Hello everyone and welcome to manufacturing wellness, the podcast where we discuss meeting challenges holistically, responsibly, and with purpose. Today I'm excited to have Alex with me. Alex is from Frisa Aerospace. If you're familiar with the aerospace manufacturing segment, you have probably heard the name Frisa. Alex, warm welcome to you, sir, and thanks for being here. Hi, Keith. Thank you for having me here. My name is Alejandro Galas. I'm from Monterrey, Mexico. I work at Frisa Aerospace. We make part for aerospace based on raw rings. Very nice. I'm so happy to have you here, Alex, for this conversation. Before we get started into the questions and talking about the manufacturing wellness, what is your role with Frieza? I'm the head of the machining engineering. I'm responsibly for close to 100 BTL CNC's. We are keeping growing, and so I'm responsibly for engineering and the definition for the CNC process on this machine shop. Yeah, just a small jobber, right? Yeah. Tiny, tiny, small jobber. Few machines, few people, you know. Few machines, and your customers, they are not so small either, right? You're a tier one provider, so some very familiar names that you provide components for. Full of your requirements, as you can tell. Yes. Yeah. So, as the head of the machining situation at Frieza, you have a lot of responsibilities, and part of what we have here for this podcast is we like to talk about manufacturing wellness, and there are some things that go into manufacturing wellness. For instance, developing people. For instance, eliminating waste. Maybe embracing new technology. There's all sorts of things that that we can put into the cocktail that is manufacturing wellness. When you look at your roles and responsibilities at Frieza, what aspects of this manufacturing wellness do you find yourself focused on? Is it eliminating waste or developing people, or what takes precedence for you? That's a good question, Keith. Actually, waste will be considered something that many cows have lost into the system. Scrap time movement not needed. And we followed the seven waste information that we know, but from my experience in engineering, have a huge commitment on cycle time linked into the railroad process. Safest as well. So, the seven ways that you know is transport, inventory, motion, waiting, over-processing, over-production, and defects. Talking about my area where we belong and we have the control. Defects and over-production and over-processing are one of the most harmful that we have here, because sometimes you can get parts out of tolerance based on that. And, you know, if you make any over-processing or defect, you need to remanufacture that part, and that will cause more... We will have less capacity for the product that we need to deliver. Yeah. And when you talk about the elimination of waste, you're referencing the manufacturing of components and the elimination of scrap components and having to go that direction. Now, are you checking all your parts manually? Do you have any software? I mean, I would imagine you guys are pretty current with your software, maybe some industry 4.0 or something like that. Are you employing any of that software to help you in your daily work? Yeah. We have a lot of improvement with the 4.0. I can bring you a few examples later. But talking about what we call it final inspection, that happens after we finish the final parts. So, first and all, after we finish one sequence of machining, because parts will be made by several sequence, we ask for a local inspection for the guy who's machining the parts. So, he needs to check everything and set everything as we request. And after that, we moved the part to the final inspection, where we have the CMM, of course, if it's required. We have the portable CMM with a pretty familiar brand. And also, they have this software from the supplier of this portable CMM, where they can create planes, we can create lanes, they can create different things to make the measurements that they request. Because sometimes, this is like a diagonal part. They need to check some points over that. And it's not easy to check that. Besides, if you need more points than that, that makes it easier. And of course, we can scan the parts and check it on the computer to see if the parts can be reworked or if inside the, you know, intersections are the hardest part to measure. Right now, we are working with robots and laser scans. So, it's a project that we have for the future. So, we are trying to automatize the final inspection. Yeah, very, very good. And the automation is something that, as we move further in technology, the manufacturing wellness certainly plays a large role in. So, we're talking about eliminating waste. Are there any particular strategies that you've implemented to reduce waste in your manufacturing? Something specific that you do that maybe you weren't doing before? Yeah, I can tell you about something that I'm doing now. In some parts, because we are forgers, we make roll rings from forge. You know, forge is not perfect. It's kind of far from perfection. It's not net shape. So, after we make a forging part, we scan it. And then, we make an internal development of software where we can put that scan and we put an envelope. So, we center it and we check if it fits all the final condition. Then, we can save time if the part doesn't fit the final part. Instead of you're running like 15 hours and after that, you realize that you get forging spots out of tolerance. You can get a preview about how it's going to fit. And also, we are using like variable heights. So, if I tell you it's a diagonal or it's a straight ring, you can move the effect upper on downer and then you can set a height, send your