Industry insights, product updates & customer wins

Published via LinkedIn by Bruce Thomas, May 2021

Depending on the size of your workplace, you likely have one or more forklifts or other industrial trucks at your disposal in order to keep your profit centers running efficiently. Even if you only need the one, there are some rules that prove universal when it comes to making the most of your machine and its efficiency in your job shop, saving you time and money. Here’s tips we’ve gathered from the team at Tempus Tools and their decades of experience to find out how you can easily make your forklift even more efficient.

Your forklift is useful, but is it accessible?

Your forklift is far less useful to you if you struggle to access it within your workplace. Make sure that your forklift is always returned to the same designated area when you finish using it. You can mark this out with brightly colored floor tape. Make sure that this area, as well as the walkways the forklift regularly uses, is never blocked off by pallets or other equipment.

If fetching your forklift seems to take longer than it should, or if it’s in such high demand that you or others have to go into downtime, this is also an issue of accessibility. In this scenario, it might be wise to consider getting a second forklift and setting up an additional parking space on the opposite end of the floor. If the functions of the areas are different enough (e.g. one area is production-based while the other focuses on incoming and outgoing deliveries), segregate each forklift to its own operation zone so that each area can have sufficient access to a machine.

Are you using your forklift safely?

Although it is easy to get used to your forklift operating around you, as the only mobile heavy machine in the job shop it is easily the most dangerous, and should not be underestimated. On average, forklift accidents cause 85 deaths, 34,900 serious injuries, and 61,800 non-serious injuries in the US annually.

On the shop floor, it’s every employee’s job to keep themselves and others safe. This includes a safe environment, systems of work, well-maintained machinery, proper training and supervision, and complying with all safety rules and regulations. Here’s some of the ways that you can maximize safety around your forklift:

1. Keep a log of employees that are licensed to use your forklift. Only licensed operators should be allowed to use the machine, and unlicensed trainees should be supervised at all times while operating. Inexperienced operators are far more likely to mishandle heavy loads, or to misjudge stopping distances and safe turning speeds.
2. Establish a safe speed limit in your workplace. Reckless speeding shortens reaction time; even an experienced operator can get too comfortable. Place signs around operating areas, and ensure that operators stick to the speed limit.
3. Keep the safety of pedestrians in mind at all times. Clearly mark out walkways for them to use with floor tape and/or safety barriers. Forklifts should be equipped with both audio (alarms and horns) and visual (flashing lights) warning signals to alert pedestrians to nearby forklifts. On their part, pedestrians working near forklifts should wear high-visibility clothing in order to stand out to drivers.
4. Maintain your forklift, and make repairs through a reputable maintenance company. Due to the weight of the forklift and the loads it handles, a mechanical failure at the wrong moment can be catastrophic. Having your forklift properly repaired reduces the potential risk of accidents, and your insurance company may not cover you if you’re not adequately maintaining your equipment. Go through a safety inspection checklist at the beginning of each shift to make sure that the machine is in safe working condition.

Remember, be responsible. Training workers, understanding loads and the capacity of your forklift, and being careful does take time and money, but disregarding these practices could ultimately be more costly if an accident were to occur.

When do you need to replace your forklift?

At a certain point in a forklift’s life, it’s more expensive to keep using it than it is to replace it. Not only will maintenance costs continue to mount, but there is also the hidden cost of its decreasing productivity, resulting in a loss of income as time goes on.

Total cost of a forklift VS Age of forklift

A forklift’s economic lifespan mainly depends on the kind of use it’s seen – harsh environments, heavy use, and a lack of regular maintenance will wear a machine down over time.

Maintenance is fairly self-explanatory—only fixing problems as they arise will allow smaller problems to be ignored and escalate over time.

The average forklift’s economic lifespan tends to range between 12,000 and 14,000 operating hours, or 2,000 hours annually. A well-maintained machine that sees less than 2,000 a year will last roughly 7 years before it needs replacing. In excess of 2,000 gives you closer to 6 years.

A forklift that works in a harsh environment or with less than regular maintenance can lose as much as 2,000 operating hours of its maximum lifespan, leaving a sparingly used forklift with 6 years of use, and an heavily used one with only 5.

As the purpose of a forklift is, essentially, to maximize profit, one has to weigh its profits (hours of use) against the ownership and maintenance costs. If a forklift was to operate as new, with little to no maintenance costs, the profits would pay back the ownership costs easily over time. It’s only with the accumulation of maintenance costs over time that the forklift starts to operate at a loss. It’s up to you to calculate when your machine has reached the end of its economic lifespan, before its expenses outweigh its profits.

How has your job shop changed since you first got a forklift? What do you wish you’d known before getting one? What safety precautions do you have in place to prevent accidents?

