Utilization of Dies and Molds using Intelligent Methods of Management.

International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Applications, Vol 1, Issue 3, May June 2013, ISSN 2320-6349 Utilization of Dies and Molds using Intelligent Methods of Management. Mr. Srikrishna.B.Rao, Prof. Chandrababu. D MUMBAI UNIVERSITY, INDIA. rahulbharathwaj@gmail.com Abstract The use of the molds and the dies play a very important role in the field of industrial revolution. The overall production chain mainly depends upon the implications and applications of use of dies in the manufacturing process. Thus, the quantity of production hugely effects the components, their subassemblies and assemblies to a larger extent. Therefore, the molds and dies producers are always ready with the new ideas and methodologies for the new challenges of the new era and technological scenario. This gives the attempt for the makers to produce the new products with significant advances and practical applications in the fields, which would suggest the various ways and means to make the process more effective and efficient. Key wordsrevolution. molds, manufacturing, industrial 1. Introduction Dies and molds are integrated by a kind of tacitknowledge based engineering, and they are of a critical capital good to determine the quality and price of products for end use. Dies and molds are a critical capital good, but the accumulation of experiences are necessary for a country hopeful to newly develop its industrial sector to acquire manufacturing technology of molds, and the build-up of such expertise on dies and molds has necessitated the bringing up of skilled technicians, which takes time and is not so easy. Figure 1 The Hierarchical Structure of Production Process shows through what stages technologies are shaped in developing countries. For example, if the consumer durables for end use are smaller cars, a developing economy in Asian region, which launches for the first time the manufacture of smaller cars, starts from assembly operations based on the complete knockdown or semi-knockdown approach, in cooperation with Japan or some other industrialized country. Then, as production volume increases, the developing country begins to run assembly operation using locally produced automotive parts in order to reduce foreign exchange payment on the import of knockdown kits. Local assemblers or their suppliers of these automotive parts, who intend to locally manufacture press-formed parts, for example, may import press dies, press machinery and steel sheets. In other words, in order to locally produce parts and components, they must import dies and process machinery. Thus, an increase in locally produced parts and components results in the corresponding increase in imports of process machinery such as dies and metal-forming machines. This situation enabled Japan to have been a monopolistic supply base of capital goods to these developing economies. Dies and molds are a cluster of product manufacturing know-how, and at the same time are essential elements in the mass-production process, but as far as an operator of the massproduction process remains dependent on dies and molds supplied by foreign vendors, the operator is not able to produce by himself the product that he wants to manufacture. As a result, demand for die and mold production emerges independently and thus the operator or his local vendor imports machine tools as the process equipment for building molds. As this case exemplifies, if one determines to manufacture a product by oneself, the person must come down the hierarchic structure of the production process. Not limited to automobiles, but when a local manufacturer starts domestically producing to a full extent an industrial product that has been manufactured by direct investment from overseas or through technological partnership, the process of such domestic production evolves a process akin to www.ijmca.org Page 55

International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Computer excavating the hierarchical structure from the top stratum down to the bottom. Figure 1 Hierarchical Structure of Production Process drawings for a product are available, it becomes possible to prepare drawings of dies information of these molds to remotely control machine tools and manufacture these dies at another place. Thus, dies and molds at the producible level can be manufactured anywhere in the world as far as technology is concerned. 2. Reviewing the study of Dies and Molds: Japan: 90% of Japan's mold and die industry comprises firms whose number of employees is 20 or less. Compared with the Japan Machine Tool Builder's Association's membership of approximately 100, that of the Japan Die & Mould Industry Association (founded in 1957) is much larger at 573. As annual sales of both industries stand at 1 trillion yen each, the average size of firms in the mold and die industry is smaller. The industry's largest firms employ several hundred workers on average. These include Ogihara, Ikegami, Showa Seiko, Kuroda Precision, Miyazu, and Mitsui High-tec. The remaining smaller firms employ 20 workers or less. The Japan Die & Mould Industry Association consists of the headquarters and the three branch offices in charge of Eastern, Western and Central Japan, respectively. As explained, the Association finds it imperative to accelerate the member firms' globalization efforts. The domestic manufacture of molds requires capital goods (machine tools as process machinery) and such production goods as raw materials for molds as well as parts and components of these dies and molds. Moreover, in order to build these molds, besides sophisticated process systems, master engineers and skilled technicians specializing in mold manufacture are also required. But, in recent years, machine tools have attained, through technological advancement, a high level of accuracy that only skilled technicians could realize in the past. Also, through the progress of computer software technology, preparation of drawings for dies and molds has become much easier than in the past. Besides these developments, remote control technology regulating machine tools has advanced substantially recently, so that it becomes possible to transmit the information of mold drawings as digital information, and control operation of machine tools from a remote place. In other words, if China: China's mold and die industry is the world's largest in the total numbers of firms and workers. The number of workers exceeds 400,000, most of them employees of state firms. However, nearly all State-operated shops are bankrupt with only township and village-operated shops remaining operable. While pay is a 20th that of Japan, molds cost a 10th as much as in Japan. This indicates that the efficiency is lower. The quality of products is also poor. Malaysia: The government has been steering the mold and die industry's development in the same way as Singapore. The industry is given top priority under the government's industrial policy. However, the government tries to promote too wide a range of industries, from automobiles to communications, to give the industry the support it needs. The manufacturing sector's labour shortage constitutes a bottleneck. The automotive industry, Malaysia's key industry, suffers from high cost and quality problems as too much emphasis on the promotion of Proton hampers competition. The industry operates only on a www.ijmca.org Page 56

