Power Tools 1993 October - Disc 2/Power Tools (Disc 2)(October 1993)(HP).iso/custref/59521890/59521890.txt

Text File | 1993-05-03 | 14KB | 243 lines

Information Systems Fuel Auto Supplier's
Pursuit of Continuous Improvement

A.J. Rose Manufacturing Company Case Study

The A.J. Rose Manufacturing Company is a manufacturer of many types of
component products for the automotive and truck industries. The company
has undertaken a massive program of computerization to drive down lead
times substantially and thus position itself strongly in today's
intensely competitive automotive supplier environment.

[Figure cover (Photo), Caption:  Three generations of A.J. Rose
management have been driven to reach the highest levels of productivity
and service for over 68 years.]

   A.J. Rose chose Hewlett Packard as the hardware vendor for both its
general data processing and CAD/CAM requirements. An HP3000 Series 925LX
system drives the DP (data processing) and information systems; four
HP9000 workstations are networked in a cluster to handle the CAD/CAM
functions.
   The results are impressive; data-processing speed has increased up to
12 times on certain internal applications. Most important, Rose can now
react more quickly to customer orders and changing requirements.

Serving The Automotive Industry
The A.J. Rose Manufacturing Company's Cleveland headquarters and
manufacturing facility occupy more than 110,000 square feet. Additional
sales offices for the $25+ million company are located in Detroit, Fort
Worth, and Yokohama, Japan. A.J. Rose employs some 175 plant and office
personnel.
   Founded in 1922, the quality products A. J. Rose makes for the
automotive and truck industries include precision pulleys;  water pump
components (hubs, impellers, backplates, and eyeplates); engine and
transmission components (oil pistons, solenoid brackets, valve spring
retainers, lifting brackets, and clutch rotors);  and a variety of
light- and heavy-gauge precision stampings. This range of products
requires that A.J. Rose have the most efficient and capable computing
platforms to develop custom (CAD/CAM software) and to run the best
third-party software solutions available.
   Equally important is the retention and training of a strong work
force. About 15 percent of A.J. Rose's workforce includes professional
engineers, specializing in precision product development and a high
level of value-added engineering. The company has been driven to reach
the highest levels of productivity and service for over 68 years.

Never-Ending Continuous Improvement
The A.J. Rose Manufacturing Company is on a mission to integrate
computer-based automation as the key to surviving and succeeding in the
1990s. A.J. Rose's goal of  continuous improvement will be increasingly
difficult as it starts from an already high level that includes numerous
accolades received for meeting and exceeding the quality standards of
some of manufacturing's largest and most demanding customers. Awards
received include the Spear One 3 Award from General Motors; the Q-1
Award from Ford; the Quality Excellence Award from Chrysler; and
additional supplier awards and certifications from numerous smaller
customers.
   A.J. Rose chose HP computer  platforms to power its drive toward
integrated computing. The company plans to produce its dies faster to
meet increasingly stringent customer delivery standards. It would like
to capitalize on increased productivity to satisfy bid requirements on
new work, and therefore, increase gross annual revenue. Such a goal in
today's demanding supplier environment requires constant dedication.
   The company selected HP for three reasons. First and foremost was the
reliability of HP's systems, which the company has experienced first-
hand for almost 10 years. The first system purchased 10 years ago was an
HP 250 computer that was used for work order estimating and labor
reporting. Secondly, HP was selected for expandability, so the company
can migrate upward as business needs dictate. The third reason was for
HP's compliance with industry standards such as UNIX(R)-based operating
systems, TCP/IP, and the X-Window System(TM). This means A.J. Rose can
run the off-the-shelf software it chooses and develop needed
communication interfaces now and through the 1990s.
   A.J. Rose recognizes that in today's world of automated
manufacturing, previously adequate manual methods of operation are
simply no longer viable. The company has continually provided its
engineering and production department with the state-of-the-art tools
needed to accomplish increasingly complex tasks. This strategy, which
incorporates solutions from HP, has kept A.J. Rose at the top of its
industry niche.
   In the past three years the company has purchased a variety of
Hewlett Packard platforms to computerize its operations. The company's
general data processing requirements are handles by an HP 3000 Series
925LX system--built on HP's Precision Architecture, HP's unique RISC
(Reduced Instruction Set Computing) architecture--which HP has
continually enhanced since its debut in 1986. A.J. Rose runs shop floor
control, inventory control, purchasing management, general ledger,
payroll, and accounts payable software packages from MDSS (Manufacturing
Decision Support Systems, Cleveland, OH)  and Cort Directions (Bend, OR)
on the HP standards-based platform.
   For Computer-Aided Design (CAD), A.J. Rose has configured a four-
station network consisting of HP9000 Series systems running McDonnell-
Douglas' Unigraphics II software.

