Engine SystemsIn a world full of demanding challenges how does a company like GKN Aerospace improve their manufacturing productivity? This story illustrates how GKN Aerospace has been successful in improving their manufacturing productivity using FORCAM’s Advanced Shop Floor Management, FORCAM FORCETM.

The following describes how GKN Aerospace management, stakeholders and operators are able to see production anywhere, anytime in real time. GKN Aerospace is now able to analyze their machine data and understands their current state - to intervene for quality improvements in the future. FORCAM enabled GKN Aerospace to see their true status every second of the production process.

A WORLD FULL OF DEMANDING CHALLENGES HOW DOES AN INDUSTRY LEADING COMPANY LIKE GKN AEROSPACE IMPROVE THEIR MANUFACTURING PRODUCTIVITY?

GKN Aerospace, the aerospace operation of GKN plc, is one of the world’s largest independent first tier aerospace suppliers, providing complex, high performance, high-value integrated metallic and composite assemblies for aero structures and engine products with a broad range of capabilities. GKN Aerospace Engine Systems, one of four divisions, accounted for 50% of sales in 2013.

GKN Aerospace has close strategic partnerships with all the major OEMs and tier one suppliers – General Electric, Pratt & Whitney Rolls-Royce, Snecma and MTU. This Success Story is about the Engine Systems division - Low- Volume High-Mix/Value Environment - of GKN Aerospace, which has facilities in Newington Connecticut, USA.

“We have realized >20% reduction in operation time on the components we have focused our CI efforts on during the year”

Martin Thorden, President GKN Aerospace Newington

GKN AEROSPACE20% REDUCTION IN OPERATION TIME

The investment in FORCAM FORCETM

GKN Aerospace has a reputation for investing in technological innovation, developing and applying new products that bring real and practical benefit to their customers, aircraft operators and passengers. GKN Aerospace’s capabilities have been, and continue to be, developed through constant investment and innovation.

Their investment in the FORCAM Advanced Shop Floor Management (SFM) Technology allows GKN Aerospace to be lean. Advancing their capabilities to manufacture and assemble metallic engine casings and fixed structure permits them to deliver the highest in quality standards.

A selection of products

GKN Aerospace leads the market in the design and production of fan containment and non-containment cases in titanium, aluminium, Nickel alloy and composites.

The FORCAM FORCE™ is an extremely flexible and powerful tool for improving manufacturing productivity, making it incredibly easy for GKN Aerospace to achieve unprecedented improvements in their production. GKN Aerospace envisions new ways to keep their customers happy and wants to further increase their focus on their needs.

GKN Aerospace Newington, CT

What is the biggest risk?

President, Martin Thorden, says “This technology is a very good tool for continuous improvement activities; we are actually able to see the effect of the change right away and we can now measure our performance on a daily basis - instantly”. “This gives us an overview of all of our equipment and how we are utilizing them”. When asked about the risk of acquiring the FORCAM FORCE™ system, Martin Thorden proclaimed:

“Strategically, the biggest risk of not having this FORCAM FORCE™ Technology is that we would be out performed by our competitors”.

“That’s the big risk - so, we realized we needed this tool for continuous improvement”.

“Strategically, the biggest risk of NOT having this FORCAM FORCE™ Technology is that we would be out performed by our competitors”.Martin Thorden, President GKN Aerospace Newington

GKN Aerospace has had the Technology in place for one year. Martin Thorden explains, “We took a moderate approach to what we should be able to achieve in this first year and I am convinced we have been able to achieve our objectives.” “Since this is a journey, we are in phase 1 while working towards hooking up to our ERP SAP in phase 2”.

In their visual lean manufacturing environment, GKN Aerospace has the FORCAM FORCE™ Technology providing a visual display that shows status information on the plant floor enabling their operators to signal line status based on color: green for normal operation, yellow when assistance is needed, and red when the line is down. This provides increase throughput efficiency, and real-time communication of plant floor status. The FORCAM FORCE™ Technology that GKN Aerospace is using provides information on Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE). It is fast and accurate. GKN Aerospace can instantly respond - instantly react - and instantly improve.

With their focus on continuous improvement, GKN Aerospace is able to see all production in a clear glimpse knowing in real time when lines require attention.

Proven visibility

Sergio Moren, Director of Operations, at GKN Aerospace Newington states, “The Technology helps me react as well”. I’ve been trying to instill my management team to keep track, while using the system as they learn. They review Gantt charts and reports to see when the machines status starts and stops. This helps us be more proactive as Martin mentioned”. “We see benefits that show that we are doing better against our standard hours which we can directly relate to using the FORCAM FORCE™ Technology. We see it in the bottom line”.

