Turning Circle

Posted on March 20, 2016 by george

You are beginning to see more roundabouts in US roads

I discovered the difference between turning circle and turning radius on my first trip to Ireland. The landscape of Ireland is largely made up of exposed bedrock. The roads snake across the ground in continuous curves because blasting is very expensive. When you travel around what they call an acute bend your mirrors stick out. Even though I was driving a rental car with a short wheelbase that had a tight turning radius, it was the turning circle that really mattered. I discovered that European cars have collapsing side mirrors. You can guess how I discovered that fact. Passing a car going the opposite direction tests whether the entire vehicle is out of the way. The saving grace of being a Irish tourist was that I did not have to drive a bus. The long wheel base of a vehicle like a bus makes both the turning radius and turning circle much larger.
Designing a vehicle for use in a warehouse brought back the memories of driving in Ireland. The aisles are narrow and the corners at the end of the racks are sharp. The theoretical radius path of the vehicle on the floor makes little difference if the corners of the vehicle stick out enough to knock the shelves over.

Most warehouses have narrow aisles and shelving that is tightly packed into the space.

Yes, longer wheelbase vehicles are harder to drive in a confined space. However we all know that more goods can be carried on a larger vehicle. Attention to detail is what makes the difference. Chamfering the corners of a longer wheelbase vehicle can result in the same turning circle that a shorter wheelbase vehicle can achieve. In today’s lean economy, we are all looking for the extra percentage improvements that
come from paying attention to detail.
Engineers think about the difference between a turning radius and a turning circle. The actual industrial vehicle users are only concerned about their ability to drive through a tightly packed warehouse without hitting the shelving or damaging the goods that they are carrying. At the end of the day lean is all about safely moving more goods each trip.

Numeric Build

Posted on March 4, 2016 by george

Noah’s Arc recreation in Holland – picture by Ceinturion

“This is how you are to make it; the length of the ark three hundred cubits. its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits.” – the Holy Bible. From the beginning of recorded history man has been employing the benefits of building guided by numeric specifications. In the case of Noah, the proportions for his ark made it seaworthy. We still use the same proportions afforded by these numeric instructions today when we design and create the ships that sail the high seas. Numbers have guided the builders of virtually everything for all recorded history. Until the advent of Computer Numeric Control, the craftsmen read and interpreted the recorded numbers and created the desired item. In Noah’s case, with God arranging the details, it is very possible that 3 numbers were all that was needed to get the job done. At least that was all that Noah needed.
Modern manufacturing is the convergence of a whole lot of processes that have been converted to numbers. At the beginning of the process is the quote. As we migrate to mass customization, every customer wants a price assembled just for him. Money is usually expressed in numbers. Calculating a custom sales price for every order has only become possible with the implementation of ever more computer horsepower. The airline model of charging an unique price for every ticket sold is spreading. Get used to it.

We hardly even think of adding numbers by hand

A lead time is a number. In pretty much all cases this number is greater than zero. I am sure that the people who needed an ark when the rain started to fall, discovered that the lead time number was a lot greater than zero. In this digital age, we place an order and expect it to be shippped in the next day or two. It is a good thing that other people start the manufacturing ball rolling a whole lot earlier.

GPS numeric coordinates track every item as they are transported to fulfill your order

Modern transportation management systems use numeric GPS coordinates to track every item real time. This coordination is needed for all the items to arrive together. It is more complicated than simply ordering everything you need to build at once. It is necessary to take into account the lead time of each item including transportation time. The longest lead time items need to be ordered first.
No, not even the latest computer implemented numeric build methods can deliver you an ark in a couple of days. However under the new Pack Mule Prime program the sum of the latest numeric build systems enable you to configure an electric vehicle to your needs and have it shipped out in a couple of days. Just keep watching for the rainbow, you might not ever need an ark.

