You can increase production and reduce costs by exploiting what different jobs have in common.

The most obvious kind of part family is made up of items that share a name and geometry – 8-32 pan-head screws in different lengths, or a series of standoffs that come in different lengths, perhaps with different features (through hole or internal thread).

From a machining perspective, however, other characteristics can also define a family. Consider parts that you can

• hold in the same fixture
• run with variations on the same program
• make using the same type of operations
• cut with the same set of tools.

Sometimes it’s hard to see these commonalities, but once you do, you can use them to boost production by reducing setup and changeover time, minimize programming effort, or improve other aspects of your process.

Tooling

Parts made by the same processes and tooling might not look the same, said Rick Schonher, product manager for workholding, Hardinge, Inc., Elmira, N.Y., “but the operations performed will determine a family. You won’t be changing out tooling between parts.”

“The tooling is a family,” said Gerard Vacio, product manager for workholding, Big Kaiser Precision Tooling, Inc., Hoffman Estates, Ill. “A family of parts made with a particular grouping of production tools [will have] virtually no downtime between parts.”

You can expand this type of family by making the most of the limited space in the tool magazine – try to optimize the selection of tools to cut the greatest number of parts. Can you use one drill instead of three in different lengths?

Workholding

Usually people know when they a have family of parts, but don’t necessarily know how to make the most of it, said Wendy Swann, product manager, Chick Workholding Solutions, Warrendale, Pa. Workholding is generally the least-noticed aspect of machining part families, she said. However, the benefits of a family approach to workholding can be considerable. “If you are using the same set of jaws, the offsets are the same,” she said, saving time on every part you load.

For example you could use stepped jaws. The top, wider step could hold larger parts, the lower step or steps could hold smaller parts, Swann said. For milling round parts, you can use V-shaped jaws to hold a large range of diameters.

Your suppliers can help sort out how best to approach your workholding. “Typically [customers] share with us a sampling of part prints. We take those parts and separate them out into families using similar workholding,” said Schonher.

Programming

“If we’re lucky, the family of parts was identified as such by the designer; the drawing shows a generic part and has a table of the dimensions of the individual variations,” said Bill Gibbs, president, Gibbs and Associates, Moorpark, Cal., developers of GibbsCAM software. “The programmer can easily make use of this commonality in the program without doing anything especially sophisticated.”

As you add parts to a family, you may be able use portions of previously written programs. Suppose you are already making a part with a particular feature on it, and the customer asks you to make another part with the same feature – in a different size or location. You can copy the relevant section of the program and use it again, with appropriate adaptation.

More advanced software features help you to do more. If you repeatedly program a certain feature or process, you can write a macro, which will automatically run the desired series of commands. Plug-ins, often written by consultants, can take this approach to another level.

All in the family

“I love families of parts,” Gibbs said. “Setup and fixturing on a CNC machine is time consuming. A family can have one fixture to handle all parts.” Changing tools in the magazine takes time, but with a family of parts, “it will be possible not to retool the machine.”

Any opportunity to group, streamline, consolidate, rationalize, or optimize programming, tooling, workholding or other aspects of production can benefit your whole operation.

The fact you have a family of parts is not important. What you do with the family – how you use the family’s characteristics to help you increase production and reduce costs – that is the advantage you can gain from recognizing what parts have in common.

For more information:
Big Kaiser Precision Tooling, Inc.:  www.bigkaiser.com
Chick Workholding Solutions:  www.chickworkholding.com
Gibbs and Associates:  www.Gibbscam.com
Hardinge Inc.:  www.hardinge.com

A family of parts. Photo courtesy of Hardinge.

Question: If you were forced to choose between Budweiser and Miller which one would you drink?

Tim Tebow praying

I’ve been anxious to see Tim Tebow, the controversial Denver Broncos quarterback people love to hate because he is unabashedly committed to his religious faith and fearlessly shows it to the cynical press and doubters.