machine that phase, and then you will continue with that. So, you will handle where you want that spot to be located. Very good. So, that's good. It's a good improvement for us because it reduces a lot of rework. Yeah. And anytime you can reduce rework, we talk about elimination of waste. We can also talk about sustainability in the same breath because if you're reducing rework and scrap or machine hours that completely go to waste, that's you're reducing your carbon footprint. You're reducing your strain on the electrical grid and ultimately saving Frisa money with that initial inspection process. So, that's very interesting because you're right. We all know that forging is close, right? It's not the greatest thing in the world, but it's what we need to do for certain applications. So, Alex, in the same vein, talking about elimination of waste and saved energy and saved time, I mean, we could also move into the fact that Frisa is fairly heavily committed and takes full advantage of carbide recycling programs. Sure. Actually, we recycle all the carbide that we get from the machines. We get a lot of carbide waste because the materials that we machine here are nickel-based. So, that material get a lot of wear on the coating inserts. But besides that, we make a lot of programs to improve the environment. Someone's enforced by government, our own initiative. So, for example, it's like when we try to recycle oils or coating fluid and stuff like that. And of course, there are also some scraps from the foraging. Also, we have a steel mill. So, sometimes the chips that we generate, also we use it for produce more material. Very good. Yeah. Sustainability is something that I believe is on the forefront of most everyone's mind these days. Before we move on to the next topic of the three that we have today, can you think of or can you share one particular success story where the elimination of waste was really significant in the improvements to Frisa? Okay. I'm going to put this on a perspective. So, I have close to 100 VTLs, but if I need to rework and do extra machining or extra labor, so that will mean that if I need to make like a 20% of my material reprocess, I would have at the end 80 turning VTLs instead of 100. So, the two days that I have to deliver products or the programs that the people from process technologies are trying to get to see the capacity that we have here is going to get worse. So, at the end, that waste is going to get more it's going to down my capacity from the machine shop. So, that if you put it in perspective at the end of the year, it's going to be pushing a lot of parts that are going to be delivered on their date. So, that's pretty important. So, we can tell that we are working as we design, it's not as we can respond. Yeah. So, just to summarize a bit, it's extremely important and you have that going back to that checking of the forging and ensuring that you're not wasting time or doing rework that has a very, very significant positive impact on your overall daily operations. True that because the solution is not get more VTLs, right? It's use of it, improve the process. Yes, improve the process, which is the definition of manufacturing wellness. So, very good. Kind of transitioning along here, the next two topics that we've chosen today for our conversation revolve around people and the development of people because human resources are extremely important to the success of all things manufacturing and embracing new technology. Now, the new technology part is something that I'm passionate about, so I'll probably save that for the last topic. So, let's start with the people, the human resources, Alex, and developing people. What initiatives has Frieza put in place to help develop the workforce to be able to more effectively carry out the operations? I'm going to start with a very famous sentence that says, if you think training is too expensive, try with ignorance. That's pretty tough. So, since new cutting edge technology is being incorporated to our manufacturing process and transformation, it can be possible to put the maximum without training people. So, we're very committed with the training of the people. It has to be together. That is the right formula. As Toyota Production System says, people sustain the system. People are the most valuable asset into the organization. Well-trained people are the key to success period. So, talking about my guys, I think I am as good as my people. That's a very good statement. It's an interesting viewpoint. And I think it's a statement from a point of leadership, though I happen to agree with that. A manager, a company, is only as good as their people. Is there one significant or one specific thing that you could point to that would help us understand how investing in your people has made a large positive impact and contributed to your overall success? Is there one single thing you can think of? Sure. First of all, I'm thinking about the people on the machine and on the VTLs, the technician guys. So, we make a special run from them. We bring some simulators. We invest some tools so they can try and they can put the clamping and all the situations that they will experiment in the machine. So, they can, before going to the machine shop, start working with the control, start working with the program, getting involved with the M-Code, G-Code. So, once they go to the machine, they have, they know what they're going to do. So, that helps a lot with the people. It reduces the training time. So, we get a lot of, you can tell we need a lot of people to work here. And talking about engineering people, where I'm leader. So, I'm fully committed with that. So, I'm bringing a lot of training programs across each year. So, it's