  I want the machine to do what the salesman says it will do.  The results of this project exceeded all of our expectations.”

The critical operation on these parts is the deep boring.  One of the parts requires boring 52” deep into the part and changing tools 55” long tools.  Tom explained, “We were pleasantly surprised; we ended up with no vibration at the deepest parts of the bore.  We didn't get there on the first try, but working together we were able to accomplish it. This was always a problem for us.  We thought we would inherit the problem in this process.  We have managed to avoid it.  The Mazak Integrex has allowed us to reduce some of our boring passes from 4 hours to 15 minutes.”

“Another thing we did was incorporate a lot of high pressure coolant.  All the boring bars have 1000 PSI through the tool coolant, and the headstock has a constant high pressure coolant flush.  We cut deep into the hole for two minutes; stop, drag the tool and the chips back and then let the high pressure coolant flush the chips away.”

Before the Integrex e-650H, the maximum annual plant capacity for these two parts was $2.5 to $3.0 million a year.  Today, the plant capacity is $11.4 million a year.  Instead of building two to three shafts a month, they now do fifteen to eighteen.  On one part they eliminated 13 work centers from the process; on the other part 17 work centers were removed.  This is a classic American success story, not as easy as it looks, but certainly doable when you have top management behind it and an exceptional project engineer driving it.

By the way there’s a second Integrex e-650H on the way, and Tom is also leading that project.

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