Tebow had been relentlessly mocked in Chicago going into Sunday’s game with the Bears, but once again he led an amazing comeback in the last few minutes to get to overtime and then win during the extra period. Tebow’s performance was miserable through the first three quarters, and terrific in the fourth. The Bears helped Denver by making bonehead plays and playing soft, “not to lose” football. Tebows’s Broncos have now won seven out of eight with Tebow as quarterback after starting the season 0-4 with Kyle Orton (now gone).

I was extremely eager to see the game because Tim Tebow has gotten so much press, mostly negative. America is so cynical about everything today. My view of pro-football has been shaped by movies like Al Pacino’s Any Given Sunday, and the novel Semi-Tough, by Dan Jenkins. Tebow is the anti anti-hero. Supposedly, Urban Meyer, the head football coach at the University of Florida, where Tebow won the Heisman as a sophomore, had his quarterback checked out by an investigator to see if he was who he said he was. Tebow, the devout Christian who put the number of Bible verses on the adhesive eye-black patches he wore, checked out.

Tebow occasionally goes to one knee to thank God during a game and will exalt by looking to the sky and lifting both arms like signaling his thanks to the Lord for a score.

Honestly, I was set to dislike him because I don’t think God really follows the NFL, but after watching him play I have to love the kid. Not for his authentic devotion to his God, but for his leadership and belief in himself on the field.

In the final quarter of the Bears/Broncos game you had a team with belief in itself, and a team with doubt.

Bill Parcells, the great coach, has said that in most games there is a moment when one team perseveres and the other gives up its belief in itself. This happened last Sunday. The Bears had the game, but inexplicably the veteran running back Marian Barber ran out of bounds when all he had to do was fall down to keep the clock moving.  The Bears had to punt, leading 10-7, but knowing that they faced a Denver team led by Tim Tebow that knew in its heart that it was going to win. And they did, with a last second tying field goal and an overtime field goal.

I rooted for the Bears, but I loved watching Tebow confidently lead players who obviously believed in him, and themselves.

Tebow does not have the great technical skills as a quarterback of an Aaron Rogers or Tom Brady, but he brings a palpable, authentic, belief to the playing field. You can feel an aura, even watching him on TV. A leader with authentic belief is a beautiful thing to observe. It doesn’t mean Tim Tebow, with a flawed throwing motion, is going to win the Super Bowl this year. But who am I to doubt it? The doctors said I had a slim chance of survival when I entered the hospital in heart failure three years ago.

Question: Do you think Tebow should restrain his religious demonstrations on the field?

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Bud Pohlman died last week. He saw the future of high production turning in the Hydromat rotary transfer machine manufactured in Switzerland by Pfiffner. In his way he was a visionary in the screw machine world in America.

Looking at the positive, manufacturing is skyrocketing. Seemingly headed for a 14 million car pace. Automotive suppliers are going nuts trying to keep up. The unemployment rate is down sharply. Pundits are confused. Retail sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday were out of sight. What’s going on? People are working part time, on contract, off the books, etc., screwing up the traditional employment/unemployment numbers. The statisticians have not caught up. Revisions are all over the place. Don’t trust the employment numbers. Look at the sales. People are gaming the government and it’s hard to blame them because the government does not pay us back fair value. There are a lot of people not paying their mortgage. Some of them were standing in line Thanksgiving night waiting for the $200 flat screen for their next apartment paid for with cash generated in a part-time job (off the books).

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Measured over many metrics like unemployment, health insurance coverage, percentage of residents with a high school diploma, debt ratings, etc. California is the worst governed state and Wyoming is the best. Would you rather live in San Francisco or Cheyenne?

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Interesting anomaly. The United States has many positive trends now. Lower rate of violent crime, less family debt, lower rate of abortion, less drug addiction among young people. The country is repairing itself while government is in disrepair. But not everywhere. In Chicago we are seeing Rahm Emanuel take over from Rich Daley, transforming the perception and probably the reality of governance almost overnight. The public employee unions are backpedaling, the Teachers Union hardly knows what hit it, the patronage corruption system is being dismantled, and the budgets are being chopped. It looks like we elected the wrong Chicago politician to be President.

