Today’s markets are becoming increasingly competitive, with customers who own machine tools needing to adopt new, more systematic approaches to improve their performance. Concepts such as SMED, lean manufacturing, 5S and 8D are being used more and more widely. The production process is very important, and the choice of machine has a significant impact on numerous parameters that directly influence the operating result of companies using them. (To be discovered comprehensively in a further issue of Eurotec).
With a few clicks on the internet you can access numerous studies that provide a breakdown of production costs for an industrial company. These can be highly precise, more haphazard or simply fantastical. Nowadays however, if we take a simple or even simplistic view, we can state that, roughly speaking - at least in Europe - for production with a value of 100, the costs can be spread as follow: Salaries 60, Machine 30 and consumables 30. These figures are debatable, and depend to a large extent on the organisation of the company and many other factors specific to each company. Nevertheless, however we calculate, it seems evident that labour is the main cost driver. According to Willi Nef, Sales director at Tornos, in most cases when customers purchase a new machine they will only compare the purchase price and the cycle time (of the old machine and the competition). These are just two parameters amongst many others.
A few parameters Purchasing investment goods can have major consequences and customers can’t afford to make mistakes. Many parameters acts on the ROI.
Don’t miss the article to come… Cheers py