Custom MRP Needed For JIT
The production process at A.J. Rose begins with a customer order  Many
of these material releases come in over the phone. A.J. Rose has
established  X.12 EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) communications with
several major customers, including leading automakers such as General
Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. Caterpillar and Cummins Engine also have
communication links with A.J. Rose.
   In the past, A.J. Rose's customers requested deliveries once or twice
a week. With the new emphasis on Just-in-Time (JIT) methods, requests
come for daily deliveries at specific times. The HP Series 925LX system
has the horsepower needed to meet those requirements. A.J. Rose's
technical personnel wrote custom order-entry software to serve as a
release accounting program handling customer data. Reports and batch
updates that were taking 10-15 minutes to process are now completed in
75 seconds.
   The first step after receiving the material release is an update
routine that outputs required shipment dates, schedules work flow, and
retrieves relevant manufacturing files. Manufacturing requirements are
automatically compared with on-hand inventory to reconcile current stock
with current orders. This custom materials resource planning (MRP)
system, developed in-house, gives A.J. Rose's corporate managers up-to-
the-minute information for rapid and accurate decision-support.
   In addition to allowing A.J. Rose to take advantage of new computer
architecture, the HP Series 925LX upgrade also met the company's floor-
space requirements with its small footprint. The complete system--CPU,
disk storage, tape backup, and terminal connections--fits into one self-
contained unit.
   The HP Series 925LX system was also strong in meeting Rose's port
requirements; it can handle up to 40 workstations. And further upgrades-
-requiring a simple board swap that can be performed by the customer in
less than an hour--are now available to Rose in HP's Series 925 and 935
systems. These two systems offer capabilities for 152 and 400
workstations, respectively, should A.J. Rose require more horsepower as
business increases.
   Finally, the HP ALL BASE environment of the HP Series 925LX system,
an integrated network and relational database management system,
provides A.J. Rose the flexibility it needs to manage its data and adapt
to changing business needs. Hewlett-Packard's ALLBASE integrated
database management system supports a wide range of applications,
including statistical processing, query handling, and various software
tools for application development.
   Once orders are processed on the HP Series 925LX system, hard copy
reports are provided to engineering to initiate the design, development,
and detailing process. A.J. Rose is studying the benefits of an
electronic link up between the HP Series 925LX system and the HP9000
workstations that power the CAD cluster.

[Figure page 4 (A.J. Rose, HP 3000/9000, and CAD/CAM chart), Caption:
With HP systems behind their general data processing and CAD/CAM
functions, A.J. Rose now reacts more quickly to customer orders and
changing requirements.]

[Figure page 5 (Photo), Caption:  Through the HP9000 Series CAD network,
A.J. Rose engineers have dramatically reduced design cycle times.]