There just might be gold at the end of the rainbow

Gravity

Posted on February 21, 2016 by george

Tesla Gigafactory by Steve Junvetson contrasted against the original Ford Highland Park Assembly plant by Andrew Jameson

Tesla Gigafactory by Steve Junvetson contrasted against the orginal Ford Highland Park Assembly plant by Andrew Jameson

Lean is a continuously evolving target driven by the underlying business cost factors. As observers, we see the evolving result. The original Ford assembly plant was a 6 story building. I suspect this was optimum at the time because other business cost issues, like heating and central utilities, overrode the difficultly of lifting materials to the upper floor against the force of gravity. In a 6 story plant the elevators were always the bottleneck. They had to work against the force of gravity. Given this history, it is not surprising that we have evolved to a plant layout, like the Tesla Gigafactory, where everything is at the same elevation.
In the 70’s the auto industry annually made 2 million identical Chevrolet Caprices. This necessitated the movement of a whole lot of material. Engineers can rise to the task. Modern marvels of mechanical movement were invented to continuously shuffle identical loads. Comics such as Rube Goldberg poked fun at the result.

Tuggers pulling goods on trailers are displacing transport using lift truck and conveyor systems (by Mdomseif) which look a tiny bit Rube Goldberg (by Phil Mankar) to the current eye

Less than efficient results occur when the engineering task is to stuff more equipment into a limited space. The saving grace in the 70’s was the stability of the market demand. It was stable enough to recover investments in highly dedicated material moving equipment. Energy was cheap, so no one was concerned about the energy wasted fighting gravity using lift trucks and automated retrieval systems. Many of today’s companies have found it more cost efficient to transport goods without changing their elevation. Today we see tuggers and burden carriers, which do not fight gravity by raising and lowering loads, capturing market share by displacing lift trucks. The general public is more concerned about wasting energy and generating extra greenhouse gasses. The cost drivers are always evolving. We may switch back to lift trucks in the future if we can achieve better than a 25% regeneration of lifting energy. Recovery of lifting energy only occurs in a tiny portion of the transport equipment currently in use. Gravity is always weighing us down.
Equipment also benefits when gravity is considered in the design. In my work history I was involved with creating the concept for a machine for ultrasonically testing jet engine blades for cracks. This testing occurs every 1000 hours of jet engine operation.

New Automation Ultrasonic
jet engine blade inspection
machine

Using the same ultrasound used for pregnancy imaging, a probe is CNC transported around the blades in a tank of water. The original testing machines were behemoths. Most of all they were excessively tall. This resulted in the actual blades being tested above the vision level of the operator. New Automation took over the business by implementing my equipment concepts which absolutely minimized the amount of vertical motion that occurred.

Gravity is a relentless adversary. The best manufacturing processes occur when we can minimize the fight with gravity. Horizontal motion is more efficient than vertical motion.

Au Courant

Posted on January 23, 2016 by george

A multiple exposure picture (one of 68 Colorado Springs images created by Century Magazine photographer Dickenson Alley) of Tesla

au courant
Per Merriam Webster
adjective au cou·rant \ˌō-ku̇-ˈräⁿ\
Simple Definition of au courant
Popularity: Bottom 50% of words
: knowing about the newest information, trends, etc.
: stylish or current.

The 19th century started with the battle of the currents. Thomas Edison battled with George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla. The DC current generating system invented by Edison was less suitable for transmitting current over large distances. Westinghouse put in place a 3 phase AC system invented by Tesla at a generating plant beneath Niagara Falls to supply power to the businesses of Buffalo. The big advantage of AC was the ability to use a simple transformer to change the voltage. High voltage transmission lines make long distance transport of electric power affordable. The original 25 cycle AC morphed into the 60 cycle AC power grid that spans the country. DC power faded into battery powered applications like car starter motors and flashlights.

Even though the transistor was invented in 1947, it remained a low power DC device into the 80’s. Chrysler invented an electronic spark advance and introduced it in 1978. It was taken out of service in 1980 because the ballast resistor needed to protect the power transistor proved to have a poor service life.

