Science-fiction visions of a brave new world of robot-operated factories are turning out to be as obsolete as dreams of flying automobiles.
Rather than running the heavily automated, workerless plants some futurists once predicted, Inland Empire manufacturers are making quantum leaps away from gizmos that can do it all in favor of old-fashioned human know-how.
For a variety of reasons, but mostly due to management trends, the manufacturing sector is shifting its emphasis away from giant automated machines to people, select tools and software. Hydro Tek Systems Inc., a maker of commercial pressure washers in Redlands, with about 50 employees, got rid of its massive 10-year-old conveyor-belt system in January as part of a switch to so-called cellular manufacturing, which relies on simpler tools, but highly trained employees and sophisticated management software.
"It was about 90 feet long," production manager Bill Loenhorst said of the discarded assembly system. "We hauled it out back. Cut it up. Had a little ceremony and said goodbye." Edge Plastics, a Riverside-based maker of aftermarket bike grips, is edging away from heavy automation as well, but for different reasons.
"Rather than improve our processing equipment, we're trying to improve on our ability to design new products," President David Grimes said.
When Edge Plastics invests in new stuff, it's more likely to buy design software -- computer-aided programs and the like -- than it is to buy new molding machines, Grimes said. Its last improvement on the molding front was a $150,000 expenditure last year on a double-barrel injection molder, which is capable of layering plastics.
"The important part is for us to keep designing new products. The life of the product is such that we have to keep reinventing the wheel," Grimes said. "I'd love to improve out in the shop, too. But it's a matter of the dollars you have to spend."
Investing in its human strengths, Fleetwood Enterprises Inc. (NYSE: FLE) in Riverside last month established a creative intranet so its marketing department, engineers, suppliers and other key departments could collaborate better on the design of new recreational vehicles.
Companies are focusing more on flexibility, customization and design than on the high production rates typically associated with massive automation systems.
Factories across the Inland Empire have jumped on the trend, including Guidant Corp.'s stent-making factory in Temecula -- which has, like Hydro Tek, delved into cellular manufacturing -- and R.W. Lyall & Co. in Corona, which freed up half its manufacturing floor a year ago in a shift to a semi-automated workplace, according to business consultants with the California Manufacturing Technology Center in Ontario, a state organization that coaches companies on ways to improve their procedures.
Change in philosophy
One of the chief forces driving the shift away from expensive and complicated machinery is the just-in-time philosophy -- a decades-old management style that started picking up steam in the 1990s.
Just-in-time champions consider the ideal production system to be one in which a factory has no inventory. "You'd have stuff coming in and going out right at the same time," said Loenhorst of Hydro Tek. Products are built to order in a just-in-time system, so there's no reason to have a lot of unsold units around gathering dust.
"(The product) only becomes an asset when it sells and there's a check in your hand," said Fred Pocius, a consultant with the California Manufacturing Technology Center. Cellular manufacturing is a subset of the just-in-time world. In cellular systems, the standard department-style organization is replaced by one in which teams -- or cells -- of employees include all the skills and tools needed to produce a specific product line. One crew of diverse talents sees a product through from start to finish.
"We have one (cell) that's nothing but custom orders," Hydro Tek's Loenhorst said. People are more flexible than machines, Pocius said.
"Labor would be cheaper (than machinery) if trained to do four or more tasks," Pocius said. "It's part of the just-in-time philosophy: You don't lay off people, they just get additional roles."
Originally published in The Business Press 03/12/01
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