All for a Golden Mold

When Bhupesh Lal, Parametric Technology India’s director (marketing),
decided to go on a tour to rustic Yamuna Nagar in Haryana, almost everyone
outside the company who heard the news sat up and took notice.

After all, what would induce the director of a multi-million-dollar design
solutions company to visit a small and obscure town 250 km from Delhi? DQ asked
Lal about the reasons for his visit, and he countered that it would be better if
we tagged along to find out. And so we did.

Along the bumpy drive to that city, Lal’s mission became apparent–he was
out to evaluate a client’s operational efficiency after the implementation of
a PTC solution. The client in question–Polyplastics, a Rs 7-crore manufacturer
of plastic injection-mold automobile components who had invested Rs 16 lakh to
acquire three sets of PTC Pro/Engineer solution in September 2000. Another Rs 5
lakh went into high-end computers, printer and plotter, storage devices and
other IT infrastructure, bringing the total IT spend to 3% of the annual
turnover. The statistics sounded hot. Not many Indian enterprises, leave alone
an SME tucked away in a sleepy Indian town, have yet embraced IT for what it can
give them in return.

So what is Polyplastics into? "Automobile decorative parts," says
Lal. The company is the sole vendor of automobile emblems and monograms for
Maruti Udyog and a majority of the other auto majors. Monograms and emblems, you
said? E-business implementation on this scale for a two-three inch plastic
topped insignia atop the bonnet and the boot?

Ask Kapil Gupta, one of the brothers who have promoted Polyplastics, and he
laughs. "We have spent nearly Rs 60 lakh in automating our engineering
department and Pro/E is just a part of that investment," he says. Kamal,
the older of the two, explains: "We manufacture 2.1 lakh emblems, 55,000
wheel and hub caps, 60,000 molded components like tool boxes, expansion tanks,
door handles and dashboard components, 15,000 body-side moldings, 5,000 fuse
boxes and 3,000 air conditioner control assemblies every month." The
bottomline: Polyplastics manufactures nearly 400 components for over 20 auto
companies, including MUL, Tata Engineering, Hindustan Motors, Daewoo Motors,
Hyundai, Ford India, Toyota Kirloskar, General Motors, Delphi Automotive
Systems, Punjab Tractors, L&T John Deere and Eicher Tractors.

"A plastic injection-molded product is only as good as its die (the
shaping mold)," says Kapil. "Cutting a die on conventional milling
machines for the smallest of such fixtures can at times prove to be months of
hard work with no guarantees on returns." And that’s why Polyplastics
chose to automate its design and engineering department. "The company’s
decision to automate key processes is aimed at streamlining the tool room, which
is the backbone of any plastic industry," says Kapil.

Working with nightmares

Work in the engineering department of a plastic component
manufacturing plant begins with creating a design for the mold, which is
subsequently cut from modified P20 imported steel blocks. While these molds have
a minimum lifespan of three years, cutting the exact shape of the product into
these steel blocks is a complicated and exacting task. "An example is the
fuse box or expansion tank assemblies. These products have several compartments,
and the walls of each of these have a thickness of only millimeters, which makes
the mold even more complex to design," says Kamal.

"Even a simple-looking Suzuki emblem can give nightmares
to the design team," Kamal says. A close look at the Suzuki emblem shows 12
corners and several other surface curves. What’s more, as tapes have to be
pasted on the back of these emblems and fixtures, there is a definite design
pattern to increase the surface area, making these components not as simple as
they look.

So where does IT fit into this mechanical chain of processes?
"Our business demands consistency in product quality and a zero defect
rate. A simple aberration in design or quality may lead to malfunction or a bad
finish, or both. A lot of effort, therefore, goes into design of the mold, which
is critical to the final product. This is where Pro/E comes into the
picture," explains Lal. This is the CAM part of the process, which ensures
that design of the mold is in sync with other parts of the final product. But
that’s not the end of it. The most laborious part is to cut the mold as per
the CAD-generated specs. But how does one cut a block of steel to match the
exact contours of the end-product? The brothers smile, for that’s their USP
and that’s why customers keep coming back.

A time to change

"Earlier, life was not so easy," says Kapil.
According to PTC’s Lal, whose team carried out a pre-sales process audit for
Polyplastics, the average lead time–from design to mass production–was 73
days in the pre-automation era. Before September 2000, nearly 50% of the designs
were in the 2D format, which meant that the design counterparts in the auto
company had to convert the original 3D designs into 2D format. For the remaining
50% data that Polyplastic received in 3D, its design team took an average three
days to convert half of it into 2D.

It had to frequently outsource the conversion job for the
remaining of the 3D data. Next, the converted data had to be approved by the
experts at the clients’ end, adding five days to the process. The typical next
step was to manually convert the approved product design data to create a design
for the mold. Five more days spent. This was followed by the lengthiest period
in the whole process cycle. An average 45 days were required to cut mold from
the steel using conventional milling machines. Through with the most critical
phase, it was then time for creating a prototype–a much easier task, but the
whole process including final approval took another 15 days.

