Materials Matters Newsletter

October 5, 2005

Topics:

• Tolerances and Design for Manufacturing
• Book Review – Now, Discover Your Strengths

Tolerances and Design for Manufacturing

When designing a part that must fit into an assembly, design engineers pay close attention to the dimensional tolerances.  However, many design engineers do not consider the variations in materials properties when designing products. 

Left uncharacterized, the effects of typical materials variations on manufacturing or assembly processes can result in poor yields.  It should also be kept in mind that some suppliers are better than other at controlling their processes.  As a result, there can be a wide range of materials properties from between suppliers.

Examples of materials properties whose variations can have an impact on manufacturing quality include:

• Plating thickness for proper soldering or welding.
• Sheet steel grain size for good appearance (no orange peel) of deep drawn parts.
• Viscosity of adhesive for consistent automated dispensing.
• Metal tensile strength and microstructure for proper forming (e.g. no tearing)
• Composition and microstructure for consistent distortion during heat treatment.
• Surface cleanliness for good coating or adhesive adhesion.

Many manufacturing processes are developed based upon limited information about the actual variation in materials properties, and often not all the significant materials properties are considered.  The results are inconsistent manufacturing yields and manufacturing problems that are difficult to resolve.  Typically, the material or part supplier is held to blame, even though the material or part may be within the normal expected tolerance or an important property was never specified by the customer.

Many manufacturing problems can be prevented through careful understanding of the effects of materials variations on the manufacturing yields.  This is especially important when changing to “low cost” suppliers.  Furthermore, the knowledge gained by understanding the interactions between the materials variations and manufacturing processes enables changes that result in cost reduction and determining the true value of a “low cost” supplier. 

Book Review – Now, Discover Your Strengths

Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton's Now, Discover Your Strengths proposes a unique approach to effective management: focusing on enhancing people's strengths rather than eliminating their weaknesses.  The book is  based upon analysis of results of interviews conducted by the Gallup organization of over 1.7 million employees from 101 companies and representing 63 countries.

The authors describe 34 positive personality themes (e.g. achiever, analytical, learner, focus, and maximizer) that are of importance in a person’s work life and explain how to build a "strengths-based organization."   This type of organization focuses its efforts on capitalizing on a person’s strengths to maximize their benefit to the organization.  This is, to some extent, in opposition to the notion that people can improve their weaknesses if they try hard enough. 

The question then becomes…is a company’s energy that is usually put into working on an employee’s weaknesses better spent on focusing on that person’s intrinsic strengths in order to maximize their value to the company?

Readers can complete a web-based questionnaire developed by the Gallup Organization and instantly discover their own top-five inborn talents. This provides a personalized window into the authors' management philosophy which places their suggestions into a practical context.  As a result, the book encourages introspection while providing knowledgeable guidance for applying its lessons.  Interestingly, during the Gallup interviews, when asked, only 20 percent of these employees stated that they were using their strengths everyday.

Copyright Industrial Metallurgists, LLC, 2005. All rights reserved.

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