Balast resistors protected the power transistor running the spark coil until 1982 picture by Mr Choppers

Finally in 1982 we had a transistor that could successfully process a higher amperage 12V DC application. We no longer think about changing points and plugs. This used to be a biannual ritual.

Even for the engineers leading the charge into the bright new future, technology advances catch us by surprise. Moores law on the ever increasing number of transistors on a chip is well known. Other related advances in silicon power transistors seem to happen invisibly. We all got used to 12 volt DC vehicle power systems. Now with have hybrids and electric vehicles with DC voltages north of 800 volts. Driving this charge is the serious drop in the price of power transistors. I was reading about a tiny DC to DC voltage converter that can squeeze a whole bunch of extra life out of a simple dry cell battery.

DC to Dc voltage converters have dramatically dropped in price

The harder part is switching gears myself and utilizing inexpensive 48 volt DC to 24 volt DC converters when designing my current new electric vehicle offering. They are a surprisingly good match to low current LED lighting.

DC current will splash back onto the public stage. We are seeing it already in very long distance transmission lines, electric vehicles, superconductive materials. The development effort needed to bring this to pass has been going on for a while. To the observing public the change will appear to happen overnight.

Options All in Families

Posted on January 9, 2016 by george

Jean Stapleton and Carol O Conner appealed to our nostalgia for past that they portrayed as simpler than the reality.

In 1972 the Auto Industry manufactured 2 million identical Chevy Caprices. Those were the days. Identical is boring for the assembly line worker. I am positive that a typical Caprice auto assembly line assignment of installing the same three bolts on every car going by, would drive me bonkers. As an engineer, it was all about manufacturing speed. 2 million per year works out to one part every 4 seconds for a three shift operation. And God help you if the vehicle needed 8 copies for parts like pistons. Henry Ford would be proud. You can have any color that you want as long as it is black. 1972 was the high water mark for utilizing mass production to reduce manufacturing cost by making only identical copies. The high volume price convinced most buyers to compromise what they wanted. (An Ford F150 pickup truck at 500,00 annual volume is the highest selling model today,but the volume includes two entirely different chassis in that quantity)
Computerized ERP systems increased our ability to manage a degree of variability. This is not enough by itself. In most cases a buyer cannot afford to have most manufactured products custom and designed just for them. The first test Chrysler Minivan that I built cost $1,000,000. This bargain price was only possible because we were building 100 test units. I never have had personal money of this magnitude to spend on having a vehicle designed just for me. In the real market place, it is possible to purchase optional features for those items that are sufficiently popular to have enough buyers to share the design, development and testing cost.
While we were planning the families of options to fit within the Chrysler Minivan family, we built in the ability to make a camper van.

VW offered a recreational vehicle version of their minivan to fill their sales queue

To this day there is a split within the Chrysler minivan sheet metal frame behind the front seats to enable creation of a camper vehicle frame. Chrysler Minivan sales have been high enough that they never needed to go after the camper market segment. Other makers such as VW discovered that niche in Europe.
The buyers would like to think that they can custom order whatever they want. The reality is that someone has engineered a family of product so that the buyer can customize within a range of options.

by Sarah Afshar – My love for Gatorade goes beyond

Yes, you can choose the flavor of gatoraid that you want but it comes in the same bottle off of the same packaging line

Affordable Mass Customization

Posted on December 25, 2015 by george

The front wheel drive K-body became the parent for many vehicles including the successful Minivan

