Excel Manufacturing in Wichita, Kansas, hasn't been afraid to think long-term and as a result has aggressively captured market share.

On September 11, 2002, exactly one year after the terrorist attacks in the U.S., business was down nearly 40 percent. Most aerospace companies were retreating and scaling back their operations. Excel Manufacturing responded counter to this trend. The company and its owner, Alan Oakleaf, put a lot of faith in Makino technology and Excel's ability to gain new business in a down market. The company placed an order for three Makino MAG3 machines with the MMC automated pallet-handling system. The move has paid off. Since installing the equipment, sales have nearly doubled, and productivity is up 300 percent on parts machined on the MAG3s.

Performance Pays Dividends

Excel Manufacturing, Inc. is a contract manufacturer focused on the aerospace industry that serves as a supplier for Cessna, Boeing, Bombardier Canada and Sikorsky. The company has recently expanded its market share by receiving a number of new contracts while maintaining its existing customer base, fueling rapid growth. This diversification and large customer base are key factors in Excel's success. As the business needs of one customer ebb and flow, there is usually another customer in the wings whose needs are picking up.

Marwan Hammouri, vice president and general manager, explains that the company's success has been achieved by going that extra mile for their customers. As an example Hammouri cites a contract that Excel won with Boeing.

	Excel's MAG3 MMC was the first installation of its kind in the world.

"We won a contact two years ago from Boeing for window frames for Boeing C17 Globemaster transports," Hammouri says. The C17 Globemaster is a tactical transport aircraft designed to carry military payloads such as the M1A1 Abrams tank and the AH64 Apache helicopter. "The complete window frame part consists of more than 40 detail parts and subassemblies. We ran the first ship set here in Wichita and Alan Oakleaf, our owner, delivered it to Boeing St. Louis, in the back of his pickup truck! We worked with the Boeing team to perfect the parts and minimize fit issues by assembling the frames in-house." It is by going the extra mile and offering services like subassembly, that fall outside the normal confines of a supplier that helped Excel win this contract.

As another measure of the company's success, Boeing recently honored Excel by naming it the Boeing 2003 Supplier of the Year. Excel was selected to receive this award from a field of more than 10,000 vendors in 66 countries.

"Excel is willing to take higher risks than its competitors, which is one of the reasons we are seeing growth while others around us aren't," says Hammouri. "We have 110 employees or so today, and we were at just 75 only eight months ago. Since December of 2002, we have been running our operation 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while other shops were closing their doors or limiting their production output." Hammouri recognizes that Excel cannot perform as it has without having a strong technology partner in Makino.

Becoming an Industry Leader

Excel's first partnership with Makino was buying a multi-machine, multi-pallet A88 MMC cell. Hammouri states, "The A88s with the MMC enabled us to eliminate setup time from more than 80 different operations." As a result of the A88 cell, Excel's business grew even during the recent recession. Customers also perceived the value in the partnership between Excel and Makino. Every customer that saw the A88 system was impressed because they like to see their suppliers investing in the advanced equipment that produces the quality parts they demand.

The A88 cell gave Excel tremendous confidence in Makino through its reliability and incredibly productive performance. This confidence helped lead the company's owners to decide to become the first company in the U.S. to purchase the MAG3 cell.

"Prior to partnering with Makino, we would never want to be first with something, either a machine or a technology," says Hammouri. "Our confidence in Makino, the products they build and the way they stand behind their products continues to grow immensely. Our experience with them from the very beginning has given us the highest confidence that they will perform as promised every time."

When Excel placed the order for the three MAG3 machining centers from Makino, the machines didn't even exist in production form yet. "The specs weren't even completely finalized for the machine," says Mark Rehwinkel, sales engineer for Makino's production machinery group. "I took Excel's wish list and shared it with our engineers in Japan, so Excel actually had significant input into the final design of the machine.

"This is a company that is willing to invest in technology to get ahead, and they have always been proactive," he continues. "When I presented them with the initial specs and plans for the MAG3, they were interested because of the success and performance they got from the A88s."

Hammouri says that deciding to purchase the MAG machines was an easier decision than it may seem. "These machines offer a much higher productivity than our previous manufacturing methods, and can accommodate the monolithic parts that have been incorporated into the new designs of aircraft. While we have machines that can do larger parts than the MAGs, we can machine 95 percent of the work we do—two to three times faster with the MAGs—than on our other machines."

