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At Buckley Owens we pride ourselves on developing smart solutions to help solve our customers most pressing issues. We measure the value of those solutions through the eyes of the customer, and the impact the solution has on their ability to compete and gain advantage in the markets they serve.
We will be posting some of the breakthrough results that have been accomplished in partnership with our customers, and to consider the technology advantages that now are moving them ahead of their competition.

Company Background
The company is the North American Leader in the design and manufacture of the best built, best performing and most reliable electric lift trucks.. The company has a reputation for innovative product design that enhances performance implementation of continuous improvement processes and advanced manufacturing systems that create manufacturing centers of excellence that build the highest quality trucks. They have displayed a commitment to applying advanced technologies such as automation, with the intent of lowering manufacturing costs while improving throughput.

The company requested a turnkey automated solution for manufacturing their hydraulic cylinders for all of their lift products.
Needing a way to produce a more cost competitive Hydraulic Cylinder and increase production to 100,000 cylinders a year.
The following determinations were made upon review of the process:
Reduce manufacturing lead-time to 1 day.
Eliminate the high amounts of WIP inventory sitting waiting for transport to the next workstation, cluttering the work area, slowing throughput and taking up valuable floor space.
Implement a large reduction in labor requirements while maintaining quality standards.
Doing so would require a significant reevaluation of manufacturing technology employed in hydraulic cylinder production, and refinement of process capabilities.

Key to the system, Material flow of a difficult to handle product is kept relatively simple, High volume parts arrive in prepackaged bundles are separated, singulated and transferred directly when required.
Promoting higher productivity; an individual operator can run a cell with several different processes and pull all material as required. There are no nonessential touches of the material. No costly non value added tasks providing direct and indirect labor savings.
Card board removal of the piston material is inline and requires no excessive handling and simplifies transfer of an easily damaged product to and onto a Bardons & Oliver Piston turning center. A matching automated handling system (minus the cardboard removal system) runs parallel to the hydraulic piston rod manufacturing system

Once the material handling system is fully loaded and operational it can be replenished quickly and easily while still running production or at off shift times.
An SS 354 4-axis Big Bore Twin spindle turning systen from Bardons & Oliver was installed in the piston line and a 2-axis 2SC-500 Big Bore Turning machine with a 15 station turret and a 20 station auto toolchanger was installed for manufacturing the cylinder housings in a second system line.
Materials, which include chrome-plated piston rod bar stock and honed steel DOM (drawn over mandrel) cylinder body tubing, are delivered in 15' to 28' lengths. Both machines allow material to be magazine-loaded. Both machines material handling system automatically indexes each new tube or bar into the spindle. The leading end is trimmed, parts are machined complete, and are then carried out of the cutting area by an automated steady rest/unloader system capable of unloading material up to 22' long. Remnant material ends are discharged automatically. Only one operator is required to control full system ( Handling & Turning machine systems combined).
All parts are finished complete, including threads on both ends of the piston rods, if necessary, and any drilling or milling that may be required. Parts are ready for assembly upon exit from the cell.

Higher productivity; an individual operator can run a cell with several different processes and pull all material high and low volume as required.
Maximized spindle-on time through automated material handling, transportation and material buffers.
Staff requirement reduction over 370%
On Time and in place utility is very high.
Non-value added tasks very small.
Short cycle times support Just-In-Time (JIT) delivery to the next operation
Floor space reduced 30 to 50%.
In-process inventory can be reduced 20 to 70%.
Cycle time reduced 40 to 65%.
Productivity increased 20 to 100%.
Non-value added time reduced 50 to 90%.
Quality improvement increased by 1 to 2 sigma.
Productivity-sapping clutter avoided.
Substantially improved return on assets.
Real-time inventory control can be easily added: