FDM - March 2009

Robotic cell solves
production problem
Technology and lean
manufacturing open up
automotive market for
Paladin Industries.
By Kathleen McLaughlin, Managing Editor
kmclaughlin@wattnet.net

Paladin Industries isn’t interested in the status quo. Investment and innovation coupled with lean manufacturing principles is changing how the woodworking company produces machined components for the office/institutional furniture, store fixture and automotive industries.

By pushing the possibilities and embracing lean manufacturing, Paladin is tapping the automotive industry, a revenue stream not traditionally associ-

Panels are sprayed with a heat-activated adhesive. From there, they move via conveyor to the membrane presses.

After adding a Fanuc robot to automate its shift knob sanding operation, Paladin was able to reduce its labor by half.

ated with the woodworking industry, and producing components on a just-in-time basis. Paladin’s commitment to technology was recently recognized by the Woodworking Machinery Industry Association with the Innovator of the Year award.

Automated sanding

The company’s commitment to lean was tested more than two years ago when it started manufacturing solid hardwood maple and walnut shift knobs for an automotive supplier. Paladin had to produce a certain number of parts per day. Because the sanding was initially done by hand, the process required eight people to produce more than 300 knobs per day. If production fell behind, more labor had to be added to meet its daily quota.

“No one sanded the knobs the same and the size and shape is dictated by the customer and each one had to be checked with a gauge,” says Larry Bell, CEO of Paladin Industries. “We had some inconsistency, and if a knob was sanded too hard or if the shape wasn’t

right it was a reject.”

Because of fluctuating labor costs and consistency issues, the production team researched options to streamline the sanding process. After consulting with Stiles Machinery Inc., the team decided to add a Fanuc robot to automate the sanding operation. “The robot was a leap for us,” says Bell.

To maximize the investment, the team developed a lean work cell, which included moving the four-spindle CNC router and clustering the robot and custom boring machine. “Physically there’s very little movement of the part between operations and final packaging,” says Bell.

A hardwood blank goes from the custom boring machine and is sent to a CNC router. From there, it’s transferred to the robot that sands the shift knob with three grits of sandpaper. The shift knob is then given a quick touch up and is inspected for quality.