Quality Analysis and Investigation into Cutting Tool Breakage at Hindustan Machine Tools, Bangalore Complex (MBX)

Abstract

In today’s time, every industry tries to reduce its cost through possible ways and one of the main areas of concern would be equipment and tools. A look into the tool breakage at Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT), Bangalore Complex (MBX), has provided the project with considerable data to suggest improvement methods and ways in which they could reduce the cost incurred due to breakage. Only five departments incurring the highest cost towards tool breakage chosen were High Technology Centre (HTC), Die Casting Bed (DCB), Rounds (R), Spindles (S) and Radial Drilling (RD). All the five departments showed highest loss during January. Among the five departments, DCB revealed the highest loss in tool breakage while the department of Spindles showed the lowest. Few workers in the range of 3–5 among the 26 sample size studied were involved in more tool breakage. A reliable questionnaire to interview the selected workers was designed as per the requirement and the interview revealed the actual cause for the tool breakages. The quality control tools and inferential statistics used in the present study helped to strengthen the suggestions and could prove effective methods to the company. The suggestions were drawn to reduce the cost of tool breakage to the company that included proper training to amateur workers; making them to work with veteran workers; use of good-quality raw material for tool designing; proper insulation to high-cost electricity-run equipment of HTC and spindle departments; proper maintenance of equipment and so on.