THE CHALLENGE:

A major Tier 2 automotive transmission supplier needed equipment that was capable of maintaining product specification tolerances required by its major automotive manufacturers.  The customer had an automatic multi-station assembly machine that was not capable of producing parts to the Six Sigma specification.  It needed to be fixed or replaced.

Transmission Seal	Transmission Seal Shown in Transmission

THE ANALYSIS:

A Dempsco sales engineer was contacted by the customer’s manufacturing engineering group to arrange a visit to the plant to review the project.  During the visit, it became clear that the existing machine and radial forming process could not be controlled, consistently measured, nor was there a way to get data from the process.

A Dempsco sales engineer gathered sample parts and information and took them to Orbitform in Jackson, MI for further product and process testing.  Orbitform’s extensive testing and development lab resources helped reveal several weaknesses in the existing radial forming process, the fixturing, and the automation design of the customer’s current machine.  Dempsco and Orbitform worked together with the customer’s manufacturing engineers to come up with a robust orbital forming process which would meet the Six Sigma requirement.

THE SOLUTION:

Orbitform built and designed a multi-station dial index machine complete with automatic material handling including automatic bowl feeding, a shaft storage and feeding magazine, pick-and-place units, cleated belt conveyor and precision automatic table indexer.  The design function of the machine and the fixturing was critical to maintaining control of the orbital forming process.  Watchdawg Process Monitoring and Control was used to obtain reliable data from the orbital forming process.  The data collection provided by Watchdawg allowed the customer to guarantee his automotive end customers that the transmission valve seals were meeting Six Sigma.

	Watchdawg  Process Monitoring by Orbitform
	Orbital Powerhead with Force Monitoring Load Cell

The Dempsco sales engineer worked simultaneously with the customer to provide a precision YAG marking system which allowed the customer to serialize and date code product as it came off of the assembly machine.  The laser marking system automatically captured parts exiting the Orbitform machine and conveyed them to a packaging process without operator involvement.

Automatic Multi-station Laser Marking System

This complete manufacturing process allowed the customer 100% traceability of product and the successful production of Six Sigma parts in a highly efficient manufacturing system.  The customer was able to maintain his supplier status with his automotive customers and eventually win additional new business orders.