Immediate Business Impact

The MMC pallet system allows Excel to store fixtures for faster setup of future jobs.

According to Hammouri, Excel saw an immediate impact from the MAG machines. "We have already seen a three-fold improvement in our run times and our sales were up 80 percent at the beginning of this year. We know more growth is coming, we have actually budgeted our company to grow by nearly 35 percent strictly with the addition of the MAG machines from Makino.

"We've picked up a lot of contracts through our marketing of the technology that the MAGs give us. In the past we've had to work harder to sell our capabilities in such a competitive market, but now we have had people calling us when they find out we have the MAG cell. This equipment has increased our customers' confidence in us, and their response says to us that they also believe in our growth and stability as a vendor and partner to them."

Quality Performance

Having the MAG cell helps to provide excellent quality and reduced delivery lead times for Excel to pass along to its customers.

"The MAG machines give us quality parts," Hammouri explains. He says that a critical factor in manufacturing aerospace parts is reducing the number of setups required to produce the part. "Multiple setups mean a higher possibility of risk," he explains.

"We have machining flexibility on the MAGs because a part can be completed in fewer setups. For example, we had one part that went from six operations to two. And, with the pallet system, we have virtually no time spent on loading and unloading parts because the process is now automated once the initial setups are complete. Savings like that add up. We don't have to waste time verifying multiple operations on the MAG3 machines. The quality of the parts is always consistent."

The MAG cell enables full five-sided machining even on the large monolithic parts that Excel is machining. Five-sided machining enables the contours on the perimeters of the parts to be machined in the same work holding as the machining of the inner pockets. Most parts are complete in two setups, one for the front side of the part and the second for the reverse side.

The MAG machines are capable of five-sided machining as a result of the large range of motion of the spindle. The spindle is mounted in a C axis behind A-axis configuration. The A axis moves through a +/- 110 degree arc, and the C axis can rotate continuously both clockwise and counterclockwise. This configuration enables the spindle to be tilted down so machining can occur on the top surface of the part, and to be pointed vertically to machine the bottom surface of the part. The C-axis motion enables the spindle to follow the contoured part shape all around the part. The maximum workpiece size is 118.1 x 59.1 x 19.7 inches, which accommodates almost every part Excel manufactures.

Hammouri is most impressed with the true high-speed, 30,000-rpm spindle on the MAGs. "When ‘high-speed' was the buzz term, everyone was coming out with high-speed spindles," he says. "But, for good part accuracy, you couldn't run some of these spindles at their maximum speed. We've seen that with the MAGs we can set up a job and run the spindle at its full RPM capability and have complete confidence in the parts we are going to get." The proprietary technology in the design of the MAG spindle enables it to be run at 30,000 RPM and max load continuously. The spindle is designed to be extremely robust. With an estimated 90 percent of Excel's billet becoming chips, it is vital that a high-performance spindle be used to cut those chips.

The metal removal capabilities of the spindle and its range of motion, which eliminates setups, have provided Excel with a 300 percent increase in productivity, while gaining an improvement in part quality.

Manufacturing For The Future

The driving force behind Excel's manufacturing philosophy is to eliminate setups. Eliminating setups provides improved part quality and greater manufacturing flexibility. It was based on this philosophy that the company purchased the multi-pallet system with its original A88s. The MAG3s and 12-pallet MMC provide this same capability to the largest parts Excel produces. This is a real competitive advantage for the company.

Excel leaves many of its fixtures setup on the pallet and stored in the MMC. When there is a production demand for the part, virtually no setup is required. The MMC automatically retrieves the pallet and fixture and presents them to the work setting station. At the work setting station, the operator places the fresh raw material into the fixture. The part is then returned with the pallet/fixture to the pallet storage magazine.

The MMC then manages the production of the part. The cell's controller, Makino's Windows®-based A3, houses all the NC programs, schedules the production runs and manages the tools both on and off the machines. The MMC will load the part into the machine and unload the finished part automatically, storing the completed part in the pallet magazine until an operator is present to unload the part from the pallet.

The MMC system enables Excel to keep all three spindles cutting, maximizing spindle utilization and permitting unattended part production.

As the aerospace industry continues to change with the development of new aircraft, suppliers like Excel must continue to mold themselves to customer needs while also being creative and thinking ahead of the curve of competitors. With forward thinkers like Oakleaf and Hammouri at the helm, Excel is poised to stay on cusp of the cutting edge of aerospace machining.

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