Bruce Thomas,

Executive (Product), Tempus Tools

https://www.mccue.com/content/forklift-accident-statistics

https://rmh.com.pk/the-optimal-time-to-replace-your-forklift/

Published via LinkedIn by Bruce Thomas, April 2021

Although a byproduct of the manufacturing process, scrap metal is most likely the only revenue generator a manufacturer has besides the products it makes.

Last year, we saw a laser cutting job shop and Tempus Tools customer gain $144k in revenue from selling their scrap metal. They were able to achieve this by treating their scrap as another valuable commodity to be sold, and monitoring and maximizing every aspect of their scrap program.

So how do you successfully run a profitable scrap program? The key is preparation and process.

Preparation

Preparing your scrap metal by organizing into material and grade will ensure you are getting the highest price for your scrap.

Grade 304 Stainless Steel and grade 316 stainless steel are the most popular and widely used types of stainless steel. Your scrap metal merchant will give you more for your 316 scrap, so it is important to keep these two types of steel in separate bins. If your 316 bin contains any amount of 304 steel, chances are you will end up receiving a payment for the bin’s value as 304 steel.

Different sizes of scrap will also fetch different prices, as they need to be processed differently:

Blanks: an uncut sheet of material.

Skeletons: a used sheet of material with parts cut out of it

Bushings: thin material under 300 by 300 millimetres/11.8 inches.

Insize: thick material under 300 by 300 millimetres/11.8 inches.

If kept separate and clean, bushings and insize will respectively fetch roughly 5% and 10% more than skeletons. Just like with materials, if it’s not clear what sizes a particular bin contains, you may receive a lower price than what you are selling is really worth.

It’s worth noting that not every scrap dealer has the same process – ask questions about their process and how best to handle outgoing scrap. Some scrap shops will pay more for skeletons that are cut down to smaller sizes. Adding remnant cuts in your nesting software keeps your scraps at a regular size, with the bonus of making it easier to manage around the shop.

For example, if you chop your skeleton 1 meter(3ft) by 1 meter, this will fit on a standard pallet. Strap the whole lot up and your good quality skeleton is looking more valuable to your scrap dealer.

Prepare your bins and ensure general waste bins are also available. Make sure your entire team is briefed on the location and use of each bin (you may want to consider sending monthly reminder emails). The last thing you want is for a valuable scrap bin to be polluted with cheap materials or general waste! to ensure you are all on the same page.

Process

Having a clear and consistent process for your scrap metal will enhance your overall operational efficiency. For example, when and how should the scrap bins be filled, and by whom? If the usual fork truck driver is sick, who will manage, transport, and sort scrap until he returns?

One method which is very effective to efficiently separate types of material is to colour-code your metal sheets. Keep a coloured spray can handy and as a pack comes in, spray the side to leave a coloured edge on the sheet, easy for you to later sort.

Once you’ve decided on a plan and a process for your scrap, it is strongly recommended to nominate someone in charge of overseeing the scrap process, trading, and negotiation. This eliminates any discrepancies and ensures consistency in operations and in revenue.

Bruce Thomas,

Executive (Product), Tempus Tools

You breathe in as you run your fingers along the beautifully smoothen edges. Your eyes start to twinkle as you get closer, tilting your head to admire the sharpness of the cut.

Nothing can compare to a well-designed, quality cut laser part. The problem is, if your parts are not designed to deal with secondary processes such as folding and bending, all the beauty and benefits from laser cutting can be lost.

Here are our top tips for achieving the best results when bending or folding laser cut parts:

1. The fewer bend radii, the less tools setups you will need.

Avoid using different bend radius in a single part. The smallest inner bending radius should be of at least one material thickness. Generally, designing an inner radius equal to the material thickness will simplify your bend allowance calculations and avoid material fracture.

2. If the flange is too short, the part may fall into the die.

To avoid distortion of the part and damage to the operator or the tooling, make sure that the smallest flange is at least 4 times the material thickness plus the bending radius.

3. Avoid placing holes closer than 3 times the thickness plus 1 bending radius to the bend.

This will avoid deformed holes. If you need to place a hole or slot closer to the bend, it is better to extend these holes beyond the folding line for better results.

4. Allow some space between the chamfer end and the folding line.

When you need one or two chamfered ends in the flanges, the chamfer must leave enough room to accomplish a proper bend. Same 3 times thickness plus one bending radius rule apply.

5. Replace mounting holes with slots.

Whenever possible, in parts with multiple bends, mounting holes should be replaced by slots to allow for tolerance stacking.

6. Try to design parts as symmetric as possible.

This is to avoid parts bent in the wrong direction due to operator confusion.

7. Avoid designing small flanges on big parts.

These bends make manufacturing very difficult and labor intensive.

