This German company achieves perfection with ESPRIT CAM software
GDS Präzisionszerspanungs GmbH is a professional supplier of products related to grinding. GDS designs and manufactures work holding, clamping devices, grinding wheel adapters and accessories suitable for tool grinding machines. Spindle sleeves and tapered sleeves for external cylindrical grinding, grinding arbors and accessories for internal grinding. Furthermore, GDS manufactures components that are required for balancing and dressing grinding wheels, as well as other necessary components for the grinding process equipment.
The company GDS
GDS Präzisionszerspanungs GmbH, based in Ofterdingen near Stuttgart, Germany, started its business 20 years ago as a part supplier to different sectors, including the Medical and Machine Tool industries, mostly comprised of grinding machine companies. Their key differentiator was making the impossible, possible, by manufacturing complex, very precise rotational parts.
GDS produced what others could not, specifically when it came to the micro precision of parts. Today, their specialty remains in supplying wheel adapters for the grinding machine tool industry.
In 2009 during the industrial crisis GDS recognized an opportunity to refocus the company and launch their own product line of grinding wheel adapters.
At that time Dietmar Duerr, CEO of GDS also recognized that he had to review the way the company was operating to be able to master this challenge. Starting a new dedicated business meant reorganizing and optimizing all of GDS’s processes from design to manufacturing.
More importantly it meant getting the GDS employees on board with all the necessary changes needed to develop this new business venture. “We looked in-depth at all the steps in our manufacturing processes, even inviting GDS employees to get involved and contribute to those changes we needed to make to successfully manufacture our new product line. We listened to our employee’s needs, and as a result provided them with the necessary tools to make all the changes needed.
“The usage of ESPRIT in Production allowed us to reduce the cost pressure and keep the price of our components stable at the same level.”
Today GDS employees continue to be happy and feel like a part of the GDS family. Our production capacity has also increased a lot compared to 3 years ago, which has allowed the company to accept new contracts, and be more flexible than ever before” Mr. Duerr confirms.
ESPRIT in action
As a part of the necessary changes GDS optimized its processes to support production, and introduced a new CAD software Solidworks, and a new CAM solution, ESPRIT CAM software to machine the parts. These changes were key to
the success of GDS’s grinding wheel adapter business, helping the company enormously grow than in the past 4 years, plus increased their overall product quality by 25%.
GDS chose ESPRIT CAM based on the unrivaled ease of importing all feature information from a SolidWorks CAD file into ESPRIT to machine the parts. “Using ESPRIT, we almost doubled the number of jobs in production over a certain time” says Alexander Seyboldt, Manufacturing Manager at GDS. “Having the option to save defined processes for one part to a disk, and reuse them by dragging and dropping them into the next part, helped reduce programing time by 50%. The integrated simulation in ESPRIT, including complete tools and fixtures, secured our process and helped ensure high production quality’’ he adds. The Report generated out of ESPRIT helped the person at the machine feel comfortable that all the information needed for running production of the part was included.
“The usage of ESPRIT in the Production allowed us to reduce the cost pressure and keep the price of our components stable at the same level.” resumes Dietmar Dürr.
“By using the KBM functionality in ESPRIT efficiency was increased by 30% when programing new parts” confirms Mr. Seyboldt.
Using ESPRIT CAM software allowed GDS to effectively produce more, pursue new customers or projects, and most importantly for GDS Management, made employees even more happy to work for GDS – which GDS knows is one of the most fundamental components to their success.
