Drake in Automotive Production Magazine. Letting Operators ... Operate.

The practice of forcing downward more and more responsibility onto the backs of suppliers isn't all that uncommon (albeit perhaps uncomfortable for some), and certainly isn't news to the likes of Drake Mfg. Inc. (Warren, OH), a provider of CNC grinders to industries including automotive and heavy truck (Ford, GM and such) and their suppliers (TRW, for example).

Drake manufacturers internal and external thread grinders and bore grinders, with spindle speeds ranging from 3,000 rpm to 120,000 rpm (yes, that's 120 thousand ) for materials including ferrous to superalloy, ceramics to exotics.

But it's the Drake philosophy that's striking. They know this: their customers aren't enthralled with machines. What they're interested in is getting quality parts out, at ever-increasing rates, with ever-decreasing hassles. Which is why you can't buy a "standard" machine from Drake when it comes to process design. Every machine is special, designed to produce a single part (or family), for a single customer, with as little input from an operator as possible.

How? "We write all the process software right here," says Bob Dorchester, project manager. He points to a worm gear for an automotive steering assembly. "We not only figure out how to make the part, working with customer specs and such, but it's our job to figure out how to make this part most efficiently. And that's not so much a design issue, although we don't retreat from recommending design alterations, as it is a process issue. Efficiency and productivity are process issues. Software issues."

Further, they're really not "people" issues. At Drake the posture is to remove as much as possible the variability that people--machine operators--bring to the production process. Which is not to say that operators aren't important. "It's just that an operator's time," says Dorchester, "is best spent running the machine--not programming or interpreting software. That's our job."

In point of fact, a third of the Drake workforce are graduate engineers, and half of those are devoted to writing customer/part-specific software. Which results in an incredibly user-friendly--and highly tailored--control.

A menu replete with formatted prompts guides operators through data entry, such as wheel and work sfpm, number of passes, depth per pass and frequency of dress. Other variations offer built-in parts generation software which requires the user to do no part programming development; all part characteristics are entered into the system menu--before the machine ships.

Another variation offers a feature that provides configuration menus and prompts tailored to individual needs--part, setup, dress, wheel and roll variables, plus help screens. There's even a variation that allows users to gather and display the data that each wants an operator to have available--and only that data.

The point is to let operators do what they do well. And if a part should change over time? Drake engineers, like Dorchester, can change the software to embrace the new characteristics--over the phone.