Bharat K. Soni, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of the UAB Mechanical Engineering Department and his staff hosted a tour for us on Thursday, April 30, 2009 at the Business / Engineering Building at the University of Alabama Birmingham. Dr. Alan Shih, a specialist in numerical geometry, introduced us to the Modeling & Computational Simulations Lab, touching on subjects such as Emergency Response modeling; medical, anatomical and bilogical simulations; and modeling projects involving manufacturing, assembly, and technical training. Dr. Soni stands at the bottom right of the picture above.Dr. Vora from the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) took time to explain how India is ramping up to support automotive manufacturing. With 16 Million people riding 2-wheelers every day in India, companies such as TATA are beginning to mass produce smaller, less expensive automobiles in order to reach this 2-wheel market. Dr. Vora, along with Dr. Soni support automotive research competitions such as BAJA, FSAE & AWIM that support student engineers working together to improve vehicle technology from Formula to BAJA racing. We thank Dr. Vora from Pune, India for taking time from his busy schedule to visit us during his three week trip to the US.While there, we met several student engineers who were working in the UAB Machine Shop on both the BAJA project car and the Formula project car.We thank the UAB Mechanical Engineering Department, especially Dr. Soni and his staff for taking time out of their Exam Week scheduling to support our group.If you would like to join us at any of our SME Meetings or tours, please, visit the SME website to view our touring schedule or contact Brian Everling at 205-942-2491 or BrianE@PrecisionGrinding.com.
On March 26, 2009 O’Neal Steel, a full-line metals service center headquartered in Birmingham hosted a tour for members of the local Chapter 143 of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.O’Neal offers a vast array of metal products from multiple distributions centers across the United States and Mexico along with recent activity as far away as China.The plant tour featured a view of their automated metals storage and retrieval machine, manufactured by KASTO. This "parts picker" demonstrates how O’Neal continually works to increase efficiencies, improving upon their multi-stage processing capabilities. Automating processes trim costs of production, further enabling O’Neal to provide fabricators, job shops, and a wide variety of OEMs with exactly what they need, when they need it, at competitive prices.The KASTO parts storage machine is seven stories tall with over 4000 compartments. With a single crane and multiple conveyor lines, this 21,000 ton capacity storage and retrieval system is awe-inspiring to view in action.Our SME Chapter 143 membership regularly tours Manufacturing facilities across Alabama in order to view Leaner Manufacturing techniques. Through community cooperative manufacturing plant tours, these members are able to gain insight to share with their own companies to improve upon manufacturing quality assurance efficiencies. We are fortunate that O'Neal team members, Henley Smith, Marketing Director; Todd Johnson, a member of Sales; and Steve Holley, General Operations Manager for the Birmingham plant were able to schedule an afternoon shift tour for us to see their operation while under light production. We offer sincere thanks to O'Neal Steel for allowing their members to host our tour.Directions to O'Neal Steel Offices:Take I-20/I-59 to Birmingham, Exit Tallapoosa Street, take a left to go underneath the interstate. Approximately 2 blocks, at Stockholm Valve, take a left. Drive to the next block, 41st Street S. and take a right. Follow 41st Street across the railroad tracks. You'll see the corporate office on the right. We'll meet there preceding 3pm.For more information, please, contact Brian Everling, BrianE@PrecisionGrinding.com or LaVada Varner, LVarner@atn.org.
