Case Study: Snow Shoe Cutting

Written By Mark Batson Baril

On this particular project we were asked to visit, and so we did. The following is a gathering of facts as seen from the manufacturers viewpoint...

A few quotes gathered during that visit;
"We dread the busy season this year. We make snow shoes and one of our major operations includes diecutting. We currently have twenty-eight different shoe models and each model averages five different cut shapes. These five parts will often be of at least three different materials all of which are fairly tough to cut multiple layer synthetics. We produced approx. 5,000 of each model during last year. About every two to three years the models change and so we must at least partially re-tool. Some of the models have an overlap of parts allowing us to combine diecutting runs. We currently use clicker/forged dies, steel rule dies, and specialty machined dies."

"Our problems include the following:"

• Sales of our product are increasing fast. They are also unpredictable in regards to which model will sell best and what the actual quantities will be.
• We are running two clicker type presses full time on two shifts and can barely keep pace. We plan to go to a third shift this year during the busy season.
• We believe that the diecut parts of our product will become obsolete within 5 - 10 years.
• Prototypes are needed by R & D, quickly and accurately from our CAD files. We have no way of doing this well.
• Yield is critical because our materials are so expensive. All our material comes in rolls. They vary from 36" (915mm) wide to 60"(1,524mm) wide. Currently we must slit and sheet everything to size and then make our cuts, not always enjoying a no-waste situation.

"The question is - Is there a better way, and what is it?"

A Better Way:

After gathering some facts from the outside, we have put together the following possibilities followed by a recommendation.

Put on the third shift and continue as you have been. This has the advantage of simplicity, very little capital cost and no additional space needed for production. Your operators are already trained and new ones will be easy to bring up to speed. Disadvantages include having to hire more people, no yield improvements, and no prototype abilities. The costs of doing this may prove to be the highest of all of the solutions mentioned here.

Put in another clicker press and keep the production to just two shifts. A good clicker type press can be purchased for under $8,000.00 USD and will save you a lot of money in the cost of actually setting up a temporary third shift. This doesn’t solve all the problems but it may be a good cheap fix for this year. Long term this still has the yield problem nipping at your heals. As we all know in the diecutting business, material is where the money can be made or lost!

Choose several of your common large quantity parts and have a diecutting manufacturer produce these parts for you. You can still control the materials and the timing for deliveries while someone else absorbs the cost of the machinery needed to do the job quickly and efficiently. You may be surprised at the overall cost of the purchased parts compared to your actual costs of cutting them yourself. The current manufacturer of your materials may even be able to provide you with this service and with today’s quick turn-around times, your unpredictable sales volumes will not be a problem. Your company can continue to produce the specialty and low volume parts in-house while having the stress of the high volume parts passed on to someone else.

Plan to purchase a new type of press. The perfect type of press for your situation would be a traversing head press with a belt delivery system that feeds from a roll. These presses can also be purchased with computer controls that allow for a best yield for material based on your CAD file. The head can turn in any direction as it travels in order to get the perfect nest and the fastest cut. These machines also have the advantage of being able to store into memory each part or job and to be able to recall this information at the touch of a button. Between this technology and tooling matched to it, set-up times would be very short. You would, more than likely, be able to use most of your current supply of dies. Cost would be around $ 80,000 USD. You would be able to eliminate your slitting and sheeting operations and should gain enough time to be able to reduce your full time cutting staff from four people to two. This combined with material gains may make it a very logical choice. The gains would outweigh the costs over the course of a few years, and should beat the obsolescence of your product by a wide margin. You may even be able to cut products for other companies in your area. The only area it misses is the prototypes!

We talked about waterjet cutting, CNC routing, and other computer driven cutting machines at our meeting. The advantages they all have are that they would enable you to produce prototypes, would allow you to get a great yield from the material, and would eliminate any tooling costs associated with your constantly changing models. They would also eliminate the slitting and sheeting of materials. The two big disadvantages they have are that they are slow compared to punching parts out with tooling, and they all are very expensive to purchase, possibly reaching past the $125,000 mark without blinking an eye. Typical running speeds on any of these machines will be between 30 and 200 inches per minute depending on the material and how intricate the cuts are, where as a tool with 30 to 200 inches of cutting surface can make an impression many times during that same minute.

From this group of five possible solutions it seems as though the traversing head press purchase is the most logical with prototypes being cut by an outside vendor. A closer look may uncover that a combination of the above suggestions may be your best choice.

Our recommendation at this point would be to gather together and take a closer look at your costs, especially those costs associated with wasted materials. Is it really possible to gain a significant amount of money by cutting materials to a better yield? How much time and money will you really save by not having to convert the rolls before they are die cut? What does your labor really cost you over the course of a year and does it make sense to try and reduce the labor cost? What are the sales predictions for the next five years and have they been accurate over the past five years?

The final conclusion set this company on a course that continued some production in-house while developing an outside source that cut finished parts and prototypes. A great solution for a semi-complicated situation.