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Look for more businesses being bought and sold in manufacturing in 2012. As skilled workers get harder to hire, new vendors harder to vet, and China less of a factor, baby boomers are going to be selling to companies and groups with access to credit. I look for the earnings multiple to rise significantly this year on buyouts and boomers taking advantage to solve succession and retirement desires.

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What does America do if (when) Iran gets a nuclear weapon or gets to the position they could build one in a week? This is the military and foreign policy problem that we will face soon and there seemingly is no credible way out. Even a revolution in Iran may not stop the momentum toward nuclearization. I cannot imagine a U.S. preemptive strike, but Israel might move with or without an American wink.

The big fear is not so much that Iran attacks Israel as much as they might pass the bomb to Hezbollah, Hamas or Al Qaeda. That is a Jack Bauer scenario. Now we really need a prescient CIA.

Question: Would you vote for Newt Gingrich?

Will a marriage of distribution and machining firms turn out like Kim Kardashian's?

I see a mini-trend developing in the consolidation of companies in distribution and Hydromat machining companies. A major automotive supplier whose core business process is rotary transfer turning of steel bars is close to closing a deal with a fastener supply firm with CNC machining capability. I’ve already seen two other acquisitions of this type and I can anticipate more as the supply chain becomes more taut.

Three years ago Tribal Corporation, a plumbing supply company, bought Marshall Brass to add screw machine and rotary transfer capability to their successful distribution firm.

MultiTech, a primarily cold heading company near Chicago, bought its rotary transfer vendor a couple years ago in a distress sale.

The distributor buying the manufacturer can be a marriage made in hell because the cultures usually are quite different. The theory of distributor and vendor under the same tent sounds so simple in the business plan or annual report, but the reality is usually fraught with suspicion.

Tribal shrewdly cleaned house at Marshall, culled the workforce, and rehired at a lower pay scale. They managed to turn a chaotic manufacturing company around, from what I’ve heard.

From my observation, companies that develop distribution or manufacturing by growing it themselves get bigger more slowly, but probably with less company upheaval.

What prompted me to write this blog was reading the Web site of the fastener company which is acquiring the rotary transfer machining machining firm. The copy on the Web site described how they acquire “human capital.” When I see PR drivel about “human capital” I immediately suspect the company is run by Wall Street MBAs who think threaded nuts are cashews.

The stats I’ve seen say most acquisitions end up as failures for the buyers in the long run. But for many CEOs the “long run” is the next guy’s problem.

Vendors and distributors. Mars and Venus. Two different planets. Take the money and run.

Question: Do you think distribution and manufacturing firms can easily combine?

NBA owner rep, David Stern, is getting blamed more and more for the failed NBA negotiations.

One of the more interesting parts of attempting to teach my son Noah the art of business concerns negotiating. It’s a topic of enduring interest because there is seldom a day when I don’t negotiate with somebody−a client, an employee, or a partner.

Lately, I’ve been reading the accounts of the messy negotiations between David Stern, who represents the NBA owners, and Billy Hunter, who speaks for the players union. From an outsider’s perspective it appears to be a botch for both sides, with everybody involved losing big−except the lawyers.

What I try to teach Noah and continually relearn myself is a lesson I learned from my father and uncle. “Always let the other person feel that they’ve won, because the relationship is more important than one deal.”

The reality is that often there is only one deal to be made with a particular client, but that really isn’t the point. You never really know when you will meet up again, but each deal helps establish your reputation in the wider world, and teaches you lessons.

As I talk to machining firms these days I am regularly hearing that big company buyers are now negotiating with the mindset that good suppliers are scarce assets, not interchangeable widget makers. The balance of power in the supply chain world has changed over the last year and the shrewd buyers of machined parts have recognized it.

One of the most important aspects of a negotiation is how time plays into it. We are watching that play out dramatically right now in the NBA talks because players have now missed their first big paycheck of the season, agents are missing out on rookie signings, and the owners are staring at a cancellation of the entire season.

When I negotiate a deal I always try to ascertain the time requirements of my potential buyer and withhold my own needs from him. By talking to a client frequently, not only can I often discover his time restraints but I can also build a mutual investment in working out a deal. One of the drawbacks of email negotiating is that it removes that feeling of personal investment in a deal and tends to make it seem like it’s all about the money.

