Lund International Efficiency Initiative Provides Benefits

At the recent SEMA Show in Las Vegas, Lund revealed that its strategy to improve manufacturing consistency and efficiency helped Honda improved its own efficiency.
Matt Stanesic, OEM Channel Director for Lund International recently spoke at the supplier forum hosted by Honda Access America, Inc. at the 2005 SEMA show. The focus of the topic was to share best practices with other Honda accessory suppliers and the company’s efforts over the past year to improve quality and reduce scrap rate.
Lund International manufactures the Moonroof Visor and Hood Air Deflector for Honda, both uniquely engineered and challenging to manufacture. “The previous supplier delivered a very good product,” said Stanesic, “but the process required a high degree of operator dependency so we set forth an internal challenge to reduce waste.”
The company converted the production tooling to improve temperature control, redesigned trim fixtures, built application specific hot stamping fixtures and a mold inspection and refinishing program in order to achieve more consistent part geometry and repeatability in the forming and finishing process.
The manufacturing process was also looked at and streamlined. The result was the creation of a pressurized forming chamber with an air filtration system and a sheet preparation process to ensure high optical clarity in the product. Combined, the new tooling and process improvements resulted in a scrap rate reduction from 25% to 12%.
Lund International is already looking ahead into 2006 to continue improving this process. “We have a goal of reducing material scrap to less than 5%,” says Stanesic. “Working together with Honda, we are very excited about the opportunity to continue improving our products and increasing our competitiveness in the market.”