Safety Glass Experts International Ltd (SGEI) continues to develop their unique services for the glass processors. In the past months company has introduced new services for float glass quality inspections while carrying out successful consulting projects for tempered and bent laminated vehicle glazing producers in three different continents. Last week Safety Glass Experts signed a service contract with Romanian safety glass producer Gerom S.A. Buzau.
Producing heat treated safety glass, such as tempered, or bend laminated glass is largely operator dependent craft. Tempering operator has to adjust the heating recipes every often to maintain mechanical strength and flatness for example.
Bending large vehicle windscreens requires operator to control the bending process through the control panels and user interface throughout the entire duration of the bending/final bending phase. Lamination defects are in every producers top 5 most common defect list. Perfectly adjusted lamination processing parameters are important to reduce lamination defects, but also the heat treatment processing; tempering and bending quality is in crucial role cutting this waste and elimination of the lamination defects.
Lack of internal specialists and manufacturing know-how will result in slow deterioration, without continuous efforts, attitude and dedication to develop the processes. Machinery producers rarely provide quality training or consulting services from the glass processors perspective. Therefore usually more cost effective solution is to hire objective external expert for training, and consulting projects.
SGEI provides tailored training, consulting, diagnostic and tooling services for safety glass manufacturers. Companies core competence areas are bending, tempering, and lamination processes. In addition to these process related expert services, company also conducts float glass quality examinations for safety glass processors suffering from low level sub-supplier quality.
SGEI training programs contain a combination of theoretical training including detailed training material, and learning by doing type training for operators in the furnace’s (tempering or bending). The trainings provide operators real understanding of the process, skills to independently operate the furnace, understand it’s functions, develop new products, understand causes of defects and eliminate basic quality defects, acknowledge mould defects, carry out basic mould fine tuning activities and develop mould tooling together with the mould fabricators. Evidently training results are seen in positive gains on efficiency, quality, ability produce more complex products, lower waste levels, and increased worker motivation and devotion.
ON-SITE EXPERT SERVICES WITH GEMBA ATTITUDE - Go and See for Yourself
SGEI training and consulting services are mainly conducted with on-site visits in clients manufacturing units. SGEI follows the ideology of Go and See for Yourself by Japanese Genchi Genbutsu, which is a part of Lean Manufacturing and the Toyota Production System.
Field Specialist Mika Eronen comments: “Our expert services are based on the idea that we go and see for ourselves what is done on the manufacturing floor. This is required to gain true understanding on the problems client is requesting our help for and furthermore as a base for continuous improvement. For us it is normal “Modus Operandi” to put our hands into the production and perform work on the floor level. Only this way we can see the direct impact of the improvements we made”
The Present State Evaluation service provides perfect conditions for a first step towards successful development project. Present state evaluation provides new clients a possibility to get external expert view on their current production, a individual process or a production defect. The owner Pekka Kytösaho explains: “We have received only positive feedback on the PSE-visits conducted so far.
Although this service does not include implementation of solutions every time a lot of direct solutions are provided for our clients during the visits, improving processing parameters for example. Furthermore our clients have been very pleased with the extensive reports, containing sufficient information and instructions to develop found imperfections also independently. During the evaluation visit on site, client has a chance to get to know us and the way we work. Finally armed with the report + our prescription for solutions, the client then can decide whether to proceed with us implementing the solutions we prescribed –and they usually do”.
NEW SERVICE CONTRACT
Following a successful Present State Evaluation, Safety Glass Experts and Gerom S.A. (http://www.gerom-buzau.ro/) signed a new service contract last week. Gerom S.A. is specialized in the production of architectural glass, but they produce glazing also for automotive, constructions, and home appliances. SGEI is providing Gerom S.A training and consulting services to develop their bus and special vehicle windscreen production into a new level in regards of product quality, production efficiency, and extended product range.
The Director Mr. Jori Jurttila comments the project “After our initial visit at Gerom S.A. we were impressed with the level of quality they’ve achieved bending complex bus windscreens, especially taking into count the short time span they’ve spend developing their production. However during our Present State Evaluation our expert did recognize room for development and a further development project was started. We’re really looking forward to this project and remain confident that our expertise combined with the help of Gerom’s state of the art bending furnace and well motivated staff the results will be notable.”
Gerom S.A General Director Mr. Sergiu Bulatel comments “We chose collaboration with SGEI because we agreed with their approach in finding solutions to our problems. During the visit for the PSE, a good collaboration between the SGEI expert and our specialists was established together with a mutual trust. Following PSE’s recommendations, we agreed to improve the skills of our specialists by signing a new service contract.