small scale, so it has to depend on imports from Japan and other nations to procure molds and dies. Proton's local procurement rate is 85% as calculated in the number of components used, however the actual rate is significantly lower. In another key sector, the International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Computer strong. India has the potential to grow as a net exporter of molds and dies. 3. Current practices in Dies and Molds: For those traditional industries or the hi-tech industries, precise as well as reliable dies and molds electronics industry, which is centred upon the manufacture of ICs, suppliers of molds and dies are overly concentrated in the Penang district. While demand for molds and dies for home appliances exceeds supply, domestic products cannot compete with imports in either pricing or quality. The market for precision molds for pressing is under-supplied, as suppliers are limited to only one or 2 Japanese manufacturers. There is a large number of mold and die manufacturers, and a number of industry associations. Prominent mold and die manufacturer associations are based in Selangor (automotive sector) and in Penang (electronics sector). Many mold and die manufacturers are operated by Chinese that are rarely supported by the government, which adopts a bumiputra-oriented policy. The industry associations are not organized nationally, and have trouble taking concerted steps. India: India lacks all essentials of mold and die-making. The picture is similar to that of Japan s mold and die industry around 1960. Ten car-making firms have been launched simultaneously. They have imported (initially from Japan and later from Taiwan and South Korea) or produced in-house all the molds and dies they need. India's mold and die industry association now has a membership of 110 firms. The number would reach approximately 400 if non-members were also counted. The number of workers in the industry is estimated at 8,000. The disparity in size between the nation's major mold and die manufacturers (500 or more employees) and the smaller manufacturers is huge. The major manufacturers build all types of molds and dies, including pressing molds, plastic molds and die cast molds. They have introduced a complete set of state-of-the-art mostly European equipment, including Charmilles's electrical discharge machine, Jung Blohm's surface grinding machine, Waldrich Siegen's MCs, etc. CAD plays a central role in the production of their drawings. The majority of owners have been educated at Britain's universities, and Europe has been their biggest market. Their ties with Japan are only marginal. The largest mold manufacturer, controlled by a financial conglomerate, employs 2,000 workers. There are 100 million highly educated people, and their work ethics are especially are indispensable for mass production. The development of dies and molds in a timely and costeffective way impacts on the product quality and schedule very much. As industrial technology is progressing, demands on products are getting complicated and product lifetime is shortening. There is, therefore, a need to reengineer a new product development (NPD) process in the mold industry, which is a basic and important segment to support product design and production functions in many industries. A reference model developed by Supply Chain Council (SCC) to define the NPD processes, so called Design Chain Operations Reference-model (DCOR), is a common methodology among design chain partners to identify the metrics used to manage the related processes, and associated best practices. The concept of DCOR is useful not only for offering an industrial standard that enables next-generation design chain management, but also for using current practices for further improvement. The DCOR is too general to be served as the benchmark of any specific industry. The purpose of this paper is to extend Design Chain Operations Reference-model into the mold industry (in short, M-DCOR) based on literature study and a case study. The framework of NPD metrics and best practices in design chain are developed through in-depth discussion of a large mold company. DCOR allows companies to communicate with their partners, using common language and standard descriptions of the process elements that help understanding the overall design chain management process and the best practices which yields the optimal overall performance. 4. Literature Survey: The design chain domain is defined as the collection of business activities associated with all phases of product engineering including research and development. The design chain is divided into 3 process types: planning processes, execution processes and enabling processes. Planning processes prioritize design chain projects and allocate resources to design projects. Planning processes generally occur at regular intervals and may contribute to design chain response time. Execution processes are triggered by planned or actual demand. Execution processes include decomposition of specifications, defining the form, fit, and function of products and services, creating and evaluating prototypes and pilots, and releasing www.ijmca.org Page 57

