You are missing opportunities to shorten product schedules, reduce costs, and improve quality and reliability.
Six sigma and lean manufacturing are important for operational excellence. But they miss opportunities for improvement.
Design, supplier, and manufacturing decisions and problems that involve metals requires metallurgical engineering expertise. The metallurgical engineering approach uncovers hidden opportunities to eliminate and prevent problems that cause product delays, increase costs, and reduce quality.
Complete the form. We'll email to set up a meeting to discuss your challenges and next steps.
A client had product launches delayed by up to four months because materials did not hold up during UL testing. After design process changes and materials evaluation support, products passed UL testing on the first attempt. Time to market reduced by 4 months.
A client had 15% scrap when making components from steel tubing. The cost was $16,000/month ($192,000 annual). A metallurgical failure analysis found the steel carbon content was the cause of the problem. The tubing specification was revised, which permanently fixed the problem.
A client had electrical connector brass pins breaking during a bending step. This resulted in 21% scrap ($110,000 annual). Metallurgical review and testing identified problems with the annealing process. Changes were made to the annealing process and the pin breakage stopped.
Many manufacturers use lean, six sigma, automation, and quality systems to improve operations. But when the problem is the metal itself, the material specification, the supplier capability, the heat treatment, the forming process, or the way the material responds during manufacturing, those systems are not be enough.
Unfortunately, many companies don’t have engineers with the metallurgy training or experience needed. Engineers from other fields are skilled in their areas of expertise. But their expertise is not in materials properties, selection, analysis, or processing.
Industrial Metallurgists brings the missing metals engineering training, experience, and perspective to help your team make better decisions, quickly solve problems, and find improvements that are often hiding in plain sight.
Our approach to continuous improvement is straightforward to implement and doesn't require capital expenditure, training, or culture change. The results are often transformative.
Complete the form near the page top. We'll email to set up a meeting to discuss your challenges and next steps.
All projects are collaborative. We'll work with you to find improvements that will have a noticeable impact on your products and profits.
Our system of working towards operational excellence consists of three phases.
Phase 1: Identify the highest value problems
Review current engineering, production, sourcing, quality, and cost problems. Look for material, supplier, process, and design decisions that may be creating delays, cost, or quality problems. Identify next steps.
Phase 2: Gather data and find practical solutions
Collect material data, production information, failure analysis results, supplier information, performance metrics, and engineering findings. Review the data with the client’s team so conclusions are grounded in both metallurgy and real production knowledge.
Phase 3: Implement and measure improvements
Create a practical implementation plan with tasks, timelines, responsibilities, and measurable outcomes. Support execution and monitor results so the improvement sticks.
Complete the form near the page top. We'll email to set up a meeting to discuss your challenges and next steps.
What is manufacturing operational excellence?
Operational excellence is a business strategy and cultural mindset focused on continuous improvement. It involves systematic implementation of principles and tools that enable employees to identify, deliver, and enhance the flow of value to customers. Common frameworks associated with operational excellence include lean management and Six Sigma. Both emphasize efficiency, waste reduction, and quality improvement. Organizations that adopt these practices may report increased customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
How does metallurgical engineering improve operational excellence?
Metallurgical engineering enables design, supplier, and manufacturing decisions that result in better product performance and reliability, lower costs, and faster time to market. This is achieved by being able to do the following:
This is discussed in more detail in these articles:
How is this different from Lean or Six Sigma?
Six sigma and lean manufacturing are important for operational excellence. But but they miss material and process problems that require metallurgical engineering expertise.
Can metallurgical engineering reduce product development delays?
Yes. Product delays are often the result of problems related to the metals in products. This is discussed in Prevent Product Delays.
Here are things metallurgical engineers do to prevent product delays.
Can metallurgical engineering help reduce product costs?
Yes. High product costs are often related to the metals in a product. Selecting expensive materials for components, and lingering quality problems all contribute to high costs.
Here are three ways metallurgical engineers help reduce product costs.
Can metallurgical engineering help reduce scrap and rework?
Yes. Metallurgical engineers are a critical part of timely and successful root cause analyses to quickly find the root cause of quality problems and implementing corrective actions. Metallurgical engineers are trained in the analysis tools used for failure analysis. They also have experience selecting the analyses to perform for different situations and using the data to understand what happened to the materials that led to the quality problem.
Many organizations without metallurgical engineers struggle to find the root cause of problems. In many cases, they don’t know how to perform a failure analysis. Without the information gained from a failure analysis, any effort to identify the root cause of a problem is just guessing. This is unproductive and quality problems linger. Read Reduce Costs of Poor Quality to learn more.
What types of manufacturing problems can Industrial Metallurgists help solve?
Industrial Metallurgists helps when the process output of a production line doesn’t meet specifications, This includes not meeting shape, dimension, or materials properties requirements, output with defects, or output that does not perform as required. The problems might be due to poor supplier quality, poor design, manufacturing process not optimized, incapable process equipment, incapable evaluation equipment, or poorly trained workers.
What happens during the first operational excellence review?
We’ll review current engineering, production, sourcing, quality, and cost problems. We’ll discuss material, supplier, process, and design decisions that may be creating delays, cost, or quality problems. We’ll discuss next steps.
Do you help implement improvements or only provide recommendations?
Yes, this is part of Phase 3 of our process of working with clients. We help implement the improvements we recommend and work with clients to measure improvements.
What kind of companies benefit most from this approach?
Any company that uses metals in its products and the business leaders are interested in developing products faster, reducing costs, and improving product quality. This includes companies that produce a wide range of products.
