Thomas Brown Engineering
Tuesday 9th March 2010
Tuesday 9th March 2010
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Big development plans have prompted a new acquisition at Crosland Moor based, Thomas Brown Engineering Ltd. The company, who specialise in high quality, high precision, sub-contract components have recently taken delivery of a brand new Victor V-Turn 40. This 2 metre lathe with gearbox and high feed rates for heavy cutting, was purchased to meet the demand for larger, weightier precision made parts needed for the gas and oil industry. The 2 speed gearbox also offers high torque at low speeds to enable cutting of hard and wide ranging materials.
Thomas Brown Engineering currently works within the gas and oil sector, producing parts for companies who directly supply this industry. It is hoped that they can gain more work from this sector and are confident that the Victor V-Turn can help them achieve this.
Thomas Brown Engineering Ltd boss, Tom Brown, treated his staff to an afternoon away from work to enjoy a celebratory lunch. The meal was a gesture of thanks for their efforts which resulted in September being the highest ever month for turnover at the Crosland Moor based firm.
The sub-contract engineering company has seen significant growth in turnover over the last few years as their investment plans and efforts to improve their business have begun to pay off. They hope to accomplish their goal of 100% increase in business over 3 years, which they are on target to achieve by the end of this financial year.
The company's transformation began four years ago with the help of Huddersfield University's SME Support Network. Tom and his staff rolled out a 5S plan of continuous improvement throughout the business and since then have never looked back. The business has seen changes such as the huge improvements made to the workshop area, resulting in a cleaner, more organised and therefore more efficient way of working on the shop floor. Large investment has been made in the company's inspection department and office systems have been improved and updated thanks to investment in upgraded production software and new accounts software.
Tom Brown reflected that the huge efforts made by everyone at the company had made it possible to respond effectively to the upturn in workload and to seek new opportunities for work as capacity increased. "Significantly we have made investment in new machinery and new high tech tooling. We recognised a need to change the way we worked to remain competitive in a changing economic environment. We have been able to produce the high quality machining that we are known for, whilst remaining competitive. Today is a thank you to staff and recognition of their efforts which has resulted in a record month for turnover at Thomas Brown Engineering. I'm sure that this success can continue as we have put in place the groundwork for continued change and development."
An employee at Thomas Brown Engineering has been awarded a Highly Commended certificate in the City & Guilds Medals for Excellence scheme. The Medals for Excellence programme recognises and rewards exceptional people whose work makes them really stand out.
James Drury has been employed as a Toolroom Machinist at the Huddersfield based precision engineering company since August 2000. He completed his first year of a three-year City & Guilds Computer Aided Engineering NC/CNC Machine Setting and Operation course, at Huddersfield Technical College in 2006.
Tom Brown, Managing Director at Thomas Brown Engineering, commented,
"We were very happy that James wanted to expand his skills base and complete a Computer Aided Engineering Course. James is a skilled engineer and we are proud that his impressive achievement on his course has been recognised in this way. Thomas Brown Engineering encourages and offers funding for all it's employees to engage in further training and develop their skills."
Mr Brown continued, "We see investment in staff training and development as key to our continued success and growth."
James is now studying in the second year of the course. He is pictured here with his Certificate for Excellence.
The inspection department at Thomas Brown Engineering has been the latest beneficiary of the company's long term investment plans. A brand new state of the art Mitutoyo Measuring Machine has been installed in a newly built clean inspection room at the company's Huddersfield site.
This latest addition to the quality department is an important step forward for the firm whose motto, "we won't compromise on quality" is clearly visible when entering the site. The CMM will ensure that the company can accurately measure any component, regardless of its complexity and provide full computer generated inspection printouts for its customers.
Lean manufacturing and the principles of 5S play a major role in the day-to-day operations at Thomas Brown Engineering Ltd. Recently, the company played host to a meeting of local business leaders arranged through West Yorkshire Manufacturing Excellence Club (WYMEC) and the University of Huddersfield. Having worked closely with these organisations for over 2 years Thomas Brown Engineering Ltd was in a position to show what a difference the principles of Lean Manufacturing and 5S had made to the business and share experiences with those hoping to adopt these principles in their businesses.
These pictures show Tom Brown, Managing Director, and Alistair McKinna of the University of Huddersfield, explaining how the improvements had been made and how the momentum and enthusiasm for the project is kept flowing.
The visit proved a real success and the visitors seemed very impressed with the achievements made at Thomas Brown Engineering Ltd. Tom Brown commented on the importance of concentrating on "Lean" in today's economic environment, "Being lean means adding value to a business and decreasing waste, in any form. It is about identifying areas that can be improved, either by making a task quicker, easier or both, and achieving small gains. These small efforts soon accumulate to make a more organised business and a more pleasant working environment. It is about a team effort and the importance of getting all members of staff involved is an important factor to the success of the project. Placing emphasis on, "working smarter not harder", is key."
Popular in Germany, but not so with UK subcontractors - that's the hanging spindle vertical lathe. But one Yorkshire-based subcontractor has seen the light and is reaping the productivity benefits.