8. Check feasibility of successive bends.

When designing parts with successive bends, check the feasibility of the part because sometimes it is not possible to fit the already-bent part onto the die.

9. Place all the bends aligned in order.

If the part has several flanges in succession, it is best to place all the bends aligned in order to minimize readjustments during the bending process and save time.

10. Always design bends parallel to a side of the part.

For positioning purposes, try to always design bends parallel to a side of the part. Oblique bends are difficult to align and may result in rejected parts.

11. Include bend reliefs

Include bend reliefs (at least 1 thickness wide) on the sides of flanges to prevent the material from tearing or deforming on the flanges’ ends.

12. Bend perpendicular.

Where possible, bending perpendicular to the rolling direction of the material should be preferred. This will prevent fractures on hard materials.

13. Calculating flat pattern lengths.

Finally, when you design folded parts, and you are drawing the flat pattern yourself, you have two ways of calculating your flat patterns length. Depending on how you measure both legs of your bent part you will have to calculate either the Bend Allowance or the Bend Deduction.

The total flat length of the part (L_t) can be calculated as:

L_t = A + B – BD or,

L_t = A + B + BA

Bend Allowance
To calculate bend allowances we will use a K-factor that represents a ratio that represents the position of the neutral plane (the plane within the material that is neither compressed nor stretched when the material is bent) with respect to the thickness of the part.

K=t/T

To calculate Bend Allowances using the K-factor you can use the following formula:

Where;

BA: Bend Allowance

R: Inside bend radius

K: K-factor

T: Material thickness

T: distance from inside facto to neutral plane

a: bend angle in degrees.

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Bend Deduction‍

To calculate the Bend Deduction:

This way you can calculate the total flat length using BA or BD.

To calculate the K-factor, the easiest way is to reverse engineer it. For that you can cut a strip of the material you need and make a 90º bend. Then measure both legs of the bend and calculate the Bend Deduction. Using the following formula, you can calculate the K-factor:

You can manually calculate the flat lengths or use your preferred CAD system to unfold the parts for you. In this case, you may input the K-factor you just calculated to give accurate dimensions for your parts given your particular tooling and material.

Felipe Luchaga

Director, Tempus Tools

Most job shops produce a reasonable amount of scrap. It’s not just what goes in the bin that costs you the money – calculate the material quote the wrong way and you end up paying for this scrap rather than your customer.

There are four common methods for calculating material utilization.

• area of a single part
• rectangular bounds (with web allowance)
• true shape single part nesting
• true shape multipart nesting

A recent survey of 100 customers worldwide over two years has shown that approximately 56% of the revenue in laser job shops is derived from the sale of material.

Understanding material consumption in a month is always very complicated and depends upon what has been consumed in work in progress (WIP),what is in stores, and the remnants you are also holding in the store.

We define nesting methodologies as;

Area based material consumption is where the area of the part (the part itself, not the bounds) is calculated and then divided into the sheet. It does not allow for any web and is quite inaccurate in most cases gives a lower price per part than is required.

Rectangular nesting is the safest in terms of making sure that you have charged for all the material that is used given that rectangular boundary around the part is always larger than the part itself. This means that a larger percentage of scrap is back charged to the customer, the problem arises when you don’t win the business as the material cost will be higher than competitors that are using more advanced methods to calculate the material component of a part.

True shape single part nesting Uses the best of both worlds. It rotates parts to fit into each other and therefore reduces the overall price. this method normally mimics the CAM system that you will be using to cut so you are getting a realistic utilization of material. The part price is calculated on how many parts can fit on a sheet.

Multipart nesting will take several different parts of common material and nest them on one or more sheets. It is efficient in the use of the material (and therefore creates a lower sell price) but if you don’t cut those parts in the same group you will potentially end up losing money as a result of the ability of the multi shape nesting software. This will give you a lower price however you need to be aware of the real value you are charging for the material. Another issue of multipart nesting to calculate a price is that your nest is based only on the pool of parts in the quote. There may not be a good mix of parts available to calculate an efficient nest. In some cases, depending on available geometries, multipart nesting can be more expensive than other methods, especially when you consider low part quantities, the material charge is generally based upon the strip of a sheet consumed.

If we take a simple case of a part 300mm by 100 mm and 10 mm thick (which we will use as a web) and use three different methods of costing the material with the price at $500.00 then:

• Rectangular nesting gives 126 parts per sheet this gives us a part cost of $3.97
• Area or the part plus the web which gives us 131 parts per sheet and a cost of $3.79 which is 5% lower than rectangular nesting.
• Area or the part NO WEB gives 150 parts per sheet giving $3.33 per part 16% lower than rectangular nesting.

This doesn’t seem much when considering one off jobs but given that on average an industrial laser cutting machine will process about $1,000,000 of material a year, the potential lost revenue is between $50000 and $150,000 dependent upon which type of nesting you use.

