First Company (Dallas, TX)
New Processing Strategies Incorporate Gap Frame Press Productivity To Handle Air Conditioner Manufacturer's “Hot” Market Opportunities

Four years ago, First Company, Dallas, Texas, addressed its need to replace its outdated press equipment. It sought a supplier that could satisfy several requirements, some of them unique to First Company. For decades, First Company worked with hand-fed presses; it now sought a more automated mindset, especially in their press room. The company also needed to maintain its strong reputation for on-time delivery…and doing so in an ever changing set of federal mandates for air conditioner efficiency.  They felt this could only be done using the most productive and durable of equipment. They needed a supplier that could train people who have been doing things one way for several years and help them quickly become adjusted to new processes – in multiple languages. First Company decided that SEYI Presses, Inc. was best-suited to meet – and exceed – all of these needs.

First Company’s manufacturing capabilities range from short runs of specialized products built to customer specifications, to high volume production of standard 2-20 ton units. First Company serves a variety of commercial and residential markets, such as college dormitories, apartment complexes and hotels.

Out With the Old…
To save on capital expenses, First Company’s initial strategy worked with used presses that were purchased at auction for its first 30-40 years of business, according to Barry Buchanan, Director of Manufacturing and Operations at First Company. He estimates that when those presses were finally retired, some of them had more than 50 years of use on them.

“We had terrific maintenance problems on those old presses,” Buchanan said. “It got to the point where we could not maintain them. We couldn’t get parts for them – at times, we were making our own parts for them.

“We finally came to the decision that we were in a losing situation and we were never going to be able to grow the business if we couldn’t run a sheet metal shop that produces the parts we need.”

…In With the New
When Buchanan joined First Company in 2003, he and Greg Nation, Manager of Manufacturing and Operations, established a mutual strategy to introduce more modern techniques and lean manufacturing into the company. They shopped around for a new press supplier and chose SEYI Presses (Tullahoma, TN), not only for their perception of  quality and value in their presses, but also because of the quality of SEYI’s training, support, and overall “drive to help” from their employees.

“SEYI’s people were very responsive to us,” Buchanan said. “They weren’t overbearing, but they were always there, answering every question we had.”

First Company’s initial purchase was a 220-ton hydraulic press for wrapper line production. Their strategy’s next stage has included the addition of seven SEYI Mechanical Gap Frame Presses: two 220-ton, three 176-ton, and two 88-ton presses. The 220-ton and 176-ton presses are SEYI SN2 Series two-point gap frame presses. They provide high-precision stamping for First Company’s applications that require larger dies/larger bed sizes. The 88-ton presses are SEYI SN11 Series single-point gap frame presses. They are ideal for general stamping applications such as blanking, piercing, forming, drawing and bending. Some of the features that each of the presses has in common are:

• Fabricated steel frame, cast slide and bolster
• Rigid frame with minimal angular deflection
• Full-length, high-precision six-point gibs for accurate slide guidance
• High accuracy transmission gears and high rigidity crankshafts
• Pneumatic high-torque combination wet clutch and brake
• Fast response hydraulic overload protection system
• Automatic lubrication system with self-monitoring
• And an industry-standard Wintriss WPC 1000 control system

The two-point gap, big bed presses also give First Company the benefit of front access and easy loading of dies.  Buchanan added that he was looking for the largest bed he could find with a gap frame press and that SEYI was the company that could provide it.

More Products, More Productivity
An excellent example of First Company’s increase in productivity is seen in its cabinet wrapper output. Prior to the upgrade in equipment, First Company could manufacture one cabinet wrapper every six minutes.  Since the arrival of the first new press, the company can turn out one cabinet wrapper every six seconds.  And the company is seeing impressive productivity increases with the SEYI Gap Frame Presses, as well.

With seven new, modern presses, First Company was equipped to offer more products in more sizes, which requires utilization of more dies. Buchanan says that First Company implements more than 200 different dies, the majority formed for one-hit operations, during manufacturing.

“Volume has increased because product range has increased, but also, we’re selling more units,” Buchanan said.

A Change to 13 SEER
First Company was met with a unique challenge in 2005 when the U.S. Department of Energy changed its minimum SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio) for HVAC products from 10 SEER to 13 SEER, a 30 percent increase, requiring the development of reengineered units. First Company had to maintain production of units with existing specifications while, at the same time, prepare to changeover to production of the new units which had to be made available by the government’s Jan. 16, 2006 deadline.