From my experience, money is just one factor in most negotiations, and often not the most important one. In my reading about what’s going on now with the NBA, a deal was within reach, until the owners pushed the players into a corner on peripheral issues like random off season drug testing, which energized a weak, disorganized, even apathetic group of players into an angry opponent. David Stern evidently misjudged how far he could push. It’s okay to leave money on the table, my Dad told me and I say to Noah. “Does the deal work for us?” is question number one. But the important corollary is, “Can the other person feel good about it, too?”

The great negotiating mavens such as Herb Cohen argue that you should plan your moves ahead and know your own bottom line. I adhere to this idea in theory, but I believe you also need to be creative and improvise because there are crucial moments in a negotiation that you can’t afford to miss. This is when the active listener can pick up on cues about the time needs of the opposing party to conclude a deal. If the big moment is missed the deal that was makeable can go away.

I often go home and tell my wife that I am frustrated about deals that keep sliding away. She’ll say that it probably doesn’t have anything to do with you. Be patient, it will come.

Sure.

Sometimes it does.

Question: Do you care if the NBA season is canceled?

Question 2: If you could choose between deer hunting and going to an NBA playoff game which would you pick?

Dr. Hong and the Blind Driver Challenge Team at Virginia Tech. Photo courtesy of Virginia Tech

Dr. Dennis Hong is an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech and the director of the Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa). He is also faculty advisor for the Blind Driver Challenge, a project to develop a vehicle that can be driven by the blind.

What brought about this project?
DH: In 2004 the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) had announced a challenge to the research community to develop a car that can be driven by the blind. [Virginia Tech] already had a fantastic research program in fully autonomous vehicles, finishing third at the DARPA Urban Challenge. We thought that this was a very challenging project, and so far we’re the only team that has accepted the challenge.

What is the goal of the project?
DH: The immediate goal is to develop a car that can be driven by the blind, but there’s a more important aspect to it. We want to show society that blind people have the capability of handling complex tasks. We also want to give hope to the blind about what kind of freedom technology might eventually provide them. We’re also interested and excited about the potential spin-off technologies from this project, such as early warning detection systems for the safety of sighted drivers, and technology that can be used by blind people in nondriving applications, like the use of everyday home appliances.

How does the system work?
DH: There are three parts to it. Part one is perception. Because the person cannot see, the car needs to gather information about its surroundings. The main sensor of this Version Number 1 uses a laser range finder. A small laser shoots out from the front—it’s like a laser pointer that you use in a presentation. If there is an obstacle in front of it, it bounces off and measures the time of flight of the laser beam. You know the speed of light, you know the time, thus you can calculate the distance to the obstacle. The laser range finder scans in front of the vehicle and builds a map around the vehicle. Part two is computation. The computer takes the map of information and calculates the safest way to drive—which direction and what speed. Part three is probably the most difficult—non-visual user interfaces. How do you convey this high bandwidth of real information to a driver who cannot see? First of all, the car has a seatbelt that looks like a vest or harness. The vest vibrates in different patterns, and those patterns give speed information to the driver. For directional information we have a steering wheel. We call it the “Click Wheel” because when you move it, it makes “click, click, click” sounds. An audio system with headphones then gives commands like “three clicks to the left,” or “five clicks to the right.”

So the results have been good?
DH: We did some testing that was successful, but that’s not the end of the story. It turns out we had what we call the “backseat driver problem.” People can drive it, but it’s not that fun. People don’t feel the freedom because the decisions are made by the computer telling them when to stop, when to go, turn left, turn right.

What can you do about that?
DH: We’re changing the direction right now. We’re working on the second version and we have a prototype that we use on the first version of the vehicle. We call this device AirPix. Think of it as a computer monitor for the blind. It looks like a tablet. There are a lot of small holes on the tablet and compressed air shoots out of them in certain patterns to display the map around the area (used from information from the laser range finder). When the person puts his or her hand over the device they can “see” the environment and then make an active decision how to drive.

