Case Study: Koch Metal Spinning

 “Over the last three or four years, I haven’t been able to quote jobs that are polished because I wouldn’t be able to get it through the shop. Now I can and there is a ton of work out there. The hope is that we are doing things better than some of our competitors,” said Erik.

Company: Established in 1939, Koch Metal Spinning, a fourth-generation family-owned business, has grown to become one of the country’s leading manufacturers of precision metal spinnings and spun metal products.

Kyle Goodman, Buffalo Manufacturing Works’ Project Engineer, training Koch Metal Spinning’s Supervisor, Luis Ayende-Pagan

Challenge: Like most small to medium-sized manufacturers, Koch Metal Spinning faces many challenges including workforce issues and how to use technology advancement to maximize production capabilities, while minimizing organizational strain. At Koch Metal Spinning, there are part polishing jobs, completed manually with visual inspection, that yield a large amount of metal dust, causing hazards for operators. Owner Erik Koch shared that “it is a dirty job and difficult to find employees to work in that department, compounded by the fact that it takes significant time to train new employees to get to a point where they are consistent.”

Erik Koch (left) with Matt Malloy, Buffalo Manufacturing Works’ Automation Program Manager

Solution: The Shift 2.0 team from Buffalo Manufacturing Works visited Koch Metal Spinning to perform a Technology Implementation Assessment to identify a range of “quick win” technology opportunities for the manufacturer toconsider. Once all the options were identified, a collaborative approach was used to prioritize the solutions based on factors such as implementation timeline, cost, and business impact.

Koch Metal Spinning selected a cobot-based solution for single-sided automated polishing of a flat, aluminum part; polishing operations were required to interface with an existing bench grinder with the ability to expand to additional parts in the future. The main benefits are reduced labor, improved safety, and increased consistency.

Impact: Erik was impressed with how the Shift 2.0 team “put the technology implementation project together in a package; teaching us how to use it, getting us going in the right direction to create a process that we know how to modify. We can run new parts and move the cobot around to another machine. You helped us get to that first level of knowledge and understanding, then let us go from there. It is hard to get into something new for the first time; I think that’s the shift.”