“Leading up to January ‘06, we were producing more units than ever before because we had to get them done and out to the dealers,” Buchanan said. “At the same time, we had to have material being prepped for the new products we had to start building on Jan. 16. So we had a tremendous volume of pieces all over the place and had we not had the new presses and servo feeders, we never would have made it.

“We produced the last unit that was on order, we were able to satisfy virtually all customer demands on schedule, and began building new units on Jan. 16. We didn’t miss a beat on that changeover. Our engineering group did a fantastic job to get us ready. And our people on the manufacturing floor did a fantastic job maintaining the production volume on the new units. And the SEYI’s were key to this success.”

Buchanan estimates that if First Company was not as properly equipped and prepared for that changeover in 2006, the company may have lost $10-15 million in business.
“I’m sure there was millions of dollars of business that we were able to capture that we wouldn’t have been able to if we didn’t have the manufacturing capacity provided by the new equipment,” he said.

Speed + Durability = On-Time Delivery (aka: Satisfied Customers)
One of the many reasons First Company has thrived for so long is that it customers have been able to depend on delivery of products in a timely manner. SEYI presses have helped the company to increase production while maintaining lead times. Buchanan attributes that to the speed and durability of the presses.

“The throughput of the SEYI presses is faster because we are often able to operate in semi-automatic mode,” Buchanan said. “Without a doubt, I can get more punches on the SEYIs per hour than I could get on the older presses.”

Buchanan added, “The other big thing is that they don’t go down. We run two shifts and I don’t think those presses have stopped running since we put them in service. They keep chugging right along.”

Buchanan believes that many other vendors have experienced a recent drop in sales, but says that First Company is in the midst of a record year. He feels that is due to two reasons.
“We deliver a quality product and we deliver it on time,” Buchanan said. “I think that the presses, combined with the servo press feeds, have allowed us to increase our stamping output without a reduction of end-product customer delivery lead times because we have the ability to build what we need, when we need it.”

First Company’s busy season is the spring leading into summer, when many construction projects that won’t be going on in the winter get under way. Plus, the schools that First Company supplies equipment to do all of their maintenance and construction during the summer. Downtime on older presses needing repair was typically weeks, even months on occasion. To escape disaster in the past, First Company often needed a “fabricate it ourselves because the parts aren’t available” strategy for the older presses. The reliability of the SEYI presses has eliminated that type of stress at First Company.

Meeting Training Challenges
Buchanan says that the biggest undertaking First Company had with the implementation of new presses was retraining it employees. “The idea of running a press in semi-automatic mode was a foreign idea around here for a lot of years,” he said. “Old habits are hard to break.”

Buchanan said that the focus was placed on minimizing the setup time and improving the throughput of the machines. He added that some employees were skeptical that switching to an automated process would be effective, but minds were changed quickly following a few success stories.

Another benefit of working with SEYI’s people and products that First Company has enjoyed is SEYI’s ability to address a language barrier at First Company’s facility. Many First Company workers are Hispanic and many are not fluent with the English language. SEYI’s press controls, as well as many of their sales and support employees, are bilingual, which in turn enables First Company to conduct its training on the new presses bilingually.
“It’s very important to us that SEYI can provide a service person who can communicate in the language spoken on our floor,” Buchanan said. That eliminates the need for a third-party interpreter, which sometimes led to misinterpretation.

“Training operators in their first language makes the learning process a lot shorter,” Buchanan said.

Benefits of Automation
Ease of use has also helped First Company improve its part quality and consistency because parts don’t have to be reprogrammed after the initial programming.
“The fact that the presses have the ability to store the parameters for the parts gives us a lot of repeatability that we didn’t have in the past,” Buchanan said. “We just love what the Wintriss controls bring to our shop floor.”

Converting to lean manufacturing has aided First Company in cutting its raw material cost as a percentage of its total manufacturing cost, despite a significant rise in the cost of steel, aluminum and copper.

“A lot of that is due to good planning,” Buchanan said. “We make better use of our material and we haven’t been building stuff we don’t need. Therefore, because we don’t have material sitting around with the potential to be damaged or scrapped, our scrap rates have gone down.”

