Hess Industries, Inc March 2008

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2950 Redfield Road
Niles, MI 49120
Tel: 269/683-4182 • Fax: 269/683-1775
www.hessindustries.com

Hess Industries, Inc. is a thirtyplus year-old machine tool company that develops, designs, and builds DEMAND FLOW™ Sheet Metal Fabrication and Assembly Systems to manufacture families of like parts with change-over “onthe- fly”. Hess Demand Flow fabrication lines are currently manufacturing families of furnace doors and air filters; air conditioner coil guards and tops; washer/dryer/dishwasher door assemblies, cabinets, and drawers; and other components. Additional applications are being developed.

The Hess Demand Flow™ technology can produce batches of models with the same or different stock widths and lengths, as well as seamlessly change from one model to the next. Instead of building parts-to-finished-goods inventory, demand flow lines allow the manufacturer to make parts based on customer orders received, adjusting “on the fly” to meet consumer demand.

A furnace line manufactured a family of twelve furnace door sets (comprised of upper and lower doors for each set) out of pre-painted blank stock. The line incorporated Hess programmable “Smart Dies” and controller technologies that allowed the system to produce just one or even thousands of one door-set configuration, and then be able to reconfigure “on-the-fly” to do the same for up to twelve different door-set configurations with a cycle time between 6 and 9 seconds (dependent on part configuration) per door set. This one set of programmable dies replaced 24 tooling sets, which would have been required in a standard press-to-press transfer system.

This demand flow sheet metal fabrication system supported the customer’s lean manufacturing philosophy by providing manufacturing flexibility and significantly reducing time and cost from their traditional press-to-press metal forming processes.

For other examples of Hess Demand Flow Sheet Metal Fabrication Systems, visit www.hessonthefly.com.