Conventional coil fed line installed by Coe Press Equipment for Amana-Goodman

Pre-Painted Coil Processing
Eliminates Excessive Secondary
Operations, Press Set Up

Amana® is a brand with deep roots in quality manufacturing. The Goodman Company, L.P. , manufacturer of Amana® air conditioning and heating products, employs approximately 1,000 people at its Fayetteville, TN plant. Its package terminal air conditioner line is the number-one selling room air conditioner for U.S. hotels and motels.

Manufacturing at Goodman Company, L.P. involves an unrelenting focus on continuous improvement and quality. In 1992, the Fayetteville plant achieved ISO 9001 registration. In 1995, the Fayetteville plant adopted a formal demand-flow, just-in-time operation to be able to respond to customers faster. "It was unheard-of in our industry," explains Jeff Foreman, manager of tooling and fabrication manufacturing engineering. "Now it's mandated that every employee be trained to move to a continuous-improvement way of operating. Demand-flow is where we are taking things."

Changing to a demand-flow, pull-through manufacturing operation meant "rethinking" production and stepping up quality awareness. Take the outer case of a room air conditioner. Its production involved shearing galvanized steel blanks, stacking and moving them to a press brake for bending, then a louver press for forming, another press for making flanges, then to a wing bender, then spot welding, cleaning, painting, drying, and stacking components for assembly. Each operation required people, equipment, and floor space.

By 1996, the plant was investigating direct feeding of prepainted steel coils to presses with progressive-die tooling. Not only would this eliminate cleaning, painting, drying and all the associated material handling,it would also reduce forming operations on multiple presses, saving time and making material flow much more efficient. By the following year, the Fayetteville plant was ordering coil-feeding lines from Coe Press Equipment Corp. Goodman currently runs three Coe coil feed lines to progressive-die stamping presses with a fourth on order for installation in early 2003. The new line will feed a 380-ton hydraulic press formerly used for stamping louvers.

A feed line is made up of a Coe Servo Master 3-36 servo-drive digital roll feeder, an air-operated threading table, coil reel for pull-off operations, and freestanding power straightener. The Servo Master 3-36 can feed coil stock up to 36 in. wide at a maximum speed of 365 feet per minute with a feed accuracy of +/- 0.003 in. The coil reel can handle coils weighing up to 15,000 lbs, and the power straightener features a non-marking straightener roll package that removes coil set from the stock prior to feeding without leaving any lines or marks on the prepainted surface.

Running prepainted coil stock through progressive-die tools is paying significant dividends. Eliminating painting and drying operations meant the company could reduce the costs associated with EPA compliance for water treatment, boilers, and related hazardous-waste handling. For joining, the moved to pneumatically installed fasteners that do not harm the prepainted finish, making spot-welding, grinding, and cleaning prior to painting unnecessary, in addition to all associated material handling in between operations. Overall, Foreman says, the Fayetteville facility was able to eliminate 14 different operations by moving to prepainted coil.

Most importantly, the servo-driven coil feeders and progressive-fed tooling gives Goodman the ability to adjust and respond quickly to customer orders. The Coe Servo Master coil feeder can handle multiple feed lengths and multiple feed movements through a low-inertia, high-torque drive system and a controller capable of on-the-fly micro-length adjustments and infinite speed adjustment. Up to 100 different setups can be stored in the controller's memory. An ultrasonic, variable-speed loop control also helps in adjusting feed lengths and speeds for part changes. According to Foreman, another big advantage of ultrasonic loop control is eliminating any need for digging loop pits and then making sure the pits are guarded. The coil feeder also interfaces directly with the press control package, so multiple part programming and all feed lengths are reset automatically by job. "This cut setup time significantly," Foreman affirms.

How does Foreman and his engineering team measure process improvement? By a number of methods, including accelerated inventory turns, work-in-process turns, reduced inventory, faster job setups, and enhanced communication, both within the plant and in the ability to respond to customers. "Now, if we had to, we could make any single hotel/motel unit air conditioner at any time within a 24-hour period," Foreman says. "Having so many components to manufacture on these units used to hamstring us. Now we're flexible."

Back to Top