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Heidtman Steel Product's Butler, Indiana facility is home to the newest SCS Sheet Line - the fourth to be placed into operation. It brushes stretcher-leveled sheets of up to 1/2" and 20 feet long produced on Butler's Stretcher-Leveler Cut-to-Length Line.

This new SCS Sheet Line, a joint venture between Heidtman and TMW , is now processing, ultra-clean, laser-flat sheets for customers in the midwest and Great Lakes markets.
By one measure, Bull Run Metal (BRM) of Clinton, Tennessee is half the company it was three years ago. That's a good thing: "It takes half the people to put out finished product than it did in 2003," explained Robert Love, BRM's President and the catalyst behind a relentless pursuit of productivity gain. "That hasn't brought cuts in headcount, it's brought growth."

Founded 25 years ago as a fab shop serving regional manufacturers, BRM built expertise in designing and fabricating containers to store and transport hazardous and radioactive waste. In 1999, it made a strategic shift to focus almost entirely		 Leaner Manufacturing With SCS

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on the waste container business. Making containers for Department of Energy (DOE) contractors now makes up nearly all of BRM's business

BRM containers of 8 to 1620 ft3 safely store contaminated materials, from tools to filter media to soil. Most are transported to DOE's Nevada Test Site and safely buried. It's not an easy business to qualify for; BRM maintains NQA-1 certification, a crucial nuclear industry quality benchmark. But when Love joined BRM as operations manager 2-1/2 years ago, quality was not the area needing improvement. Process efficiency was his target.

Love's focus has shifted from material and activity flow to technology that
lowers costs - preferably technology that doesn't call for capital investment. "We buy P&O from Olympic Metals
       BRM operations personnel (left-to-right) Jerry Siler, David Bales and
       Mark LaCombe discuss welding requirements for this hazardous waste
       container lid which was fabricated from stretcher-leveled SCS.		       (see March 2005 issue) and they told
      me about a steel process called
      SCS. Then Chip Gerber of Layhill
      Processing visited with samples and
      a folder full of applications showing
where SCS replaced P&O and how well it was working out. I ordered some SCS for trials, and the sheets that came in almost looked like stainless, they were so clean."

At first, BRM fabricators were leery of SCS. "They thought press brakes and shears needed that oil. They didn't want a dry material," Love recalled, "but after using SCS, they see oil isn't needed and now they don't like to see us bring in any P&O at all."

The big SCS benefits have been in a welding and painting. Love observed, "With the clean SCS surface, our weld beads are more uniform with less spatter. In our big containers, we weld tubes to the sheets to add strength, and getting a good weld was tricky with P&O, but not with SCS."

As for paint prep Love points out: "We take our P&O boxes outside the building, use a degreaser and rinse to remove the oil, grime and dust (dust created from grinding the welds smooth). It only takes 20 to 30 minutes, but the added handling makes it a bottleneck. With SCS, we do a simple five minute wipedown to remove the grinding dust, then take them right to the paint booth. For a certain container made from 3/16" hot-rolled black, we spent one and a half hours grinding just to get it acceptable for welding and painting. With SCS that goes away entirely."

Love summarized: "We improve by challenging conventional wisdom. We eschew the words 'but that's the way we've always done it.' We encourage employees to try new ideas, and there's no negative repercussions if they don't work out. That's how we foster innovation and improvement. SCS fits right in with that approach. The conventional wisdom might be 'don't order SCS it's more expensive than what we could buy here or there.' But when I look at what it saves us in process time and throughput, SCS is absolutely a bargain."




Here's an indication of how confident we are in SCS' superior fabrication performance: This fall, TMW will begin first stage blanking of SCS sheets for our customers. Specifically, we'll be installing a 5000 watt laser cutting machine and 25-ton turret punch press so we can add greater value to the SCS we already produce. There are a number of reasons for adding this capability, but chief among them are:

1. Service to existing customers. It's no secret that
    freight and material handling are becoming a
    bigger portion of overall product cost. By performing
    these fabrication services mere yards away from
    where the material is blanked and brushed, we help
    customers who outsource such work to reduce their
    overall freight/handling costs.

2. Competitive Advantage. When TMW lasers or
    punches material, that material will often be
    stretcher-leveled SCS. We'll compete against shops
    lasering or punching hot-rolled black or P&O. Using
    SCS gives us advantages in laser cutting speed and
    part quality (no springback). These advantages will
    translate into new customers.

3. Training Center. Showing customers firsthand how
    SCS performs in these two common operations is
    key to selling its value. We'll be able to do that by
    lasering and punching their material just minutes
    after it comes off the SCS line. 

Look for details of these new services, and the technology partners we are teaming up with, in future SCS Updates.

The June 2006 issue contained two articles that generated lots of reader feedback: "SCS Application Highlights" gave readers a 'one-stop shop' for information on areas where SCS has proven to perform especially well in fabrication and painting processes, while ". . . And Some Application Limits" discussed processes where SCS may not perform
as well as other flat-rolled steels. Much feedback
fell into the 'THANKS !' category - readers were pleased to have the convenience of the one-stop
shop or were grateful to see SCS' limitations clearly spelled out. One reader commented that he didn't
want to learn limits by finding out 'the hard way.'

However, a few readers contacted us to take issue with some claims of success, explaining they had
not seen better welds, faster lasering or superior
salt-spray test results. AND WE'RE GLAD THEY DID ! Why? Because investigating these cases we found
that the user overlooked a key step or wasn't aware
of certain information that makes all the difference:

 - One user complained of problems grinding weld
    plugs flush on SCS sheets. We suggested a
    different grinding pad which did a much better
    job on all their steels. SCS Grinding Guidelines.

 - Another user could not get SCS to spot weld.
   After a visit from TMW's in-house expert, they get
   excellent SCS-to-SCS and SCS-to-P&O welds
   and have a copy of our 'Spot Welding Guidelines'.

 - A user claimed no speed increase for lasering
   SCS. On further checking, they found the shop
   was lasering P&O that someone mistakenly told
   them was SCS. When they lasered the real SCS
   they saw a 30% speed increase.

The moral of the story is this: If you're using SCS in customary fabrication operations and it is not out-performing hot rolled black or P&O, CONTACT YOUR SCS SUPPLIER OR TMW RIGHT AWAY ! Think of
us as the 'SCS Help Desk.' We're confident we'll get
to the root of the problem so you get the full benefit
of using SCS. Often it's as simple as consulting the
SCS Fabrication Guidelines published on the SCS web site. Other times we tap into our outside experts
to fully understand and correct issues. However, we
can't help fix what we don't know, so contact us if
you suspect you're not achieving full success with
your SCS trial or your regular SCS usage.

Call Bob Hoffman at (618) 282-4200 xt. 113
   Copyright 2006 The Material Works, Ltd.