Thomas Uloth

understand complex processes, analyze, identify critical paths and bottlenecks and provide fast help - these challenges have accompanied me on all professional stations. Three of them were:

Fritz Winter Eisengießerei

Performance improvement of the core shop

The special feature of the job for performance improvement in the core room was to create a quick help for the low value creation. Sales exceeded cost. The used technology was dominated; however, it was difficult to determine the variables of factors affecting quality. Different factors in the core room interact in a complex way: size, type, degree of angularity and grain size of sand, used amount of the resin and mixing ratio of curing components, exposure time, temperature and humidity during curing of the Core, state of the core boxes at the surface of the mold cavity, the fill and vent paths of the core sand and the filling pressure. Similar complex is the handling of cores from installation to the finished core package: drilling, screwing and gluing. All add technologies stand or fall with the smooth operation of industrial robots, grippers, screwdrivers, screw singlings, glue dosings and the curing of the glue with radiation energy. Also finishing the core surface requires great care with regard to adjustment and retention of the mixing ratio of water and ceramic powder. With this fullness of influences a concept was worked out with the operator within three weeks in order to achieve the required output.

Huf

Production process optimization in the zinc die casting

The complexity of the operation in the foundry was given by the variety of products and alloys and by the high differences in lot sizes in the downstream machining and assembly processes of manufacturing. A die-cast production is all the more economical the greater is the Gießlos. Because the non-negligible setup costs of a die casting machine during changing the mold will be allocated to the individual castings of the Gießlose. This logic conflicts with the storage costs of the castings because the downstream casting machining and assembly of parts cannot be made in the same stroke of casting production. Almost incidental but essential for success was the establishment of a kanban system to favor the proper classification and retrieval of castings. Great success brought the reduction of the setup time while changing the dies on the die-casting machines. In that manner the size of Gießloses and thus storage costs could be minimized cost-neutral.