However, as the steel was cut manually for molds, first
samples were seldom accurate and almost always used to come back with
engineering change requests (ECR). This stretched the process at times to over
14 weeks. What if the requested changes could not be made to the existing mold?
‘‘It was rare but such situations would mean a straight loss of lakhs of
rupees,’’ answered Kamal.

The mass production of the product, however, had yet to
begin.

The new talisman

"It was not the financial loss that was our greatest
worry," says Kapil, "but the need to reduce the process cycle time and
become speed-to-market sprinters was crucial." This was fast becoming
essential as clients, automobile companies from across the globe, had started
rolling out newer versions of their vehicles at never-before intervals. It
became essential for Polyplastics to keep pace with a faster development cycle
to remain in business. The only way out was to bypass some processes and
substantially reduce the time for making molds.

While the company was already using 2D CAD tools, it decided
to go in for a 3D design tool. A year ago Polyplastics finally implemented three
modules of Pro/E solutions from PTC– Foundation, Tool Design and Manufacturing
options. While all Pro/E packages are build on and extend the basic capabilities
of Pro/E-Foundation, as a stand-alone package it helps in creating detailed
solid and sheet metal components.

It also helps build assemblies, design weldments and produce
fully documented production drawings and photo-realistic renderings.

Similarly, the tool design option, in conjunction with
Pro/E-Foundation provides mold and die designers with tools to rapidly create
and modify complete mold and die assemblies. The options contains easy-to-use,
automated capabilities to design and verify the performance of dies, molds, and
castings, shortening their development time while improving quality.

The Pro/E manufacturing module, on the other hand, gave
Polyplastics a complete numerically controlled (NC) machining option which helps
them in creating programs for computerized numerically controlled (CNC)
machines. "This definitely translates into quality improvement, reduction
in scrap and cut production time and costs," Kapil says, adding that
Ployplastics can now start programming before the design is finalized and are
confident of meeting deadlines.

The result: straight saving of 12 days as the company jumped
two processes and reduced time to implement on the third one. In the new set-up,
Polyplastics gets all design data as 3-D models saving the company the time
needed for conversion and completely bypassing the approval process round. Also,
the sophisticated tool design option that Pro/E offers, the company creates
virtual mold design in one day as compared to five days in the earlier manual
process.

The next challenge was to cut down on the 45 days required
for milling. This required a further heavy investment and the company spent Rs
35 lakh in purchasing CNC milling machine from Bharat Fritz Werner (BFW), fully
equipped with a Sinumerik 810D controller. The price tag also includes the cost
of milling tools worth Rs 5 lakh. However, the Gupta brothers waited for six
months before installing the CNC machine in March this year. The period was used
by the design team to master operations on Pro/E, while they were also
coordinating with an external facility to create mold in an automated
environment. And according to a visibly pleased Kamal, the company took just 4
days to get the CNC machine up and running.

Getting stronger

With all pieces of the new automated environment now falling
in place, the engineering department had to redesign its operational pattern.
Once through with virtual mold design, Polyplastics now needs an average three
days to generate CNC codes. Known as G&M codes, these are the location and
movement instructions that the CNC machine follows in order to automatically
make precision cuts to create a mold. What this means is that it needs just 7
days milling time to cut a mold as compared to 45 days in the earlier days–that
too with perfection that rarely invites ECR. Also the company now has the
freedom to choose from two types of prototyping methods. It can either spend two
post-machining days to create a prototype or decide to go for rapid prototyping
soon after the tool design stage. Add 10 days for final approval and the company
can go in for mass production on the 24th day.

In a country where even large companies have IT budgets of 3%
or less, here is this quality conmcious SME in a sleepy little town that has
invested over 8% of its revenue in automating its operations. The gains are
there for all to see–saved time and increased quality.

But then time saving is not all this duo has gained in the
deal. "Its about surety. We are a lot more confident today when we make our
commitments–confident of quality, time and lowest possible rates," says
Kamal with obvious pride. Above all, automation has also enabled the company to
undertake designing and development of more intricate and complex products like
the fuse box. "We certainly would have refused such order earlier,"
says Kapil.

Through with automating their engineering department, the
Gupta brothers–are working on their plans for an ERP implementation. The
company has already computerized its financial, personnel, sales and invoicing
functions. And while inventory control, material billing processes and
production planning is also on the upgradation path, it is also looking ahead to
advisory tools for plastics to further refine its design and production process.

Other than material gains, the confidence building and
adopting technologies–that’s a sure new touch many others would be looking
for.

Shubhendu Parth in Yamuna Nagar–Dataquest