Improvement target for productivity was set from Rs. 75/man per hr to Rs. 125/man/hr for this year.

This target is to be achieved by

Training of Operators.
Improvement in Tooling

Tooling For Steering Rack bush Pt no. A012121200.
We were using 3 tools of 9 cavity,4 cavity ,4 cavity for production of 25000 components.
Time required to complete the production was 945 hrs with cycle time of 15 min per mould. Bulk of the cycle time involved was for demoulding and physically removing the pcs. Shot weight per pc was 22gm.
A new 6 cavity mould was made and run on transfer moulding machine.
This mould was mounted on press resulting in automatic opening and closing of mould.
Ejectors were provided to eject the component from stripper plate.

The total cycle for this mould has been reduced to 4.8 min as a result. Now we can produce 25000 No.s in 333 hrs instead of earlier 945 hrsusing two operators instead of 6 operators.Besides there is a material saving of 10gm per pc.
Because of this we have been able to pass on 1.5% discount to our customer M/s Sona Koyo Steering systems on our entire sales to them amounting to approximately Rs 150000 this year.

Quarter glass Seals : When our customer supplied us the moulds for these seals
We had quoted on breakeven volumes of 800 pcs per day but when actual production started, we could only produce 400nos per day.

On analyzing the reasons for low productivity it was found out that the reasons were
High Rejection because of material shrinkage (15 to 20%)
High cycle time because cooling was by air

We provided cooling channels in the moulds
Results
Our per day production is now 1000pcs.
Rejection is down to first 5 setup shots.

Saving to the company:
As a result of this exercise,The project of 40000 seals per month which required 2.5 machines(Each M/c costing Rs 60,00000 is now reduced to 1.25 machines.
We have been able to offer 20% lower rates to our customer from our nearest competitor who had been running these moulds for 3 years now.