A Blazing Fast CAD Network
A.J. Rose has linked its CAD department in a network configuration to
simplify the computer-intensive demands typical in data management. An
HP9000 Model 370 Turbo SRX server hosts an HP Model 360 SRX client, and
HP Model 360 CH client, and an HP Model 319+ client as nodes on the CAD
cluster. By centralizing the intensive numerical computations at one
workstation maintenance, backup, access and data processing tasks are
simplified. The operating system is HP-UX, Hewlett-Packard's version of
AT&T's UNIX System V release 3.0.
   A.J. Rose engineering personnel added an interesting wrinkle to the
network. Although most networks that function in the file server/client
mode utilize diskless nodes, Rose felt that diskless nodes could lead to
a  potential resource drain during intervals of particularly heavy
computing. So each of the three CAD nodes are augmented with 152-Mbyte
hard disks as "swap space". The HP Model 370 server can therefore
offload lower-priority tasks to the clients when it's preoccupied with
time-critical applications.   This interchange keeps the HP Model 370
system fully utilized in its role as a file server.

Ending The Paper Chase
The CAD cluster at A.J. Rose replaced a manual design environment of
drawing boards and slide rules. According to projections from managers,
the company's goal to decrease die lead times by 50 percent will be
easily attained.
   According to several project engineers, the company has already
dramatically decreased the time it takes to make changes in engineering
designs. For example, when engineers need to change the size or location
of a line, the system automatically updates all other related
dimensions.
   A.J. Rose reports that the 3D solids capabilities of the Unigraphics
II software on HP hardware have enabled its engineers to conceptualize
their designs much better; by rotating, clipping, and shading the design
model, potential interferences and conflicting design parameters are
resolved before the die is cast. Kinematic simulations also help to
eliminate inherent structural design flaws and ensure the right grade of
materials and manufacturing processes.
   The HP CAD workstation cluster has also resulted in quicker assembly
of dies. Troubleshooting is now done at the computer screen; problems
are thus identified and solved at the front of the process, prior to
manufacturing.
   The HP9000 Series 300 workstations are designed to provide and
sustain this kind of high-performance graphics processing power. Real-
time, fully shaded, three-dimensional solids modeling is the strong suit
of the high-end machines in the Series.
   Currently, die designs are output on an HP electrostatic plotter and
passed along to the toolroom. The NC programming of the machine tools
that turn, mill, and grind the die sections is done at the CNC machine
controllers.

[Figure page 6 (Photo), Caption:  Die designs created on the HP9000
Series network are used to program NC machines at CNC machine
controllers.]

   One of the next steps for A.J. Rose is to purchase two additional HP
computer systems for the CAD cluster to enable the toolroom programmers
to log on to the NC programming system. This will link CAM directly to
the CAD output. The flow of data from geometry creation to tool-path
instruction will be accomplished seamlessly, in a true CAD/CAM mode.

Meeting The Challenges of The '90s
A.J. Rose is already a very successful company. The company's
achievements are the envy of the automotive supplier marketplace.
However, A.J. Rose realizes that continuous improvement is a never-
ending process. The company plans to continue to accelerate its efforts
to improve product costs, quality, and delivery while effectively
implementing leading information technology.
   One goal of the HP implementation at A.J. Rose was to reduce lead
times so that management could respond faster to customer needs. A.J.
Rose has accomplished that, and more. The company now meets delivery
schedules that change daily--a critical service for the increasingly
inventory-conscious automotive customers it supplies. With its highly
skilled work force and its advanced and competitive information systems,
A.J. Rose can truly excel on the company's path to continuous
improvement.
   Hewlett-Packard. There is a better way.

UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the USA and in other
countries.
X Window System is a trademark of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Technical information in this document is subject to change without
notice.

(c)  Copyright Hewlett-Packard Company, 1990  All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction, adaptation, or translation without prior written
permission is prohibited except as allowed under the copyright laws.

Printed in USA M0590
5952-1890

Associated files:  59521890.SAM, A2189001.TIF, A2189004.TIF,
A2189005.TIF, A2189006.TIF
Information Systems Fuel Auto Supplier's Pursuit of Continuous
Improvement, A.J. Rose Manufacturing Case Study