Mechanical Technology October 2016

⎪ On the cover ⎪

Customer-centric manufacturing: The SMC way

SMC Pneumatics South Africa has invested heavily into the local economy and into its local production facilities, with some machinery being the first of its kind on African soil. MechTech visits the newly opened premises and talks to head of manufacturing, Peter Austin (right), who brings 28 years of SMC experience from the company’s UK facility in Milton Keynes.

P eter Austin has been involved in the manufacturing of pneu- matic components for his entire professional life. To date, he has accumulated 28 years of service at SMC, 20 of which were as manufacturing manager at the UK facility, which recently celebrated winning the Award for Manu- facturing at the local (Milton Keynes) Business Achievement Awards, 2016. “The UK facility is a made-to-order SMC subsidiary that manufactures mostly special products – over 90%. They make standard products for urgent out of stock orders, for example, but prefer to focus on products that need to be customised or those that are not immediately available off the shelf. This policy is driven by the company’s guiding philosophy of customer-centric design and ultimately, customer satisfaction,” says Austin. With a significantly bigger market, SMC began in the UK 38 years ago. Today, the facility has 230 internal staff with a nationwide sales team of around 120 technically trained sales engineers. “There is a strong electronics and semi-conductor industry in the UK, so the trend is to focus on smaller products for lighter applications. Here in South Africa, heavy industries such as mining are stronger, so there is a shift towards the larger ranges,” he points out. As well as its widespread use in automatic manu- facturing systems such as those used by the automotive industry, pneumatics is widely used in an array of industries including food and packaging, machine tools and many others. In addition, “both globally and in South Africa, we are the number one supplier to the Japanese automotive

industry and are equipped to deal with all automotive companies,” he says. “Generally speaking, we pride ourselves on strong relationships with the Japanese automotive industry.” SMC South Africa’s production capabilities SMC’s newest manufacturing facility, is modelled to achieve Japanese quality levels and to mimic long established manufacturing principles. Although smaller compared to the larger mass production sites in SMC’s portfolio, the company’s production structure ensures lean and efficient manufacturing. “All of our factories operate according to SMC’s production guidelines, from raw material storage to machining of components and then on to the assembly and testing of completed units,” says Austin. The actuator production process starts with the cutting of raw materials supplied by SMC’s mass production sites around the world. These materials come into the fac- tory and go directly into bulk storage. Stroke related parts are cut using cut- ting machines on receipt of a customer order and thereafter the machining is completed with either CNC machinery or special purpose equipment. “Here in South Africa, we can machine material with diameters from 3.0 mm to 320 mm. Both the cut-to-length and the finish- ing machines used are designed for preci- sion and repeatability. The operator puts the component in, clamps it down and performs the operation under automatic control. Rapid changeover is then made possible via pre-programming, even if the following component is a different size. “We often need to make many different,

smaller batches in quick succession and quick changeover principles ensure increased pro- ductivity and efficien- cies,” he explains. Thread rollers are commonly used to gen- erate the tie rod and piston rod threads for the majority of cylinder sizes.

Following cutting and de- burring of piston rods there are three CNC turning machines in the fa- cility. “These have highly sophisticated control systems, to such and extent that they are disabled if their position is dis- turbed. They have built-in GPS sensors that record the position on installation and if any change in that position is de- tected, the manufacturer is informed and the machine is automatically disabled,” Austin tells MechTech . The CNC machines are mostly used for manufacturing piston rods in the dif- ferent sizes required. For the smallest pistons, those with 3,0 mm to 12 mm rods, a Tsugami precision CNC machine is used: “These are watch-making machines for very small but accurate components. “Here in South Africa, the smallest size we do is the 3.0 mm rod for our 6.0 mm CJ2 cylinders,” he says, add- ing, “all the CNCs will also cut threads, but for the very small sizes, a three roll Fette thread roller systems is preferred. This is an instant process and, because the threads are formed and not cut, its clean and debris free.” For the larger piston rods, two preci-

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Mechanical Technology — October 2016