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FACTOR

Specialised in Metal Machining

FACTOR is specialised in metal machining and precision turning, offering a comprehensive solution for the outsourcing of metal mechanical components to customers of the most demanding and leading industrial sectors (Aeronautics, Agriculture, Automotive, Electronics, Elevation and Handling, Energy, Hydraulics, Medical, Naval).

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FACTOR machines different kinds of raw materials (stainless steel, aluminium, titanium, hardened steel, etc.) with wide ranges (turned parts from 1 mm up to 130 mm) using different equipment. Factor quality control resources include:

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  • vision control system,

  • coordinate measuring machine,

  • optical measuring machine,

  • microscopes,

  • roughness meters,

  • layer-measuring instruments for coating,

  • gauge blocks,

  • range of other features for conducting systematic incoming and final inspection, check batches, certificates, and non-quality costs.

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FACTOR wants to become an aerospace industry supplier and needs to improve its manufacturing quality assurance system to follow the strict data quality management requirements of the aerospace industry.

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AS 9100 combines and harmonizes standards: AS 9000, ISO 9001 and Europe’s prEN 9000-1 quality systems and defines specialised areas within an aerospace quality management system such as:

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  • acquisition traceability,

  • configuration management,

  • product documentation,

  • control of work performed outside the supplier’s facilities.

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Pilot partner

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Technology Provider

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r&d partner

Problem description

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FACTOR wants to evolve towards manufacturing with zero defects by:

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  • Eliminating the efficiency failures caused by the state of the cutting lubricant,

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  • Minimizing the breakage of the cutting tools due to lack of cutting lubricant or due to the blockage of cooling channels of the tools,

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  • Facilitating diagnosis and evaluation of breakage incidents,

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  • Ensuring that the tools work within their optimum range,

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  • Predicting equipment damage,

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  • Implementing an efficient inspection of all manufactured parts.

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Currently, FACTOR does not have a manufacturing lines qualification system based on a continuous process validation to certificate its manufacturing quality level. So, it cannot guarantee the inalterability of product and process data to its customers. The objective is to meet this requirement of some aerospace and automotive customers and a competitive factor in other sectors.

i4Q Solution

The use case will be developed at the FACTOR factory located in Puçol, Spain in at least one machine of each of the following types:

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  • Automatic CNC Lathes Swiss Type,

  • CNC Vertical Centres 3, 4 and 5 Axes,

  • CNC Multitasking Machines,

  • Gear Cutting Machines,

  • Ultrasonic Cleaning Machine.

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FACTOR will use the i4Q Digital Twin and the i4Q Data Repository for digitising its entire factory.

 

The i4Q Services for Data Analytics will be applied to the collected data, in real-time, to alert on product and process deviations and the AI algorithms will recommend parameters reconfiguration.

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The solution will use:

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  • sensors to measure the properties of the cutting lubricant to facilitate the diagnosis and evaluation of incidents in tool breaks,

  • the real-time measurement of the temperature of the cutting zone it will be ensured that the equipment works within the optimum range,

  • the real-time analysis of the temperature and vibration of different machine sites will predict future failures,

  • laser sensors and artificial vision to allow metrological inspection of 100% of the parts in real time of manufacture.

  • the virtual and augmented reality to allow the measurement of complex parts. It will eliminate human error and minimize the training time in inspection for operators and verifiers.

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The data collected by the i4Q systems will allow to build a knowledge base to estimate the optimal working ranges of the machines and tools, anticipate maintenance, increasing the efficiency of the entire production system by reducing set-up times and a drastic reduction of incidents.

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Finally, FACTOR will use the i4Q Data Integration and Transformation Services for assuring its manufacturing data quality and to ensure the reliability of all the raw industrial data to its customers, especially of aerospace and aeronautics sectors.

Expected results

  • Data accuracy/precision in timestamped sensor capture.

    • from 50 to 10 ms

 

  • Computer numerical control machines set-up time.

    • 20% reduction (from current 20 minutes - average)

 

  • Measurement time in complex parts and eliminate human error.

    • 50% reduction (from current 2 hours - average)

 

  • Equipment productivity

    • 5% increase (from current 95%)

 

  • Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)

    • 15% improvement (from current 93%)

 

  • Time to market of new parts.

    • 30% reduction (from current 1 month)

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