products to supply chain execution, marketing and services. Enable processes prepare, maintain, and manage information or relationships upon which planning and execution processes rely. DCOR was first developed by Business Management Organization of Hewlett-Packard in 2004. The purpose of DCOR is to standardize the definition of NPD processes for offering a common language among design chain partners. DCOR identifies the metrics used to manage these processes. The model itself contains several sections and is organized around the five primary management processes of plan, research, design, integrate, and amend (as shown in Table 1). The reference model processes start with the earliest planning and research, and extend through specific design, design integration and design amendment. The model is designed and maintained to support design chains of various complexities and across multiple companies. The council has focused on three process levels and does not attempt to prescribe how a particular organization should conduct its business or tailor its information flow. Every organization using the DCOR model to improve its design chain that needs to extend the model, at least to Level 4, by using organization-specific processes, systems, and practice. The overall framework is shown in Table 1. Table1: Definition of DCOR Level 1 Plan The planning processes prioritize design chain projectsd allocate resources to design projects.planning process generally occur at regular intervals and can contribute to to design chain response time. The research process encompasses the Researc identification and decomposition of research topics, obtaining and synthesizing of information and evaluation and publishing of research findings. This includes the identification of sources of supply, sourcing and validation of materials/products against requirements. International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Integrat Amend The integrate management process encompasses synthesizing the design definitions and decomposition of the design definitions into sets of component design definitions, releasing product and product definitions to Supply Chain execution and releasing design documentation to Business Development and Customer Chain organizations. The amend management process encompasses the gathering and analysis of product design issues and manufacturability feed back for current products. 5. Scope of use of Dies and Molds: One of the biggest problems in design chain is that iteration design change cycle wastes time and costs significantly due to individual companies, regardless the size of the companies, some of which may no longer have a better understanding of all the aspects along with the design chains. For example, the designer of products cannot know the knowledge of mold. Lacks of collaboration between part and mold development often cause a consistency problem: even though one part may be quite good for its function and performance, the mold may not be done, or it may be done by a large amount of cost. Moreover, an important phenomenon of design chain is the impact of design decision is initially very high, and declines steeply as the design matures. Great opportunity exists at the preliminary design stage. As a result, collaboration as early as possible in design chain is very important to solve the above problems. Therefore, we try to use the DCOR standard process and add the conception of collaboration. Figure2 shows the framework of the relationships among the standard process within extended enterprises. Design The design process encompasses the definition, creation, analysis, testing and release of form, fit and function of a product. This includes development of manufacturing, testing, servicing and disposal processes. www.ijmca.org Page 58

International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Computer (3) To further prepare the mold diagrams and parts for the product. (4) To conduct analysis for the research methodology of the system based design, for the part. (5) To apply the principles of Design Chain Operational Reference (DCOR) Model, for the automobile parts and find the design chain analysis for the process. Figure 2: The framework of M-DCOR DCOR is a cross-industry frame of product development process so that the model is a general one. For some specifically industries, model should be extended to lower process focusing on special industry development processes. As a result, we define the Level 4 process and activities based on mold industry. The process is shown in Figure 3 7. Conclusion: Due of the market changes, many industries have been characterized by a strong demand for reducing time and being cost-effective while maintaining a high level of quality. This trend seriously affects the mold industry, particularly in its quality of linkage between product development and production process, where the schedule of mold makers is critical to the product development and manufacturing. This pressure has forced mold industry to optimize the design chain as soon as possible for survival and growth. M-DCOR was developed based on the case study, literature review and was extended from DCOR of SCC. This model is designed for evaluating, positioning, and implementing to optimal design chain in the mold Industry. The M-DCOR model can help upper management of an organization in designing and reconfiguring its supply chain to achieve desired performance in mold Industry. Since the development of DCOR is too slow to meet the demand of enterprises and its methodology is too difficult to understand and to apply, an extended model focusing on a specific industry is necessary. As collaborative design is an important strategic approach in design chain, a reference model can provide a clear framework to illustrate the collaborative relationships among the process within extended enterprises. This paper highlights several directions which might require further research: 1. To be applied in the practices easily, should DCOR be developed as industry-specific or be a general framework? 2. How to build the framework for the relationships among the design process within extended enterprises? Figure 3: The process level of M-DCOR 6. Future Work: (1) To carry out the study for the mold and dies. (2) To make the designs for the particular automobile part with respect to the mold mainly used in the ancillary industries. The M-DCOR is developed based on the design process of a specific company. It is necessary to further develop the proposed M-DCOR model based on more companies practices. Figure 4: The As-Is and To-Be process www.ijmca.org Page 59

International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Computer REFERENCES: (1) The Process Chain in Die and Mold Manufacturing, Klocke. F. Klottz, M. Knodt, Altmueller. S. (in German) presented at the EDM Technical Conference, Aachen. (2) Manufacturing of Dies and Molds. Taylan Altan, Blaine Lillg, Y.C. Yen Department of Industrial, Welding, and Systems Engineering. The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A. Submitted by Taylan Altan, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A. (3) An agent-based collaborative design system to facilitate active die-maker involvement in stamping part design. Dunbing Tang* Aachen University of Technology (RWTH), Steinbachstr. 53B, 52074 Aachen, Germany. (4) Supply Chain Management Strategy, Planning and Operation. - By Sunil Chopra, Peter Meindl, D.V. Kalra. Second impression 2011. www.ijmca.org Page 60