Using the True shape nesting model to calculate material sell price can take this figure to well over $200000 as this method rotates and interleaves parts to make the best nest with a close approximation to the CAM system that you will be using when cutting the parts.

In conclusion it is very important that you understand what your quoting system is doing in terms of calculating a price for material. If it is too low, you are losing profit and if it is too high you are losing customers. It is quite important that you have software that can mimic the real production methods and you should continually do an audit on quoting through to programming through to cutting.

Bruce Thomas

Executive (Product), Tempus Tools

Sales and support specialist Steven Foster shares his journey beginning as a Tempus Tools customer and evolving into a proud and passionate employee.

In 2010 I was working at a laser cutting job shop and I was given the responsibility of trialling a new software from Tempus Tools for our business.  We had originally envisioned it as an external system only, however, this rapidly changed when we saw how quick, easy and accurately we could push DXF’s through the system.  It was much more efficient than our historic process of quoting which included dimensioning and printing the drawings then entering this data into a manual system in which there were many opportunities for error. As I was learning how to quote in these early days it minimised the chances of me making terrible blunders, but my more experienced colleagues loved it for its speed and accuracy.

“Overall, we loved it for its speed, accuracy, efficiency & consistency across the board”

Being early adopters, the team had the opportunity to provide reporting and query things in the system that we felt could be changed or improved. We would regularly talk to our Account Manager at Tempus Tools and provide feedback and ideas to which they were extremely open. Over time, the relationship extended into one of a trusted partner. We were often asked to look at new product ideas, and test new functions, before a general release to ensure continuous improvement of the product.  I was so excited about the new ideas that I often tested the products outside of working hours and in my own time.

“Over time, the relationship extended into one of a trusted partner”

In 2016, our management decided to move from Tempus Tools into a full MRP & nesting software that integrated a quoting solution. When this decision was made, we were no more than two days behind with our quoting at the worst of times. Within a few months of installing the new MRP, we had lost our prompt quoting advantage and had fallen back into being three weeks behind on quoting even with more staff on board! In short, we had gone from returning quotes usually within the same day as they were received, to now not getting the quotes out to the customer until after they had the parts delivered from one of our competitors!

Our team knew that we needed to return to Tempus Tools in order to regain our timely quoting process and maintain the accuracy that management were looking for. Within weeks of going back to Tempus Tools, we were up to date, had improved our sales conversion, and reduced our quoting staff in sales by half. This allowed us to deploy those employees in other areas of the business. From this point our job shop went from strength to strength.

“Within weeks of embracing Tempus Tools, we were up to date, had improved our sales conversion, and reduced our quoting staff in sales by half”

I met Ivan Cooper, Managing Director of Tempus Tools in 2016 when my team moved back to using their software. We immediately clicked. The brainstorming of ideas and conversations about how this software could be used would last all day with great results for both companies at the time. Ivan offered me work experience with his business with a view to setting up an office in the UK. I now lead the UK operation of Tempus Tools where I support customers to optimise their use of our software. I also provide product demonstrations and implementation support for new customers within the UK and abroad.

Since joining Tempus Tools, I have not looked back. I love meeting people as passionate as me within the laser cutting industry.  It is interesting to see how different companies operate and are evolving with new technology.  But best of all I get to show them how we can streamline their quoting process. The comments of how powerful, friendly, and speedy the system is to use is always validating. It fills me with great pride that we offer one of the best solutions in the industry for laser cutting quotes.

“It fills me with great pride that we offer one of the best solutions in the industry for laser cutting quotes”

As to the future, I am passionate about seeing our market share increase as we gain recognition within the industry as one of the “go to” solutions for laser cutting software & our extensions for order management. Success, for me, will be growing my team and being able to impart my love of our product throughout the UK and EU.

An intelligent experience is the combined impact of data, automation, mobility, AI, and the Cloud with a focus on bringing more value to the customer. This is achieved not only by the valuable experience that is created, but also by the speed in which these experiences are delivered.

In a recent article by Industry Week, it is noted that manufacturers who have embraced flexible manufacturing, 4.0, digital supply-chain optimization, digital commerce, digital service and the cloud, are able to create intelligent experiences and are currently thriving.

Unfortunately, many job shops are still left behind and are relying on outdated ways to produce quotes for their customers. The quotation process is rigid, slow, cumbersome and costly. This leaves job shops struggling to meet customer’s expectations of a fast and effective experience.

At Tempus Tools, we are continuously working to improve and develop our software’s functionality to help you create intelligent experiences for your customers and your employees. Our goal at Tempus Tools is to help you replace your ineffective traditional service model for a modern, automated, and intelligent one that delivers the service experience today’s and tomorrow’s customers want and expect.

Learn more about how we can help you.