Finding what we need in less time is part of 5S in LEAN manufacturing, a model used to continuously improve business processes. The Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MassMEP) guided our team through the basics of the LEAN system.
We're hard at work making our processes more efficient so we can bring you the best prices in the market and faster delivery times. Recently, we reorganized our raw material area to more easily access our most popular sizes, freeing up time to make more parts for you.
Finding what we need in less time is part of 5S in LEAN manufacturing, a model used to continuously improve business processes. The Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MassMEP) guided our team through the basics of the LEAN system.
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In his BostInno article "How Ben Einstein and Bolt are making Boston the center of hardware tech," writer Dylan Martin says that Boston-based VC firm for early-stage hardware startups Bolt has invested in 26 companies and raised around $40 million. Bolt provides:
Hardware startups are getting more and more profitable Bolt managing partner and co-founder Ben Einstein predicts that the latest hardware companies, such as FitBit and GoPro, can be more profitable than software companies. The success of these companies may encourage more investment in hardware startups. Last year alone, the amount of funding into their hardware startups "increased from under $500 million to nearly $3.5 billion." "The average investor doesn't understand that hardware startups are a thing and can be profitable." Why the increase?
Last week, we learned how to map out our processes at a Value Stream Mapping (VSM) workshop with the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership. VSM involves six steps that will help us identify waste and create more efficient processes:
While some predict that robots will increasingly take over jobs, the Association for Advancing Automation (A3) claims that robots contribute to an increase - not decrease - in U.S. employment. A3 cites vast research that robots are the key to claiming back offshore manufacturing jobs and increasing global competitiveness in its white paper "Robots Fuel the Next Wave of U.S. Productivity and Job Growth" Robots help companies stay competitive A3 President Jeff Burnstein says that robots:
Studies in China, Japan, Brazil, and India support this notion. When robot use went up, so did employment. "Our first figure in the study went back to 1996. We looked at industrial robot shipments versus employment. We assumed that if robots were job killers, you would have expected that unemployment would rise when robot shipments rose. But we found the exact opposite. When sales of robots go up, unemployment falls.... The factors that lead companies to buy robots are the same factors that lead them to employ people," says Burnstein. "Employment rises and falls for many different reasons, but what we've seen is that automation is not correlated to unemployment in manufacturing as a whole. The real issue that we need to talk about, and the real threat to jobs, is American companies remaining competitive. If they can't remain competitive and stay at home, then we lose jobs. Robots help companies stay competitive." The question of low-cost labor abroad
Burnstein says that quality - not low-cost labor - keeps companies competitive: quality products and short lead times. "Companies that are closer to their customers can deliver more quickly. That's a reason to be very happy about the advantage that automation provides U.S. manufacturers," he adds. Moving forward "We need to make sure we're training people for the jobs of the future," claims Burnstein. "People right now don't have the requisite skills. Workers can get those at technical schools, at community colleges." Source: New paper argues automation will revive U.S. manufacturing and create new growth, more jobs It's official! We knocked our setup time in half by trimming out the waste and resequencing steps. We're on the final week of a three-week evaluation of our setup process, and our brand-new road map for our setup process helped us significantly improve our setup time. The result: lower costs for us and lower prices and faster delivery times for you.
The Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MassMEP) guided our production team through an evaluation of a real-life setup process. Setup reduction is part of the LEAN system, a model used to continuously improve business processes. We just finished week 2 of a three-week evaluation of our setup process. We now have a brand-new road map for cutting out the waste in our setup process. Next week, we'll try it out.
The expectation: to knock our setup time in half so we can spend less time prepping for production and more time producing parts. The result: lower prices and faster delivery times for you. Led by the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MassMEP), our entire production team evaluated a real-life setup process from beginning to end. We tracked and documented each step, then evaluated and reconfigured the steps, cutting out the waste. Setup reduction is part of the LEAN system, a model used to continuously improve business processes. By eliminating waste - non-value added steps - from our processes, we reduce our costs and speed up our production times. Part of the LEAN system, these continuous improvements translate into lower prices and faster delivery times for you.
It's a philosophy handed down from Toyota, and our team at Donahue Industries rises to the challenge of embracing that philosophy daily. Today with help from the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MassMEP), we analyzed our setup process and will reduce our setup times to help bring you what's important to you: lower prices. Photo from Bolt In hardware venture capital firm Bolt's "How It's Made" series, engineer Avery Louie dissects how designers of Fitbit's Aria Smart Scale worked smarter. In a nutshell, product developers designed the scale in these clever ways:
Read the full, in-depth blog post. Our friends over at Greentown Labs and Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MassMEP), a group that helps Massachusetts manufacturers grow, made headlines in the Boston Business Journal by teaming up to connect Massachusetts clean tech startups with local manufacturers. They're visiting manufacturing companies, hosting tours, and more. "Many early-stage startup founders developing hardware products don't want to outsource jobs to places like China, but they don't know which local manufacturers are trusted and affordable.... We're seeing these startups leading the way on this. They don't want to go to China. They want to figure out how to do it here. It's a very exciting opportunity for startups in the Boston area to be a vanguard of that trend." In about six months, startups will have the option to search a database for local manufacturers and rate us. The goals:
When you want to produce metal parts, your goal is to think through as many aspects of your final part as possible. Here are 10 factors to consider when producing metal parts at high volume:
Before you have your tooling created, you'll want to consider these 10 factors when working with an engineer to develop your final metal stamping. |
Donahue Industries, Inc. is a full service international metal stamping manufacturer in Massachusetts specializing in parts for the grinding wheel and wire rope industries. Donahue Industries, Inc. 5 Industrial Drive Shrewsbury, MA 01545-5835 Phone: (001) 508-845-6501 Fax: (001) 508-842-7665 sales@donahueindustries.com |