Are you gong to be testing the car on regular roads?
DH: In July 2011, the second generation Blind Driver Challenge vehicle will be driven by a blind person from Baltimore, Maryland, to Orlando, Florida, which is about 900 miles. It’s going to be a combination of highway and regular road driving. The details are not set yet.

Cell Phone Guru, Scott Goldman

Scott Goldman, also nicknamed “The Wireless Wizard,” is one of the world’s foremost authorities on cell phones. For the last 25 years he’s been an author, consultant, speaker, entrepreneur, and trainer in the field of wireless communications. You can read his blog at www.thewirelesswizard.com.

NG:  How do you rate cell phone carriers?
SG: They all have their advantages and disadvantages. The most important aspect of any carrier for someone considering purchasing a cell phone or switching a cell phone to another carrier is whether or not the coverage is adequate at your home and office. If it’s not, no amount of choice in hardware, no reduction in cost, and no other tweaks to the capabilities of the phone will make it worthwhile.

NG:  How are the sizes of cell phones changing?
SG: At this point, phones have already reached the minimum size that they can reach from an ergonomic standpoint. The possibility of phones getting smaller from a mechanical standpoint always exists. There are ways to make keypads smaller; there are ways to make screens smaller. You might be able to eliminate screens and so forth. The major factor in the size of the phone today is not the keypad, the screen, the casing. The major factor is the battery size.

Read full interview here >>

I just got back from travels that took me to Austin, Texas, Palo Alto, and Pasadena, California. I stayed at three hotels, two of which cater to conferences, the other an independent in Silicon Valley. One thing I expect from a hotel these days is a good TV. At the Barton Creek Resort in Austin there was a new flat screen in the room, but it had snowy reception on most channels. If I wanted to watch the World Series I had to squint to read the score. I called for service thinking it was a bad cable connector causing the problem. They sent a pleasant young fellow, but he couldn’t help. The audio/visual guy called the room and said there was nothing they could do. They knew the reception was bad but management won’t spend the money to improve it. Ok, so they buy new TVs for show, but don’t fix the problem. Next time I’m in Austin I won’t stay there.

Dinah’s Garden Hotel in Palo Alto had an old school tube type of TV. The cable was strong, but I expected a flat screen because of the room price. The Hilton in Pasadena had an LG flat screen and good reception. In all three rooms I was funneled to the hotel station, which showed paid programming each time I turned the set on. A stupid annoyance to me.

Another annoyance—each room had terrible lighting so there was no good place to read or write. In Austin there were even bulbs out. Are these cost saving measures supposed to annoy the customer? And at the two hotels in California the room attendants made the beds up so tight that you almost had to tear the sheets to get out of bed. Is this a time saver so they are easier to make up?

At each hotel, bottled water was displayed in the room—for sale. I kept thinking that for what I was paying they ought to include at least one free bottle. Some hotels are still trying to sell Internet service. What planet do they live on when virtually everybody has wireless access?

I know lodging is a hard, labor-intensive business. I will definitely go back to Dinah’s in Palo Alto because it is three minutes from my daughter’s house. The Hilton in Pasadena I would revisit because I loved Pasadena and they had drivers and a shuttle that made my life easier. The Barton Creek Resort was too pricey for the services provided and the location was too far from downtown Austin where the fun was.

Question: What’s the worst hotel experience you’ve ever had?

Eurostat projections for Bulgaria show the sharpest population decline and the largest share of older people in the EU.

I attended the PMPA annual meeting last weekend and watched an inspiring talk by Herbert E. Meyer, Former Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council.

He gave a unique perspective on where the opportunity lies in the coming decades for U.S. manufacturers. India, the Middle East and Africa will be the leading consumers in the next few decades, while Europe and Japan will literally die. According to Meyer, the Western capitalist democracies in Europe and Asia simply don’t produce enough children to support their aging populations. A rate of 2.1 births is needed to sustain a population, and modern capitalist welfare economies need young people to pay taxes to care for the retired geezers. In addition to providing tax revenue, large families spend a lot more money to fuel economies than the AARP folks.