Chrysler almost went bankrupt when the first K-bodies came out. Fighting through dismal sales of historic rear wheel drive models, the K-body tooling bills, launch hick-ups, the finish line finally was in sight. Lee Iacocca was desperate for cash flow. All of the first vehicles in the initial build schedule were fully loaded with all of the options. All of the engineering thrifting needed to sell a vehicle for the $9800 advertised base price had been done right. Engineers become creative when their backs are to the wall. Changing the bumpers to shorten the vehicle by 2 inches so that 7 cars instead of 6 per row would fit onto the captive train cars used for vehicle delivery, saved $100 which was the profit on the base vehicle. Sticker shock killed the initial sales. Curious buyers attracted to the new model hype came into the dealers to see, but turned away when none of the lowest cost vehicles were on display. The funny part of the story is that the buying public did not want to purchase the base model with its manual transmission and vinyl seats. Chrysler did not want to make vehicles with manual transmissions or vinyl seats either because these components actually cost more than the cloth seats and automatic transmissions that actually sold. Actually, what turned out to be important was that the buyers wanted to judge the value of the options for themselves. Welcome to mass customization!
It is easy to determine whether a design is ready for mass customization. A manufacturer of excavators missed the mark by designing a custom frame for their combo dozer option.

Equipment that can fill multiple roles is easier to employ to generate a profit. An excavator that also functions as a bulldozer saves equipment mobilization.

It is possible that the mass customization that was accomplished through the use of welded mounting details showed as a cheaper manufacturing option. In reality a customized frame was never available to land a order from a customer who needed a timely delivery (Most customers do) For a little more piece cost, this offering could have been designed so that the option is nothing more than a bolted variation of the parent. I find it very interesting that companies such as Toyoda employ artisan craftsmen mechanics in separate facilities to flavor each vehicle to match the customers order. Yes, a change in thinking and a new manufacturing reality combine to satisfy a market demand for more customization without incurring excessive cost penalties.
Engineering is all about planning and implementing profitable future products. I am currently designing an electric vehicle.

A burden carrier delivers
parts at the Ford Rouge Assembly plant.

Even though lithium batteries like you find on a Tesla are a lower total cost option, it will be a while before the the buying public is educated enough to invest in the higher up front cost. This is where mass customization is all about planning for options. A good measure for my design success will be whether it is possible to offer all vehicle options from a common design frame. At the same time, it will be necessary to avoid penalizing the base model pricing when adding the design provisions needed to offer the full range of options.

Change

Posted on November 15, 2015 by george

Historic 2 man saws no longer match the OSB wood we build with today

My grandfather was a carpenter. In the Finnish community, this was a common profession. Finland is a land of many trees. Many of the immigrants arrived with the practiced skills and tools for working in wood. As a tiny boy, I was fascinated by the two man saws, augers, planes, chisels, files that were used in the craft. I inherited the Audels manuals that taught the methods for building a structure without using any nails. Sharpening was a key skill. Many hours are needed to file and set each tooth on a saw so that it cuts straight and true. This insight transferred into my occupation in custom metal cutting cutter design. The tools themselves are no longer relevant. A two man saw used to cut planks from timbers is not appropriate for cutting 4×8 (In true change fashion now a slightly different metric size) sheets of OSB (Oriented Strand Board). In a earlier age, ancient northern trees were cut down. The trunks were cut into timbers and floated back to civilization. The rest of the tree was left to decompose. As human population grows, it has become necessary to utilize more of the raw materials. Pretty much all of the wood of a tree can be shaved into the flakes that create OSB board. The sharpening skills of craftsmen have been replaced by mass produced cutting edges made from high technology materials.

All gas stations used to be full serve

My first job was pumping gas. This was consistent with my auto mechanic training and automotive design career goals. Not too bad in the summer. Out in open when the weather was bad. Checking fluids was necessity for most patrons. More reliable cars and self serve made all of that go away. A roof over the pumps made the task palatable for the general public. One of the interesting features of change is that old methods come back with a twist. As we adopt driver-less trucks, the gas pump jockey will reappear. Instead of fill the Truck with diesel, the fuel will be liquefied natural gas. Methane has 4 hydrogen atoms instead of 2 per carbon atom in diesel fuel. We need to make a dent in carbon and black soot emissions.
There won’t be quite as many trucks on the road though. Trains are more fuel efficient at moving goods. I suspect that the gentler grades are a big factor. The autonomous technology that guides AGV (Automatic Guided Vehicles) around warehouses will dispatch a myriad of driver-less train cars to the individual train sidings that lie unused around the country. Again this will come back with a twist. The size of the train car will be adjusted to match the sea land container that now dominates the transport of goods. The receiving plants will invest in the track fans needed to directly unload the cargo in the same fashion that multiple truck docks are currently implemented. As is true in most transitions, we will see loading docks with train rails that can also serve as truck docks.

