IPECO Cutting into costs with ITC
From small acorns grow great trees; this statement makes a fine description of IPECO of Southend, Essex. The family run business commenced operations in the 1960's as an aerospace subcontractor and in the 1970's it purchased the Teleflex Morse group, a manufacturer of aircrew seats. Its first major customer in the 1970's was Lufthansa; the company has since grown to become the world's largest manufacturer of seating for commercial aircraft. All Boeing aircraft are now fitted with IPECO seating.
Since the 1970's the company has taken ownership of a carbon fibre company, an upholstery business, an electronics company as well as diversifying into making galley equipment. Beside this, the group also acts as an aerospace subcontractor with a client base boasting prestigious names such as AMS, BAE and GEC Marconi. With the operation continually expanding, IPECO has spent in excess of £400k in 2004 on machine tools. To gather a concept for the scale of the ISO9001 accredited company, there are over 30 machine tools and a manufacturing cell on site plus an abundance of various production lines and manufacturing equipment. The majority of work for the machine shop is allocated to the internal business, with 25% servicing a number of external aerospace clients.
The machine shop operates 24 hours a day seven days a week, producing anything from single components to batches of 500 working with a host of materials including aluminium, stainless steels, titanium, phosphor bronze and plastics. Using an extensive range of materials on an abundance of differing products requires a complete range of cutting tools. To accomplish the complete range of tooling, IPECO was using over 35 suppliers to cater for its tooling needs.
Production Manager, Paul Pursor comments: "We had tooling from almost every supplier in the UK; employees were empowered to purchase their own tooling. Two years ago we made a decision to rationalise the supplier list. The laborious task involved measuring and comparing not only each tool, but each product line, price, supplier and service. The majority of this was conducted by the staff on the shop floor as their experience is beyond measure. A decision was made to use two suppliers; ITC was selected to provide all our carbide tooling and we are delighted we made that choice."
This rationalisation has enabled the company to cut its tooling spend by approximately 35% through reducing tool use; this has also increased product quality. Taking into account the company's tooling spend is now £250k per annum, 35% is a considerable saving.
"Our decision to choose ITC tooling rather than any other supplier was based upon the fact that the quality was superior to all the other products. The shop floor staff tried various manufacturers' products and ITC's tooling came out on top, not only for performance and tool life but the complete package of service, cost and support. The reaction time with ITC is excellent, whatever I want, they make it happen," continues Pursor.
The rationalisation of the tooling supplier base at IPECO has proven such a success; the company is planning to investigate its complete supplier base of over 1,500 vendors.
ITC has assisted IPECO in recent months with tooling trials; this has brought interesting results with aluminium cutting technology being extremely successful with steel. The company is currently using 50 different types of ITC cutters for machining steel and aluminium components throughout the plant. Taking into account differing lengths and diameters, the range extends from 50 to over 200 different cutting tools.
The advantage of the reduced supply base has provided IPECO with the opportunity to bring ITC's expertise and products to machines and work pieces that previously used competitor products. Introducing ITC's tooling has significantly increased productivity via the increase of speeds and feeds. This exercise has also brought a startling revelation that the geometries of the ITC aluminium range enable the cutters to work with steel as effectively as with aluminium.
"The performance of the ITC aluminium range far exceeds the previous cutters designated for machining steel. This will enable us to further reduce our range of tooling by using the aluminium range as multipurpose tooling. We are delighted with the service and the relationship we have and long may it continue. I cannot emphasise enough, the success of the relationship with ITC as they continually strive to provide us with the best possible service," concludes Pursor. |
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Using an extensive range of materials on an abundance of differing products requires a complete range of cutting tools. |
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