CLEVELAND, OH—November 6, 2017—Anchor Manufacturing Group, Inc., Cleveland, OH, has received the 2017 Zierick Manufacturing Corporation Productivity Award as part of the Precision Metalforming Association (PMA) Awards of Excellence in Metalforming.  Anchor Manufacturing Group produces stampings and assemblies for a variety of industries, and has put a significant amount of focus on class-A-appearance trim parts as one of its core areas of expertise.

The company won the award for its approach and handling of a class-A part, an automotive side-sill.  The side-sill appearance part presented many challenges from the onset of the project due to the need to maintain critical appearance standards.  

The first major issue involved scratches.  The repeating location of the scratches made it apparent that the parts became scratched during transit to the customer.  Anchor then developed two new packaging concepts to eliminate scratching.  

A second issue was related to inspector agreement—internally between Anchor’s own inspectors, and between Anchor’s inspectors and its customer’s inspectors.  A Kappa study was performed to evaluate how the inspectors’ inspection of parts compared to one another as well as to the process expert.  With regard to the inspector agreement, the team determined it to be critical that both parties view the parts in the same environment.  As a result, Anchor built a part stand that placed the part in field position and then determined the customer-specified distance for viewing the part.  Anchor placed lines on its plant floor to properly locate the part stand and the inspection distance.  Then, it investigated the customer-specified lighting under which the parts needed to be inspected.  Anchor modified the lighting both at its inspection table and at its part stand to meet the specification.

The final issue experienced during the project involved a part surface blemish that turned out to be residue from the adhesive on the protective film that was applied to the part before shipment.  It was determined the parts were sitting too long when Anchor was ahead of schedule, which resulted in adhesive residue on the parts.  After trialing other protective films, Anchor found one that left no residue and also saved the company on cost. 

As a result of these measures, Anchor experienced an annual savings of $150,000 from scrap reductions, productivity increases and on-time delivery.  The scrap rate decreased from three to 0.5 percent.  In addition, the customer could now expect 100 percent on-time delivery and 100 percent quality parts.

The Productivity Award is one of nine Awards of Excellence in Metalforming, presented annually by PMA.  Sponsored by Zierick Manufacturing Corp., Mount Kisco, NY, the award recognizes outstanding achievement by a manufacturing company in the development and implementation of programs, processes and use of assets that lead to significant improvements in productivity.  

PMA is the full-service trade association representing the $137-billion metalforming industry of North America—the industry that creates precision metal products using stamping, fabricating, spinning, slide forming and roll forming technologies, and other value-added processes.  Its nearly 800 member companies also include suppliers of equipment, materials and services to the industry.  PMA leads innovative member companies toward superior competitiveness and profitability through advocacy, networking, statistics, the PMA Educational Foundation, FABTECH and METALFORM Mexico tradeshows, and MetalForming, Fabricating Products News and 3D Metal Printing magazines.

Editor’s Note: For more information on PMA’s Awards of Excellence in Metalforming, visit www.pma.org/awards.