How Industrial Molds Improved Precision Manufacturing with Smart Automation
For over 50 years, Industrial Molds in Rockford, Illinois, has been building precision tooling. In 2005, the company adopted a new approach to remain competitive in high-mix, low-volume manufacturing.
Industrial Molds proved automation works even in high-mix, low-volume work, adopting EROWA’s tooling, presetting, robots and software to boost spindle use and shopwide efficiency. Source: Industrial Molds
By 2005, Industrial Molds hit a critical bottleneck in its graphite cutting operations. Despite operators running at maximum capacity, frequent downtime between setups left expensive machines sitting idle.
Rather than accepting these limitations, Industrial Molds partnered with EROWA Technology to implement their complete Flexible Manufacturing Concept (FMC). Starting with EROWA pallets in a single graphite cutting cell, the results were immediate and impressive.
"In using the pallet system, we quickly realized the benefits of automation," Kris Grey, Industrial's Production Manager, explains. The zero-point tooling system positioned steel identically every time, while built-in skew correction allowed machines to automatically find center points. This eliminated manual alignment errors and dramatically reduced setup times.
Encouraged by early success, Industrial Molds systematically expanded automation throughout its facility—from wire EDM to milling operations and into quality control via CMM machines. The integration culminated with EROWA’s Job Management System (JMS 4.0 MoldLine) software, creating a unified platform across the entire shop floor.
The numbers tell a compelling story. Before automation, Industrial Molds required six operators to run 11 wire EDM machines. Today, they achieve higher production output with just two EDM machines and one operator. Perhaps more importantly, the time allocated for new employee training decreased from seven years to just two weeks.
"With today's labor market, companies need to maximize machine uptime, including lights-out manufacturing," Dan Pilolla, EROWA‘s President, notes.
Industrial Molds' transformation rested on four segments of EROWA’s Flexible Manufacturing Concept:
- Tooling: Standardized pallets and holders eliminate errors and reduce setup time
- Presetting: Offline preparation ensures machines cut continuously rather than wait
- Robots: Automated cells enable lights-out operation, maximizing spindle utilization
- Software: Job Management System orchestrates scheduling and data management across the entire shop floor
"Where most assume automation isn't possible, Industrial Molds demonstrated that even with unique, day-to-day work, automation can be fully leveraged," Brendan Perry, EROWA’s Sales Manager, says.
automation at Industrial Molds
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