During the Pilot, the FORCAM FORCE™ Technology has helped us get great results, Martin Thorden states. Sergio Moren agrees, “FORCAM is important because everyone knows what to do - we all now know what we have to do. FORCAM helped to quantify and justify our course of action to get to certain levels.

We see benefits that show that we are doing better against our standard hours which we can directly relate to using the FORCAM FORCE™ technology. We see the bottom line.Sergio Moren, Director of Operations GKN Aerospace Newington

GKN Aerospace has daily production meetings tracking their parts. Engineers are responsible for these parts and need to talk about improvements via their Key Performance Indicators (KPI).

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) at GKN Aerospace are metrics that facilitate achieving GKN Aerospace’s critical goals. GKN Aerospace’s best manufacturing KPIs are aligned with their top-level strategic goals to identify and quantify waste.

According to Sergio Moren some of the KPI’s are:

• on time delivery• quality notification• tool cost• inventory

Sergio Moren, Director of Operations and Martin Thorden, President GKN Aerospace Newington in the Lobby of the GKN Aerospace Engine Systems Facility in Newington, CT with the FORCAM Advanced Shop Floor Management Technology on display.

Ewelina Maselek, the Sales and Configuration Engineer mentions KPI’s to reduce lead time from about 50 days to 34 days. Now GKN Aerospace can run smaller batch-sizes because the flow of production is improved. In gathering the data, “The newer machines can handle more signals so we get more accurate data. As for the older machines, we have to rely on the operator to signal or tell us”. In the beginning; it was tougher to trouble shoot signals if the machine was not operating to its full capability. The question always was is it really running 100 percent? A very painful realization.

For instance one machine, a dual ram mil turn with two controllers, was not working properly and we didn’t realize it until the operator told us that one had lost connection. There was no automated notification process in place to let us know us about machine status without interaction.

There is a camaraderie between operators to provide feedback. Martin Thorden states, “Part of our success is that we have not forced the data on our operators or held them accountable, they have adopted it willingly as a tool for improvement”. This is seen on the shop floor when Martin walks around the facility. Having a trained empowered workforce makes a difference. This trained workforce could be the difference between a customer putting their work here or elsewhere, stated Sergio Moren.

Reporting

For GKN Aerospace, Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is a metric for monitoring and improving the efficiency of manufacturing processes at their facilities. This measures the percentage of planned production time that is truly and fully productive. Three crucial performance metrics:

Availability, Productivity, Quality.

OEE reports are usually only available to managers as a record of what happened in the past. GKN Aerospace can learn from the past but they can’t change it. Now, GKN Aerospace can most definitely change the future by utilizing FORCAM’s Shop Floor Management Technology. Displaying OEE or related metrics in real-time enables supervisors to proactively set live targets, and enables the GKN Aerospace production team to immediately see the results of their improvement efforts. There is now a trend of organizations focusing on data quality.

The reduction of waste by using the Shop Floor Management Technology, Ewelina Maselek describes as an example:

“We used to have planned stops in our machining process in several 5-10 minutes intervals. Now, we are able to condense the intervals to only a few, which allows us to increase production without the operator present.

This technology is empowering and motivating employees by aligning their efforts with goals of the company.

Martin Thorden

The Visualization feature of the machine states allows us to see actual run times. By working with the machine operators who work with the part every day, we understood that interruption times needed to be reduced. So a vital action plan could be put into place. Through data tracking, Ewelina Maselek is able to notice when a machine’s program is not properly updated and running for instance on an old rpm feed rate which does not reflect actual state and leads to reduced production. It is key to make sense of the data provided to take meaningful action.”

Sergio Moren details, “Once we had an issue with reduced production because of a new sharpener tool we used for one of our new aluminium containment cases. We were able to spot production time differences and through an investigation with engineering we determined that a dull tool would bring much more productivity and less time for the machine to manufacture. “We are devising improvement solutions”.

Sergio Moren, Director of Operations, is currently looking at the reporting module in the office client and doing a run analysis. He is checking the power consumption and evaluating ways to reduce GKN Aerospace’s carbon footprint.

Having a trained empowered workforce makes a difference.This trained workforce could be the difference between a customer putting their work here or elsewhere.

