Aiming high for quality and growth

US-born company owner and CEO Allan Edwards has infused the firm with a new, process-obsessed culture, with one of the most important areas being quality. FGP are reducing the annual scrap rate by rigorously applying best practice and by employing the latest technology from Renishaw, which now includes the addition of a PH20 5-axis touch trigger head system for coordinate measuring machines (CMMs), an Equator? shop floor gauging system, and a QC20-W wireless ballbar.

Mr Edwards explains, “My background was in Investment Banking. In 2004 I started looking for investment opportunities in the UK and I was introduced to FGP as a possible investment. I acquired FGP in 2006 and I've since relocated to England.

“Before FGP I had never worked in a company that manufactured parts, so it's been an interesting learning experience - which I am enjoying every minute of.”

FGP manufactures critical parts for aerospace applications. “While serving in the Marines, I learned the meaning of Flight Critical on the flight line and the demand on our Helicopters, to be ready at all times. At FGP we understand what it means to be safe in the air and so we take quality very seriously.”

A little over twelve months ago, Mr Edwards appointed aerospace quality expert Nigel Manning, to oversee the transformation of the company's quality processes. What struck Nigel was that the company had some very good, state-of-the art manufacturing equipment and machine tools, but that it needed to invest in the latest quality control processes.

“Before we bought any new equipment, however, we looked closely at our scrap rate,” says Mr Manning. “The amount of scrap FGP was producing annually was more than 14.7% of total output, so we examined and prioritised ways in which we could quickly and effectively reduce that figure. First of all, we thought carefully about how our CMMs should be used and we decided to retrofit our IMS Merlin with the Renishaw PH20 5-axis head, which offers exactly the level of precision we need for aerospace parts.”

Four-fold increase in measurement throughput

The responsibility for FGP's co-ordinate measuring machine (CMM) operations lies with Dave Robins, our CMM programer, whose job as inspection operator is to verify parts before they are shipped to customers.

Some parts are inspected 100%, some are batch- or sample-checked, but increasingly many of the parts being checked on the CMMs are first-offs, where as Mr Robins says, “When the first machined component comes off the machine we then check the machined part to make sure it is to specifications before the operator runs a batch.”

Many of the items that are routed to the CMM room are complex parts that would be time consuming to check manually, so the inspection team has to write inspection programmes for them. Mr Robins explains, “for example, on a tail-rotor component for the AW139 helicopter, we have to check all dimensions. It is a critical component machined from titanium. We manufacture a batch of 35 every month and we check 100% of two of them. We measure the outside profile, the holes, their positions, and so on. The programme takes around 15 minutes to measure 350 dimensions. The older, PH10 indexing head took about an hour to measure the same part. The PH20 is a 5-axis measurement system, so it can get to every feature in one set-up. We're so pleased with the PH20 that we're planning to buy another, in 2012.”

More accurate and predictable machines

Inaccurate parts may result from bad tooling, worn spindles or workpiece clamping, but defects can often be attributed to positioning errors in the machine tool itself: the result of geometric, dynamic and play-errors within the machine. And it doesn't matter if a machine is new or old; the secretJordan Extra Fly