Brawo Brassworking

Brawo Brassworking is a leading manufacturer of hot-moulded brass parts produced on a subcontracting basis. The company makes about 26,000 different articles and handles around 170 tonnes of brass every day.  Production takes place in two separate factories. Bar cutting and hot moulding are performed at the plant in Piancamuno, where over 30 presses are in operation. The plant in Gratacasolo handles mechanical finishing operations, with work centres and transfer machines.

Brawo Brassworking has pursued a policy of continuous improvement for the past decade, developing its organisation and technology to discover hidden costs in all processes - including production, logistics, quality, maintenance, and die and tool management – and eliminate them effectively by means of corrective and prevention actions.

STAIN’s project developed specifically for Brawo took the following requirements into account:

• Machine status and production progress data available in real time on all company PCs to allow immediate targeted intervention.

• Accurate and verifiable productivity indicators (performance, efficiency, OEE) available to all company functions.

• Automatic acquisition of items produced and machine stoppage causes.

• Accurate reject recording and root cause determination.

• Accurate production costing based on precise, reliable data obtained automatically from the machines.

• Recovery of financial resources thanks to reject minimization and reduced work in progress (WIP).

• Real-time availability of quantities produced at each stage (WIP), allowing optimal scheduling and stock minimization.

• Real-time raw material warehouse management and automatic recording of consumption by job order.

• Full product and lot tracking by bin, pallet, crate and box.

• Reconcilement of raw materials used for each job order.

• Real-time on-line inventorying, thereby saving lengthy and laborious manual operations for aligning physical stocks with those recorded in the management system.

• Reutilisation for other tasks of human resources previously used for manual data entry.

• Fully electronic machine tooling data sheets with part programme management.

• Automatic part programme modification based on the tool presetting values for each unit.

• Electronic management of the life, status and location of all tools, spindles and clamps.

• Automatic tool reordering based on the residual life of each tool and the list of items to be made.

• Automated management of dies, die holders, matrices and inserts.

• Total elimination of transcription errors and omissions.

• Full integration with the management system for automatic state-of-progress recording.

• Elimination of the use of paper in production.

• Ease of use by all operators, allowing considerable time saving.

• Rapid and targeted reporting for all company requirements and functions.

• Data exportability to Excel.

• Production bonus calculated automatically according to system-identified indicators.