CNC Coordination | CNC Processes

The role of a CNC coordinator - The Best Technology on the Planet: IMTS 96

Mike Lynch

The CNC environment is any portion of your company that in some way affects or is affected by your CNC machine tools. Based on this broad definition, there are very few people in your company that are not part of your CNC environment. The most important role of your CNC coordinator is first to identify the elements of your own CNC environment, and then to facilitate smooth interaction among the people involved. Optimum CNC machine utilization is the most basic criteria upon which any decision is based.

There are three basic element types in any CNC environment. Core elements are those easily identified people, machine tools, and accessories that form the heart of your CNC environment. People in this area include CNC programmers, operators, setup people, and instructors. They're the ones working with CNC on a daily basis. Since they are so easily identified, and since they have the largest impact on how well the CNC environment performs, most companies place a high emphasis on the core elements. In fact, some companies concentrate so heavily on core elements that other important elements are completely overlooked.

Satellite elements are those people, machinery, and accessories that affect the way CNC machine tools function, though to a less tangible degree. Yet they are still very important and, if overlooked, can have a devastating impact on the CNC environment. Among the people in this category are design engineers, tool engineers, process engineers, quality control engineers, production control people and even the company's sales force.

Target elements are those people, machinery, and accessories that are in some way affected by what the CNC machine tools do. Some of the people in this category are assembly people and operators of machines performing secondary operations.

Identifying CNC-related areas in need of improvement is actually very easy. Simply schedule a meeting and invite representatives from all three areas to attend. You may be surprised at what the meeting renders. It is likely that you'll turn up a great deal of confusion, duplication of effort and waste. Even within one element type, you may locate problems caused by communication breakdowns. When it comes to core elements, for example, you may find that your setup people waste time searching for hand tools, cutting tools and gages needed during each setup due to poorly documented setup sheets. You may find that your CNC operators are consistently having problems holding size due to poorly formatted CNC programs. You may find that your operators require more training in given areas.

As you expand the discussion to include all three element types, you will surely turn up even more problems that can be improved. You may find that simple changes in the way design engineers dimension and tolerance work-pieces will minimize the calculations required of programmers, operators and inspectors - saving time and minimizing mistakes. You may find that your company's sales people have been unaware of your company's true capabilities and have not been offering all of the available products and services. You may find that if your production control people order workpieces in a more logical order (for workpieces made of the same stock size, requiring the same tooling and run on similar machine tools), a great deal of setup time can be saved while still adhering to just-in-time principles. You may learn that assembly people prefer that certain important tolerances be held on the high or low side in order to facilitate easy component assembly.

As stated, finding areas within the CNC environment in need of improvement will be easy. However, determining the best methods for improvement and actually implementing them will be more challenging. You'll need help from the same people that helped identify problems. In most cases, they will be the best people to make suggestions for improvement. However, you must make it clear that improving CNC machine utilization is the most important goal. In some cases, the improvements you implement will mean more (or different) work for the people involved. Be on the look-out for human nature-related problems like complacency (we've always done it that way), pride of authorship (my way is the only way) and personality conflicts (us versus them). As long as your people have your company's best interest at heart, you should be able to motivate them to a high degree of cooperation.

MIKE LYNCH, CNC Concepts, Inc. 44 Little Cahill Road, Cary, IL 60013