Martin Thorden, President GKN Aerospace Newington

In this facility, Sergio Moren states, we noticed our highest usage during the summer with all the air conditioners running. Aluminum parts are sensitive to temperature so GKN Aerospace has to maintain a certain temperature. During peak season we correlate with the power company to help us predict usage and to offset compressors so that the system does not get overloaded.

At GKN, more efficient equipment can be scheduled to run more accurately and for smaller lot sizes. This lowers cost and reduces lead times and increases capacity, which leads to more customer orders.

As GKN ventures forward in their Manufacturing journey they have implemented a collection of improvement techniques based on the idea that waste in all forms should be eliminated from the manufacturing process.

Using the FORCAM FORCETM technology, GKN crreated a culture that continually challenges employees.

Martin Thorden

Continuous Improvement

President Martin Thorden relayed, “Continuous improvement is an important strategy allowing the company’s individuals to work together proactively to achieve regular, incremental improvements in the manufacturing process”. Continuous improvement for GKN is about ongoing vigilance and multiple layers that address machines, people, process and technology enhancements.

Empowering

Focusing on reducing the time it takes to change a production process from manufacturing one part - to manufacturing the next part enables smaller lot sizes, less inventory, and a faster response to the marketplace, reducing SMED. At GKN Aerospace the role of information sharing using the FORCAM FORCE™ Technology is empowering and motivating employees by aligning their efforts with the goals of the company.

This tool has enabled GKN Aerospace to:

• show line status at a glance (e.g. running, stopped, changeover), enabled operators to call for help as needed (e.g. from maintenance or supervisors)

• bring immediate attention to problems as they occur in the manufacturing process

• provide a simple and consistent mechanism for communicating information on the shop floor, encourage immediate reaction to quality down time, and safety problems, improve accountability and responsibility for “good” production of operators and empowering them to take action when problems occur.

Continous improvement is an important strategy allowing the company’s individals to work together proactively to achieve regular incremental improvements in the manufacturing process.Martin Thorden, President GKN Aerospace Newington

Giving operators the authority to stop the line and call for assistance and to address a quality issue promotes the employee’s involvement in the production process. Having the opportunity to truly understand the reason for interruption will save time in the long run.

Using the FORCAM FORCE™ tool, GKN Aerospace created a culture that continually challenges employees. Efficient communication at GKN Aerospace provides a simple, consistent, method of conveying concise information.

Looking ahead: Using FORCAM FORCETM in the futureGKN Aerospace now enables their operators to add more value to the production process, increase throughput, and to be an integral part of process improvements. Although the underlying FORCAM FORCE™ technology continues to evolve, the value and benefits of timely communication and shared information remains essential. The FORCAM Advanced Shop Floor Management Technology promotes visual manufacturing lean communication, enhances the role of information sharing, empowers employees, and aligns their efforts with the goals of the company. FORCAM’s Technology is extremely flexible and powerful to improve manufacturing productivity. For GKN to use the tool is making it possible to achieve significant improvements in manufacturing productivity.

Phase 2, Ms. Maselek, conveyed that data is gathered to get the Shop Floor Management Technology to integrate with GKN Aerospace’s ERP. This integration will allow GKN Aerospace to be even more exact and efficient.

As GKN Aerospace Newington President, Martin Thorden puts it, “This Technology is a very good tool for continuous improvement activities, and we are actually able to see the effect of the change right away. We can now measure performance instantly on a daily basis. This gives us an overview of all of our equipment and how we are utilizing them.

“Strategically, the biggest risk of not having this FORCAM FORCE™ tool is that we would be out performed by our competitors”. “I am convinced we have been able to achieve our objectives.”, As this is a journey, we are in phase 1 while working towards hooking up to our ERP SAP in phase 2.

This technology is empowering and motivating employees by aligning their efforts with goals of the company.Martin Thorden, President GKN Aerospace Newington

FORCAM FORCE™ dashboard at GKN Aerospace Newington

Technology Partner

FORCAM’s awarded technology supports best-in-class companies in discrete and repetitive manufacturing industries of automotive, aerospace and defense, oil and gas.

Multinational Corporations and SMEs trust in FORCAM’s advanced shop floor management technology to monitor over 50,000 of their critical assets and machines globally today.

FORCAM stands for rapid Return-On-Investment (ROI) and an increase in Return-On-Capital-Employed (ROCE).

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Our customers benefit from a strong global network with offices and partners in Eurpe, Asia Pacific, and the Americas. Research and development partners include the Fraunhofer Institute, and the Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems (IMS) at the Universitiy of Cincinnati (USA).

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Technology for the Smart FactoryAdvanced Shop Floor Managment

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