V Company profile

V Problem identification
V Analysis and solution
V Conclusion and suggestion
V About John Crane Ltd.
V Products
V Customers/the market
V Competitors
V A packing company founded in 1917 in Chicago, Illinois.

V First product invented by John Crane, a system rotating shafts

by packing material tightly around the shaft thus preventing
the fluid surrounding the shaft from leaking out.

V In 1923, John Crane built its subsidiary in UK. John Crane UK

became a main arm to John Crane International (JCI) in
Europe.

V JCI was owned by TI group, a British engineering company.

V JC UK managed the EMA (Europe, Middle East and Africa)

region and generated 30% of JCI·s revenue.
V The products: mechanical seals
V Despite the variety of applications, all seals performed a similar
function, to provide a barrier between two regions through which a
common shaft rotated.
V Customers came with particular sealing problem and Crane provided a
solution in the form of either a standard or custome seal, along with a
housing design if necessary.

V 60% of seal sales were replacements for seals which had reached the
end of their useful life.

V Three categories of customers:

1. Projects
2. Original Equipment of Manufacturers (OEMs)
3. End user

V Projects: large scale plant, intense competition, success resulted in

future sales.

V OEMs: for example pump manufacturers; fierce competition.

V End user: multinational campanies, swimming pool owners.

V Four categories:

1. Offered a wide range of sealing solutions (similar to John

Crane)

2. Low variety, small range of seals, high volume producers

3. Competitor emerged from companies expanding from

seal servicing

4. A pirate competitors who put Crane·s name on a sub-

standard seal and passed it off as genuine.
 


  

 
  
 
 
  

'
 


     

    
    
V  

Too many types of machine to produced high variety of Crane·s
products (divided by material sizes, batch quantities, types of
product). Production flow became complicated since the machines
were separated by groups of same function in different rooms.

V u  
Production in large batches caused a long jobs in each stage of
production. Thus, it created ineffectiveness caused by a long lead
time 8-12 weeks from one stage to another.

V à     

A fire burnt down the factory and caused a resetting of factory into
two groups, Make To Order (MTO) and Make For Stock (MFS).
V   
Machines in shop were located based on the parts they were producing rather than the
type of machine they were. Component were grouped to be produced by particular
cells, instead of machines grouping based on its function.

V à
    

CNC machine has a computer controller which tells the machine all it needs to know to
make a part. On traditional machines, the operators performed these functions using
levers and dials.

V ï     

People were trained to use computerized system which was replacing the old manual
system

V ! à à

CIM using CAD and CAM has enabled JC to integrated the system between Design
Engineer, Production Engineer and Operator (Exhibit 9)
V JC performance improvement (figure 2)
V Dilemma about carrying offline programming by Production
Engineering or online programming by the Operators.
V JC used integrated manufacturing system CADAM to computerize
the process of design to manufacture. CADAM also enabled editing
in design process became faster rather than using pencil and
eraser.

V CADAM was unable to create program as detail as the operator

did. Finally the CADAM was being re-released thus the Operators
were able to interupt CAD drawing to create the program as what
they wanted without any error (online programming)

V In fact, online programming and offline programming have their

own good and bad points. These resulted in dilemma problem
about carrying the online programming or offline programming.