Recently, the Finishing Department identified one of their Herbie's (constraints).

It seems Texas Die Casting had spent numerous hours sorting one customers appliance valves for nicks on the seal beads. It was our #1 cause for sorting. Furthermore, our customers frequently found seal bead nicks as well. A team of interested employees met to determine the cause and cure.

The initial thoughts were that they came from the Die Cast Department (its' not our fault), or possibly from trim or shot blast.

An experiment was conducted which proved the majority of the seal bead damage occurred at the shot blast area. Again, the causes had to be explored. The potential causes were listed as not enough ballast, too many parts, too few parts or just the handling of the parts.

The cure turned out to be adding more parts to the shot blaster to avoid the parts falling so far while tumbling. This resulted in the nicks on the seal beads going away, as well as a productivity gain of 32%.

Another great TOC success story!