Loading docks can serve either trucks or properly configured autonomous rail cars

In much the same fashion that the ocean shipping converted from bulk cargo to containers, this change will migrate into the rail industry. As always change happens with a twist.

Batch Process

Posted on October 14, 2015 by george

A batch of fresh baked cookies brings out the kid in me

I was thinking about how to determine the ideal batch size. Cookies came to mind. The ideal batch size is one when you are eating them. As a lover of cookies, I have tried stuffing a bunch of them in my mouth. It doesn’t work as well as eating them one at a time. Further upstream in the manufacturing process, one no longer is the optimum batch size. In my college days the optimum batch size was six. That was the size of my toaster oven tray. Even though the efficiency gurus suggest that we should eliminate all inventory and make cookies one at a time, that is a good theory that does not work in practice. There is something about the smell of baking cookies that attracts and makes friends. Especially on a Sunday night in a guys dorm when there is no food service. Obviously it was necessary to do an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) raw material order earlier in the week to pick up a roll of cookie dough from the grocery story when the grocery store was open. Only one because that is all that would fit in the dorm micro fridge that I shared with my roommate. Again the batch size was no longer one and increased to a dozen. Going further upstream the cookie dough rolls arrived at the grocery store in case boxes. These were stocked on the shelf from the distribution center arriving in mixed skids. The food batching plant obviously wanted to send full refrigerated trailer loads to the distribution center but for the slower moving products like cookie dough this shipment usually includes a mix of all pre-made refrigerated dough products to reduce scrapping of stale product. Any batch size is theoretically possible. In reality when we chose a width and load limit for the roads, factors like the size of trailers start to govern the equation. Even further upstream in the supply chain, the concept of “pull” scheduling totally falls apart when we get back to the planting of the wheat to make the flour. Planting wheat in one cookie batches makes no sense at all.

Drones will emerge as a means for avoiding traffic jams as the population concentrates into big cites

It will be interesting to see how new delivery methods such as drones affect batch sizes. In this emerging mass customization era, batch size planning also applies to building heavy equipment like excavators. In this market every purchaser wants a machine that is customized for their use. Theoretically the batch size of a sold excavator is one but in the actual market the end users like to buy units is groups of three or five so that they have some opportunity to reduce the number of spare parts that they need to stock. Many of the large components like diesel engines, hydraulic pumps, cylinders are ordered in one year batches of 1000. This is inconsistent with the customers who would like their machines a week or two after they place an order. The solution is to complete the manufacturing until the point that the parts begin to acquire customer unique features. The historical customer behavior influences the upstream batch size planning. Many of the components arrive in “kits.” Building heavy equipment is the sum of organizing and collecting heavy components onto skids that fit into trailers or sea land containers. In the past we saw more 1 TEU containers in ocean shipping. In the US most sea land containers in use are 2 TEU because they are similar in capacity to truck trailers. Lift trucks and pallets sizes also evolve toward the same dimension constraints. In most cases the workers require lifting assists at every step

Gathering heavy items takes a lifting device

I also market a connected car device http://www.mileagetrakker.com that helps people who drive for business save about $1000 to $2000 per year on their tax bill. We give the user the option of recording trip purpose in batch sizes of one using their cell phone or in weekly bunches using the internet. One size does not fit all. Users choose a batch size which fits their work pattern. People that have an unpredictable travel pattern like recording in smaller batches. People with a more stable work pattern tend to like recording trip purpose in weekly batches using the internet because is saves time.

