MILLING AROUND PAYS OFF IN EMC MACHINING

The creative Kaizen team at the EMC have saved the business more than £40,000 after coming up with a way to fabricate crank pallets on site with their own milling machine.

Crank pallets are small plates which hold the crank in place during fabrication. Re-use and wear and tear of the specially milled pallets mean they need to be replaced through an external supplier...or at least they did!

Kaizen Team pair Simon Bullock, Adam Box and Jason Lightwood from the Improvement Team put a case together to buy their own milling machine which meant they could create their own pallets in house with the help of some CNC mill experience Simon picked up in a previous job.

They then milled enough replacement pallets for the next five years at no cost, wiping out the more than £43,000 bill JLR would have received for an external supplier to do the same thing.

The size of the saving meant the team paid for the new CNC machine in just six-weeks and future-proofed the machining hall from any milling costs in the future.

They even managed to build their own small room on the crank line to house the machine. After receiving a huge quote from external suppliers to build an area they decided to do it themselves which cost them just over £1,000 instead of the originally quoted £42,000!

Simon said: "It's been so effective that other teams in the area have approached us to see how it could potentially support other projects in the area. Each pallet we make has 'Kaizen' etched into it, we milled a Kaizen table for sessions and we also created a template holding tray for the individual parts of the crank so they fit snug and they're stable in transit so it protects the quality of each component."