EFFECT OF COLLABORATIVE WORK AND INFORMATION SHARING IN MACHINE TOOL INDUSTRY

摘要

Many manufacturing companies arc struggling with the availability of machinery and equipment needed for production. Many of these complex machines are unreliable and require extensive maintenance activities. Some of the primary consequences of machine downtime are higher production cost, low operator morale, higher WIP, and less customer satisfaction. This paper describes a project with an automotive company that decided to initiate a collaborative effort with one of its machine tool builders. This builder had been selected to design, build, and install a 50 million dollars piece of equipment. This paper describes how this project was managed to insure that the design and build process was reliability and maintainability (R&M) centered. To carry out this assignment, the user hired one of the authors to facilitate this joint effort. As a result of this one year endeavor, the following four major tasks were accomplished: (1) A formal design review sessions was conducted, (2) An elaborate FMEA on the critical subsystems was performed, (3) A thorough benchmarking and data collection activity was initiated, and (4) The environmental impact on the design was studied. The benefits of this effort were three-fold: (1) The builder gained a better appreciation for the significance of R&M activities on improving the performance of a machine, (2) The user acquired a better piece of equipment than anticipated, and (3) A new and improved reliability-based procurement and bid-packaging process was established. This article reports the findings of the study. In addition, the impact of collaborative work between the builder and the user on the life cycle cost (LCC) of machinery and equipment is discussed, and the need for change in the current equipment procurement practices is emphasized.