'Thumbs up' for the consumables feature

SirAs a member working in the 'nonmetalbashing' side of industry, I would like to congratulate you on the excellent Christmas issue of Production Engineer. It was very refreshing to find a range of articles with which I could identify. However much the developments of CAD/CAM and CNC may be of vital importance to British industry, as a whole it is very difficut to sustain enthusiasm for each new improvement when the technology is not relevant to your own type of manufacturing operation. Manufacture of consumable goods is also a very important aspect of British business and it is encouraging to know that new developments which are taking place in this field are also given attention. There must be a wealth of information, useful to most production engineers, available on materials handling, automation and robotic applications in the consumables sphere of industry, and I hope that the Christmas edition will pave the way for more regular 'non-metallic' articles. Thank you again. J A Durkin (Member) Lever Brothers Limited Lever House 3 St James's Road Kingston-Upon-Thames Surrey KT1 2BA SirIs this the start of something good in December's edition of Production Engineer magazine? I hope the awareness of being guilty of covering metalbashing to the virtual exclusion of all other sections of production engineering continues (excepting computers of course!!). What about covering glass making and glass products, bricks, wall and floor tiles, clay and plastic pipes, industrial ceramics, refractories, pottery, sanitary ware, industrial and domestic chemicals, textiles, clothing, footwear, furniture, paper and card conversion, timber conversion, etc. Please do not pander to these industries with a once a year seasonal coverage of food and booze. You might persuade more engineers to take an interest if you demonstrated an awareness of them, remember the Institute (sic) needs engineers, the converse is not necessarily true. I look forward to a magazine filled with interest and VARIETY. WGMayou (Associate Member) 7 De Verdun Avenue Belton Nr Loughborough Leics LE129TY SirI would like to commend the journal for the coverage of production engineering in the consumer industry in the December issue. I have been a frequent critic of the apparent emphasis on metalworking within the Institution, and am very pleased to see that my complaints, and those of other similarly motivated production engineers, have not fallen on deaf ears. Can I express the hope that this will not be a unique feature and suggest that production engineering in electronics would be a fruitful area for future features? Suitable subjects could be the manufacture of basic printed circuit boards, automatic assembly of pcbs, CAD/CAM as applied to microprocessor and printed circuit board design, and interconnection methods in electronics. I am sure that there are many other applications of production engineering in the plastics, clothing and pharmaceuticals/chemical industry which would be of similar interest. Barbara M Stephens (Associate Member) 72 Parklands Drive Chelmsford Essex CM15SP Editor's commentThe consumables feature in December was a major departure for this journal, and I am encouraged by the favourable reaction of members. You may rest assured that every effort will be made to publish more articles in this vein in future issues.

When one man's experiences are not enough

SirI must complain that the article on computerised work measurement in the December issue was not of the standard I expect in the Institution's journal, but more appropriate to the free issue press. Fifteen repetitions of a trade name on a single page would be exceptional even for them. I am aware that the article related the author's experience in installing that system, but I would have preferred to have seen a comparative study against other systems. The author quotes a ratio of 12 minutes to produce a 45 minute standard time, that is 16 minutes per standard hour. What are other system users achieving? With my company's inhouse system, if I include everyone from the computer programmer, through the study engineering to the distribution of the job cards to the shop floor, we are currently at 2.2 minutes per standard hour. Having been targetted to reach one minute per standard hour by 1988, I am very interested in what is being obtained with other computerised systems. E A Marshall (Member) 31 Carnoustie Avenue Gourock

Sticking up for an 'old friend'the EOQ formula

SirMy old friend EOQ is really receiving a If the critics don't like the proposition that set-up battering from your big guns recently. Why, it was labour is a variable cost (and I tend to agree with even said in your Letters in the November issue them), why not consider machine time as an that "this three letter word should be consigned to irreplaceable asset and set a value on that? Have oblivion along with other four letter words. . ." spare machines, as some critic suggests, but then really Mr Rushton, how un-English can you get what is the difference between this and the cost of to kick a poor formula when it is down? large buffer stocks, which the same critic probably deplores? The criticism seems to be that the EOQ formula No, EOQ is still a valid guide, provided it is is no longer a true model of the actual situation applied in the right circumstances. If its critics but in all cases? We became good friends when I had to set batch quantities for a manufacturer of a disagree, let them provide a more meaningful large variety of builders' hardware. Most of the replacement. I have seen models based on statistics which may be more logical but require 10timesthe items were made on presses with progression work to apply and are based on much more far tooling where one machine did the whole job per flung assumptions such as the cost of a stock-out. pass. EOQ is simple to apply and, because of its squareThe EOQ formula actually reduced the batch root form, not so vulnerable to errors of data. To quantities in comparison with pre-EOQ times and take a simile from engineeringthe solution of this was probably so because the planner, who was forces in a framework using Bow's notation makes also the foreman, could not be bothered with set-up some really wild assumptions regarding the stiffchanges, material interchange and storage of ness ofjoints but provides a relatively easy method. finished parts. Don't make such assumptions and you increase Another example was a manufacturer of woodthe complexity of solution a thousand times whilst en picture frame mouldings, where some 150 the only real criterion is 'Am I safe?' standard profiles finished up as some 700 items to be chosen from the catalogue. Again, there were no Are we safe with the EOQ formula and if not queues because of inter-operation storage, which what 'thick cylinder' formula can be devised that is was necessary when one profile could end up as not beyond the bounds of computation? four or five finished products. Using the EOQ formula, the actual total stockholding was very WSKohn (Member) similar to that in the pre-EOQ era, but with a much 55 Third Avenue more practical distribution which then greatly Parktown North reduced stock-outs, the bane of this industry. Johannesburg 2193

Production Engineer February 1985

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