like last month, we get a training from Corman as well. So, people come down here and make a lot of training. We send people to Querétaro facility to make some trails. So, I get the materials, send it to Querétaro. It was, hi to Jonathan Vaca, the guy who's helping me there. And so, we send a part. So, send people. Of course, it's not easy to release people for training because I need them here. There is a need for those guys. And, but it's an investment that I really, really believe that it works. And also, we make a lot of training programs across each year. And sometimes, we design our own training for the new people that we have in our internal department. So, the older guys train the new guys, and we make special programs for that. So, they have all that they need for the training. Yeah. So, just to summarize a bit to make sure that I understand, you emphasize streamlining your training, making it as efficient as you can so you can keep your people at the machines. And when they arrive at the machines, they know precisely what they're doing. So, the learning curve at the machine is very flat. The learning curve happens previous to working. We reduce the learning curve by getting a guy experienced from the machine shop who trained the new guys. We get the control simulators. So, we make a room special for that. And we make a big program for the training of the guys. We believe in that. Yeah. Well, it's, it's, if you're making your own special programming and having machine simulators, I think that's one of the better training programs that I've, that I've heard of in a while. So, congratulations to Frisa on that job well done. Yeah. My, the final point that we have today, Alex, and probably my, I won't say my favorite, but one I'm passionate about is, is new technology. And it kind of ties into, to everything in my opinion. That's why I love talking about embracing new technology. We can use new technology to help us eliminate waste. We can use new technology to help us be more sustainable. We can use new technology to develop and train our people to do things that we could not do five years ago, or even two in some cases. So, what new technologies have you and Frisa adopted recently, and how have they impacted your operations? Oh, that's a good question, Keith. So, talking about what we're, we did last year and at the beginning of this year. So, we started working with digital, digital twins. So, we make full simulation for the full enclosure machine, so we can see what's going to happen. Also, we start working with special, special softwares that can predict the forces that you're going to develop with your CNC program and, and they can tell you what's the improvements that you can make on your CNC program. And also, they can make inverse engineering. One good thing about this, this age is that we can make everything by add-ons with the software that we use for the CNC. That makes everything easier. Also, we are involved in several programs with local schools from Monterey, pretty good ones. And we are getting a lot of lessons from analytics, artificial intelligence. So, we are starting a program on Python and in our languages is Colabs. And that helps us a lot to make more systems internally to develop some equations that help us to see if the part is going to be on a chatter area or it's going to be any deformation. So, we can predict that before getting to the machine shop. And also, those systems are developed by us. So, we are getting control about what we are doing. Other things that we do a lot is working with the post processor from the machines. We develop by ourselves based on that we train a guy and make a special guy for that. And we can add like automatic measures after each cut. So, you cut the diameter and when you go to M0, it appears automatically what should be the measure of that diameter. That helps a lot on the machine shop and reduce a lot of time by programming that manually. Also, typos could be an error there. That would be really good, really bad error. And we use touch improves, tool setters, and always looking for new tech. So, now, we are using ultra high pressure. Before that, we were using high pressure. Of course, new technology, new issues, right? It's kind of a balance. So, we need to go with solid foods because we don't want to stop operation or got any new issue. But we're always trying to get the most new technology. For example, I'm working a lot with you guys and you got a lot of different kind of new carbide insert and another material insert. So, we are trying them here, improving the cutting times, and you know, getting better results every day. That's good. That makes me happy to hear that our worlds are intersecting in a nice way of a partnership. It's also impressive to hear that you're doing a lot of what I would call predictive machining, where you do everything in the virtual environment and you try to find all of the problems before you actually go to the machine. I think that's a very interesting way to approach manufacturing components. And with the components that you manufacture, the price tag that is on those components and the cost of scrap, it only makes sense. So, I think it's very impressive that you're making that investment to develop your own systems to be able to do some of that virtual predictive machining. Those lessons that I told you before, allows and brings the capacity to create our own algorithms, our own design experiment, finite elements so we can incorporate that to our CNC programs. Also, make some intelligent systems that can predict some behaviors while we're machining based on the experience that we have. And also, always, always making some improvements because we design our own toolings, we