Virtual

Posted on August 21, 2015 by george

William Shatner and Julie Newmar of Star Trek by NBC television

Being a Star Trek fan, I remember the original episode that incorporated film footage from the first pilot. In that pilot, the Star Trek team encounter an advanced race that inserted illusion into their minds with such precision that it replaced reality. The stuff of science fiction except for the fact that we are beginning to have that technology. Google with others have invested a billion dollars or so into a Florida Start-up named Magic Leap. They are in a technology category called augmented reality but they like to call it “cinematic reality”. Unlike some of the other virtual reality technologies. their method of projecting light directly at the eye is a lot less likely to make you sea sick. The images that it creates are so convincing that you think that your hand is the illusion when you try to touch the projected images. Before you dismiss this technology as a video game, be aware that there are commercial uses for a technology that can display activity beyond the vision of your eyes.

Full flight simulator by
Super Jet International (uploaded by russavia)

The next time you are flying, it will be comforting to know that the potentially new pilot flying the plane is not using this flight as a training tool to hone his ability to land the aircraft under all kinds of adverse conditions. Modern virtual reality in the form of flight simulators allows pilots to practice landing at many of the airports of the world. We are happy to know that the pilot flying the plane has practiced landing enough times to react instinctively to the turbulence around him. Other things, we would like to “see”, are hidden inside opaque objects, occur too fast or slow, are not our scale, lack contrast, or have other mismatches. In the molding industry the filling process is occurring inside an opaque mold at extremely high speed. As we adjust the shapes to improve the part quality it is helpful to have a virtual testing tool to guide our efforts. This technology reduces the amount of expensive trial and error mold changes needed to achieve a commercial yield from the mold.

Mold fill simulation software of the “brain” of a Ford Transmission by Magmasoft

In the emerging mass customization era, we do enough part set-ups that we can no longer afford to tie up the production equipment to train the robots. The availability of 3D models for the parts and equipment makes offline pre-programming of the robot path commonplace. This matches the Japanese SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Die) strategy invented by Segeo Shingo. Job shops who employ welding robots are the heaviest early adopters of this virtual technology. It is easy to more than double the through-put of a robot welding cell when you can minimize the time that it is not burning
the arc

Robot motions can be taught remotely

Store High In Transport

Posted on August 16, 2015 by george

Aerial view of grounded ship Rena 04 by New Zealand Defense force from Wellington

Ocean shipments of “fertilizer” had their containers labeled Store High In Transport so that the moisture that was a part of being stored near the bottom of the hold would not dissolve the contents. In much the same fashion as we honor the contribution of a British Sanitary Engineer, the contraction has become a part of the English language. The concept of storing high In transport is not as attractive these days, because the highest containers in the stack are the first to be jettisoned into the sea when trouble is blowing. Mostly novice shippers get caught by this fact. A good friend of mind told a story of someone he knew who wanted to bring the secret of caramel filled chocolate bars to Jamaica. He bought a surplus candy making line and loaded it into a container for shipment from Canada to Jamaica.

Chocolate encapsulates some delicious fillings

The secret remains safe with Davy Jones. The container with the candy making equipment is at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. It is easy to see that this container was not shipped using a capable process. As we eliminate waste, it becomes evident that we need a container ship that is less likely to jettison containers. Innovations like that usually come out of the military. The multi-hull littoral combat ships are much more stable in rough weather. It is very likely that a catamaran would make a great container ship and result in a fuel saving as well. From a lean standpoint it is a lot easier to load containers as they are delivered without staging in a yard. Yard staging is a current requirement because the shippers who pay for premium container placement want their containers at the bottom of the stacks. This queuing and staging can easily double the transport time and cause many shippers to choose higher cost air freight. If the majority of containers are directly transferred between boat and truck or train, autonomous vehicles can be implemented to create an automated storage and retrieval system for the rest. We will implement driverless trucks. The first place you will see them in use is in captive applications like docks or yards. It is a whole lot less risky to implement this high level automation when the speeds are a lot slower and people can be excluded from the transport paths. I would not surprise me if the first driverless “trucks” also have a custom shape that matches their task.

Automatic Guided Vehicle
in Hamburg port by HeJe

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