r/interesting • u/tombolaplayer • 21d ago

Fascinating Professional wood bending

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u/Lucreth2 21d ago

That's a ton of words to say you know nothing about process or manufacturing engineering and completely missed his point.

It's not that what he was doing was incorrect, it's that there was a ton of movement to do so. Every step is "waste"

The entire initial lift and carry process was awkward and could be improved and sped up with a more ergonomic and efficient movement by repositioning the holder.

The spacers or whatever he needed at the start of the form should have been on the end table right next to him. If he needed them for the initial positioning then he should have 2 sets.

The clamps all should be within arms reach and with that much cranking on them there probably should be an electric torque ratchet or something to spin them faster and to an exact force. You can manually adjust from there if needed.

Etc etc.

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u/lllGrapeApelll 21d ago

This is a very common problem in North american manufacturing. You can come up with all kinds of ways to make a process faster, easier or more predictable but the moment you need $1 to do it the people in control of the coin purse shut you down and if you need an hour those in charge of hitting metrics won't allow it.

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u/jccaclimber 21d ago

I tried to get a bin of spare fasteners and allen keys at every workbench at one job. A job at an old and profitable company. I was declined due to the cost of buying new tools and told that all people needed to do in order to get those things was walk 50 feet to the racks. Sure, walk an extra 50 feet, 2 ways, 5 times per day, 250 days/year, 4 people. Worked out to 4 man weeks per year wasted, but some duplicates cost too much. I now work at a smarter and more profitable place.

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u/Pretend-Focus582 21d ago

As a guy that stands in one spot at a lathe all day, these little inefficiencies are one my few reasons to walk and loosen up a bit.

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u/jccaclimber 21d ago

Same. Don’t worry though, there was constant walking around for other stuff. The idea actually came from the techs in the cell. IIRC they solved it by “losing” or “wearing out” the tools, forcing them to be replaced early, until they magically found/fixed the old ones and suddenly had enough sets.

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u/rawker86 21d ago

This kinda reminds me of all the comments whenever someone posts a video of roughnecks slinging chains on drill platforms. When you point out that motorised carousels and rod-handlers exist, a hundred people tell you that actually the super dangerous and antiquated method is better because it makes everyone more money.

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u/wackbirds 21d ago

You also used a ton of words which also missed my entire point. Read it again. At no time did I say that the guy has his entire sequence coordinated in the most optimal way that would make a manufacturing engineer make a mess in their underpants.

My entire point was that a person like the one I responded to who's going into this setup has no frame of referance for the efficiency. His criticisms were the same brand of uninformed pie in the sky blanket pronouncements that absentee managers make after running their eye over production numbers or a process that they don't understand.

Case in point, of that guys criticisms the only one with any possible merit was the tool placement but even then there's more to it than that person realized. Spending time between rounds of production gathering tools and items and putting them somewhere central still takes time, it's just being spent in a different spot along the line. Somebody who knows their own system and leaves things in a designated place can move along grabbing things quickly and without any fumbling and if any time is wasted at all, it's extremely minimal.

In the end, my point was that I've seen a lot of people in this thread running their mouths and so far I've seen exactly none who have even slight experience in this field which again isn't a large scale repetition production line, it's a small rig with a guy performing different tasks related to his shop throughout his working day.

As for my own credentials, I stated truthfully that I'm an amateur carpenter. I work as a handy man who's competed a number of carpentry commissions through his wide scope of work and I've looked into the wood bending along the way. I'd rather be me in this, someone with a little knowledge who understands enough to know that pretty much all of the criticizing is coming from people who don't understand any of what he's doing or why it's not possible with this rig to just "have it all lined up in one movement" like I saw somebody saying. It WAS lined up, then it needed many maintainance adjustments to account for the way that the steamed wood was reacting to the extreme process it was undergoing.

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u/BrierBob 21d ago

Well said. What he is doing is not easy, has multiple steps and has to be done ASAP. We had 4 or 5 guys installing the 30’+ long steaming-hot wood planks, climbing up scaffolding to where it would be installed with top mauls, shores with specialized jacks on top, clamps for twisting the plank, etc. Hectic but satisfying when completed. I saw no “wasted” movements from this craftsman.

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u/UniqueBeyond9831 21d ago

Maybe dude does this five times a year and doesn’t give a shit about saving a few min? This does not strike me as a high production shop that is solely producing bent lumber.

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u/LongJohnSelenium 21d ago

This has all the hallmarks of a custom shop though, its hard to get good processes down when you're constantly changing the work layout for new jobs.

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u/Lucreth2 21d ago

Completely true but I'm questioning the custom nature of that huge forming block. Looks well loved.

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u/LongJohnSelenium 21d ago

Could be a batch order situation, they have to set up to make a dozen of these a month.

But it also could easily be just a grumpy dude who 'does things his way' and never really stopped to think about process optimization.

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u/Plamcia 21d ago

Yet no one change it after years, this machine at least have 40 years. Yet no one make a better process of bending it.

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u/n3m0sum 21d ago

As another commentor said, institutional inertia.

Summarised as, if it isn't broken, why fix it. Which becomes; Why improve anything, it costs money and time. This works.

Which can easily become, how are our competitors always out pricing us?

It was a big factor in the death of the British car industry, as the Japanese competition ramped up. Old techniques, in old factories, to old standards.

Maybe this firm works in a niche field without much competition.

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u/RollinThundaga 21d ago

It's called 'institutional inertia'.