Design and Fabrication of Grooving Fixture for Brake Pads Production Line

In manufacturing industries, the quality of the parts produced and the customer satisfaction is very important. The confirmation to the specifications demanded by the customers and delivering the demanded parts in right quantity at right time is very much essential to satisfy the customers so that the customer-manufacturer relationship can be maintained. This project deals with improving the quality, productivity and reducing lead time for manufacturing of brake pads. Of all the other problems faced by a brake pad manufacturing company, the bottleneck region where the production flow is affected was found to be in the finishing line. The reason for this bottleneck was observed to be the increased setting time in grooving machine. The increase in setting time is due to different setting procedures followed by the operators to obtain an important parameter called thickness under groove in the brake pads. A time study was done and the feasible solution was identified to be a combined fixture which can accommodate variety of parts and also meet the specification of the different parts. Therefore, a combined fixture was designed for high volume parts and the testing was done. As a result, the setting time was reduced to a greater extent and also the productivity was improved with better quality.