Quality control and lean manufacturing are important to most companies. For Thomas Brown Engineering they are "key areas of growth," according to owner Tom Brown. "We have had to look closely at not just what we are able to produce but how we produce it and how we control our production," he explains. "Hence we have implemented new TQM methods such as the Japanese developed 5S system; retained the ISO9001:2000 and introduced lean manufacturing."
The company, located in Huddersfield, has been manufacturing subcontract, precision machined parts for over 20 years. It provides machined components in a range of materials to the compressed air, oil, electronics, glass, aerospace and automotive industries.
An important factor in the move towards lean has been the purchase of a new Hardinge VL5 Vertical Lathe, and a CADCAM system for offline programming of this and other CNC machines in the workshop.
50-60% Cycle time reduction
The VL5 automatic load and unload process guarantees 100% efficient production output as soon as the cycle start button is pressed and there are raw material parts on the loading station. Because Thomas Brown Engineering turns large quantities of sawn billets or castings, typically in batch sizes from 50-1000-off. The major benefits achieved are in the efficiency and quality of parts produced. The Hardinge VL5 purchased includes live tooling turret and C axis to the wrap-around spindle, eliminating the requirement for secondary operations and considerably reducing cycle times.
"We are now able to have unmanned billets or castings loaded to the chuck without operator involvement," says Tom Brown, "we simply load up the prism loading system with raw material and unload the parts when finished. We are able to increase the efficiency by up to 60-70%, and because we have live tooling capability with a massive amount of torque, we can complete almost all secondary milling operations in one hit and are achieving a reduction in cycle time of almost 50-60% on these items." Customers, he says, benefit from the performance of the VL5 combined with the impact of the 5S system which is "transforming the work environment," making it cleaner and more efficient.
Purchase intentions prior to the VL5 purchase had favoured a horizontal chucking lathe, to supplement CNC bar fed and chucking lathes already in use. The thinking was that while a technician was loading the new chucking lathe, he could also operate a second bar fed machine. In practice, it would have meant that as well as removing parts from the bar fed lathe, the operator would also have to be unloading a component from a chuck, cleaning the jaws, and holding whilst the jaws clamped - difficult to do and dependant on continuous manning.
Eliminates operator fatigue
A better solution had to be found, says Tom Brown. "We are very experienced with bar fed lathes up to 55mm, chucking lathes and machining centre production and know the capabilities very well. A further purchase of a horizontal manual chucking lathe only added capacity and did not give us the edge in our market place - we needed an operator to be able to run two or even three machines efficiently."
With the Hardinge VL5 "one operator now looks after a bar fed lathe, a chucking lathe and the VL5, because the VL5 loads and unloads the parts automatically within 4.5 seconds chip to chip. We only have to load new castings or billets every 21 parts. Quality of repeatedly loaded billets and castings was also a consideration and because the Hardinge uses Cardanic plate to pick up the parts in the correct position every time. It also eliminates operator error and fatigue from the load/unload process. The parts don't have to be round either - we can accommodate just about any shape or form to the prism loading system and even foolproof the loading for correct orientation of the component."
Thomas Brown is the first subcontract engineering company in Yorkshire to use the Hardinge vertical lathe. In the past these types of machine installations have generally been restricted to large automated manufacturing environments. With the development of the Hardinge range the VL5 and VL3 stand alone machines are offered to any subcontractor or OEM who currently uses CNC lathes for chucking work.
A clean-up campaign has paid dividends for a Huddersfield company.
Thomas Brown Engineering called in advisers from Huddersfield University to help cut clutter at its Crosland Moor Premises. Now the move is helping the staff and management team to increase efficiency and productivity.
Owner, Thomas Brown linked up with Alistair McKinna, manufacturing adviser with the universities Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Support Network, to get the messy work-shop permanently spick and span.
The four-month project meant implementing a range of simple measures, such as ensuring that tools were cleared away after use and kept on wall-mounted "shadow boards," rather than left on worktops or in untidy toolboxes.
Employees were encouraged to store away equipment and tools they rarely needed, rather than leave them out all the time.
Mr Brown said the campaign to "de-clutter" the premises had resulted in better use of floor space and a more pleasant working environment.
He added, "we have found that a tidy workshop has increased efficiency, because people can find the tools they need more quickly."
The company makes precision-engineered components for various industries. Mr Brown said, " we deal with small batch orders, which means more time spent changing machine settings. Now, we can have a machine up and running more quickly, because operators don't spend time searching for tools."
The company received funding for the project through the SME Support Network, based at the universities school of computing and engineering. Under the scheme, small and medium sized firms get free manufacturing and technical help. The network can provide an expert to work with the company for five days free.
Mr McKinna said he was now advising other Huddersfield firms on the benefits of smartening up their operations.
"Other countries seem to have taken these principles on board a lot quicker than us," he said. "The UK is playing catch-up."
(Article taken from Huddersfield Examiner)