design our own fixtures. So, that also saves a lot of money and saves a lot of time because sometimes it's too much time to send it to a supplier and bring us a better response on the daily, I would say, challenge. Yes. Basically, and sorry, I don't mean to hang on this topic, but I find it very intriguing. You're essentially, you're using programs and computers and algorithms to put all of your experience over the years that Frieza has into an artificial intelligence brain so it can tell you where the problems are going to happen before they happen. This is a very interesting concept, if I'm understanding it correctly. Yeah, yeah. We make this predictive model of chatter for one of our tasks, or homework. I want to say homework, but yeah, the limit is homework. So, we make the simulation of this part. It's a really, really important part, really tight tolerances. And we realized that after running through the software and algorithm, there were some points that need an extra support. We went to the machine and say, why did the parents say that they need supports if nothing happened and the parts is good? We realized that the guy on the machine, we're making all the fixed supports and all the adjustment by his own. So, we learned from him as well. So, we can put that on our software. So, what we did is that we have a 3D printer. So, we print all supports where the software says that they need it. We run the part and runs perfectly without mismatch, without vibration. So, it goes through the first pass. So, we only use one pass, to finish the final surface, and it works great. So, after we make that prototype in the 3D printer, we send the supports that we needed to an external supplier to make it more life laundered. That's a smart example of what we did last week. I think that's a premium example of an answer for my next question. I was going to ask you if you could provide an example of how you've overcome a challenge by embracing technology, but you just explained it to me. So, I can... If you have another one on the top of your mind that you would like to talk about, a different example, I'm happy to hear it. But that was an amazing example you just gave. I'm full of examples, kid, as much as you want. Let's do one more. Yeah, that's it. So, we make this touching proof. You know, it's pretty famous. There's a brand pretty famous of that. But we have this big part with a lot of roof, with a lot of different diameters, cakes, steps, because, you know, it's a part for our airspace. So, it was really hard for the guy to measure because some places are not easy to go through that. And so, we used the proof to touch those areas in a different zones and make comparisons and get the results at the end. But you needed to put manually. So, we developed an automatic sequence that I only specified the points where I want to measure. I specified how should go out, like actual radial to avoid collisions. So, we specified the points, how many measures that we want to do. So, we run it and it saves us a lot of time. So, we are doing that part rapidly. So, if you can make that time saving by the year, we can tell that we improved the machining time about the manufacturing time over the machine. So, that's one of the things that we have. Other thing is that we have all the BTLs connected to our local developed system. So, we know which machine is running, which not. Also, I can check the downtimes. I can check how much time the machine is working, how much time the machine was down. And also, I can monitor the loads per axis and the load about the table. So, if I get an issue on the machine, and let's say that the guy said that everything was okay. And he put it like, no problem. I can go there and see if they move a compensator. If they run the pad again from some area. So, I can correlate that with what I see on the part. So, I save a lot of money doing the investigation for the defect parts. Very good. And at the end of the day, that's the name of the game. We save money, we make money, and we do it sustainably. So, Alex, I appreciate your time. That's been wonderful talking to you. It's pretty easy for me to see how and why Frisa is a very successful global aerospace company. So, I have everything that I need as far as my questions. I feel good about this conversation, and I think our audience is going to very much enjoy it. I'll give you this opportunity for any final thoughts or closing words before we round off. Yeah. First of all, thank you for having me here, Kit. People from Coromant will be very supporting with us. They are helping us a lot with the daily challenges that we have here. We hope to keep working with you guys. It's a really, really good experience. I meet a lot of you people and are amazing ones. And we are continuing working and continuing discovering new things. That's why we are assisting all the summits and all as much as we can figure it. We realize that there's a lot of improvement in software around. The only advice that I can bring to the people is that don't work for the tool, let the tool work for you. Right? Because sometimes you can get the same solution with an add-on, so all the information can be exported automatically instead of export like a 3D model, export like the CNC program, put it together, then run it and go back. So that's working for the tool. Yep. That's good advice. Let the tool work for you. I do agree with that. Alex, again, thank you for your time. It's been a true pleasure. And for those of you watching and listening, thanks for taking the time with Manufacturing Wellness, where we meet challenges holistically, responsibly, and with purpose. My name is Keith, and I'll see you all next time. Thank you, Keith. Have a good one.