Throughout Europe the family birthrate averages 1.5 children per family. According to Meyer, if Europe were to somehow reverse its downward spiral in population growth, it would take two generations to get back to the required replacement birthrate. In Germany 40 percent of college educated women have no kids. One out of seven couples gets married in England. Spain and Italy have rates of 1.2 children per family. Japan averages 1.5 births per family, and by 2020 one out of five Japanese people will be over age 70.

Everyone worries about the threat of China’s booming economy, but the country’s workforce shrunk for the first time last month as a result of its 1.1 birthrate. Nature’s ratio of males to females is 103 to 100. In India and China there are 118 males to 100 girls. One hundred million men in those countries will never marry–can’t be great for morale. According to Meyer, the present level of political unrest in China is higher than that in the Soviet Union two years before its 1992 revolution.

Speaking of Russia–the life expectancy of a male in that country is 58. Demographers predict that by 2050, Russia’s population will be smaller than that of Yemen. Thankfully, Hispanic immigrants have enabled the United States birthrate to hover right around the 2.1 children per family replacement required to leave its economy well positioned in the coming years.

While Europe dies, huge opportunity awaits in India, the Middle East and Africa. India has a healthy 2.8 children per family birthrate and many countries in the Middle East and Africa have large young populations. Manufacturing plants are finally beginning to sprout up in Africa. The Arab Spring is spawning democratic governments all over the Middle East (different interpretations of democracy than ours) that will eventually pave the way for a larger global middle class. Meyer said that each year throughout the world 50 million to 100 million people emerge from poverty. The new prosperous populations will need to build infrastructure, grow more food, and produce more fuel. They will manufacture goods domestically and want to buy goods produced by American companies.

Keep having babies and develop a taste for Falafel and Tandoori Chicken.

Question: Are you scared by the possibility of an Arab dominated Europe?

CBS news announced in January that Austin, Texas, leads the U.S. in job growth and CNN has it in its list of the 10 fastest growing cities

I attended the Precision Machined Products Association’s annual meeting in Austin over the weekend. The question I heard often was, “Why is my business so good if the economy is so bad?” Unfortunately the speakers hardly addressed this topic, so I will try to explain it.

1) Structural changes in the world economy now favor American manufacturing. A lot of businesses have gone away in the last 10 years. They’ve closed, moved to China, downsized, gone bust, or merged—and not much has started up in the last decade and a half. Manufacturing was downsizing in the ’90s but it was masked because of the Internet and telecom boom.

2) Automotive is coming back, but we mistakenly think of automotive as just GM, Ford and Chrysler—American vendors are doing a lot of work with Toyota, Honda, and Mercedes, too. High yen and Euro values relative to the past make America a low cost producer.

3) Relentless productivity advances in manufacturing makes for better margins. The press mistakes “restructuring” and cutting people as indicative of bad business. It may be the reason for continued good business. Head count and profits no longer rise together and even the Wall Street Journal misses it.

4) Contrary to popular opinion we are starting to get better young people to join manufacturing. Old people always think the younger generation is shiftless and inept, but I think that the notion that you cannot recruit capable new people is obsolete in this labor climate. Nonexistent desk jobs no longer look appealing next to $80,000 machinist jobs with benefits.

5) China is struggling to compete—wages are rising 15-20 percent per year, the workforce turns over constantly, there is a shortage of skills, and high-energy costs. The realization of what it really costs to make things in China with the travel, logistics, and quality issues has made outsourcing to China less attractive for American firms.

6) Innovation. If you look at big companies like Apple, Cummins and Amazon.com you see that America still has game. Add the brilliance of our farmers and the revolution in oil and gas production with horizontal drilling and you see a core economy that is thriving and world class, but one does not necessarily hire unemployed 56-year-old bankers.

All of this does not mean that Europe is not a mess and that retired Chicago teachers are going to get the pensions that were promised them for the next 50 years. The world economy is in the throes of a nasty restructuring not that different than what American manufacturing has gone through for the last 15 years. I like our odds. I wouldn’t bet on the French though.

Question: Do you feel optimistic about 2012?