One of the factors leading to the reduced scrap rates, according to Buchanan, is the ability of the presses to communicate with their feeders. The length of metal being fed into the press meets exact specifications, whereas in the past, it was, as Buchanan describes, a “hit-or-miss situation.” This was especially true in extra long feed situations, according to Buchanan: “Long feeds were an issue. Our press feeds offer a mode of “Feed Signals Press/Press Signals Feed” that’s used in many of our long part processing when you can't really time the press in the feed mode to meet the press stroke timing because of the extra long feed. The feature allows the system to feed the proper coil length and only then, send a signal back to initiate the stroke. And it does this over and over and over without our operators needing to press palm buttons. Trying to run those long pieces in automatic mode just doesn’t happen, because of time factors and strokes per minute and the feed of the part. It has sped up and simplified the process of our long part feed work.”

The new presses have also eliminated the need for batches and more of a drive to lean manufacturing. A lot of the scrap in the past was caused by building a surplus of products that sat in a staging area and were often damaged while being moved throughout a building, creating a need for a rebuild. “Up until five years ago, we used the age-old technique of ‘let's minimize our set up time, so when we build something, let's build a whole bunch of them’. What we wanted to do is to not minimize set up time, but instead let's still worry about how to get the set up time smaller while not trying to optimize large numbers of parts. Why? We were using a lot of press time to build something that we weren't going to need or we wouldn't need for 7 or 8 months. We had parts all over the place and many times, we either lost them or we damaged them. So we ended up making them over again, and we were using valuable press time to build stuff that we weren't going to use for months. So that was the first step, convincing people that we really didn't need to optimize set up time over large numbers of parts.”

A Boost In Safety
Automation has enhanced worker safety at First Company. Its insurance company’s loss prevention expert recently determined that First Company’s time lost due to worker injury has decreased each year since SEYI presses have been in use. Buchanan says that applying a largely hands-off operation naturally reduces the potential for accidents.

“Once the die is set and the part program is running, there is a lot less interaction between the operator and press,” Buchanan said. “The operator does not have to continually go in and try to make adjustments to the press.

“Without automation, there is a tendency for operators to try to get in there and muscle out jams, which is a formula for disaster. But we have not had a serious injury since we implemented the new equipment.”

Buchanan points out one key safety feature on the presses: “These presses employ a hydraulic overload protection system. It doesn't give the operator carte blanche to ‘stick it’ anywhere he wants it, but it gives a little more protection to the press if they do stick it a little deeper because the material might be a little thicker. It offers a very quick reset to get out of the jam and back into production. There were many cases in which our old presses would jam and we'd be sitting there for another 3 or 4 hours before you could get that press back in operation. The overload feature has eliminated these issues.”

Aside from the inherent safety features of the SEYI presses, First Company has its own policies designed to protect its workers. It does not allow any equipment to run without guards, light curtains or floor pads. In fact, every machine has a lock-out, tag-out procedure that prevents its operation if a light curtain malfunctions.

Future Considerations
Moving forward, Buchanan says First Company will continue to improve quality throughout its operations.

“HVAC systems are electro-mechanical with lots of parts,” Buchanan said. “We’re constantly looking for ways that we can take parts out of the cost and improve the quality of the systems.”

Its new 16,000 square-foot distribution facility will allow the company to maintain a larger inventory of stock items. The company will also continue to look at methods of reducing lead times without inflating raw materials inventory. They expect that greater automation processes (such as part and scrap conveyors, quick die change equipment/techniques, other material handling/dunnage concerns, process monitoring systems/procedures to help view individual press statistics from a remote site, etc.) will be a key directive over then next few years.

First Company also plans on replacing some older remaining presses with SEYI presses in the coming years. “There’s no doubt, we will ‘say yes’ to SEYI again,” Buchanan said.

About the Companies
SEYI Presses, Inc., with North American headquarters in Tullahoma, TN and a Regional Sales/Service Office in Walnut, California, is a globally-leading producer of Mechanical C-Frame, Straightside and Link Style Presses. For more information, contact SEYI Presses, Inc, 843 Joint Park Blvd, Tullahoma, TN 37388. PH: 931-455-7700, FAX: 931-455-6092, email: sales@seyiamerica.com, website: www.seyiamerica.com.

For more information on First Company Products, contact them at 8273 Moberly Lane (PO Box 270969), Dallas, TX 75227. Phone: 214-388-5751. Email: sales@firstco.com. Web: www.firstco.com.