My impressions from the ENGEL symposium 2015

This year, the injection moulding machine manufacturer ENGEL Austria GmbH (Schwertberg, Austria) held a symposium, where the latest developments and applications in the field of injection moulding and machine engineering were presented.

Among all the symposium exponents, one was really impressing to me which is part of the program for medical part production and due to my project, which was related to pharmaceutical industry, it was in special point of interest (for short overview of the pharma-mould project click here):

The part is a drip chamber with an integrated filter for blood transfusions (Figure below). It was produced on a three-component injection moulding machine (e-victory 160 combi 3K). One plasticising unit is placed horizontally, one vertically and the third one with 45° in between. As you can see in the picture, three different polymers are necessary: the needle shaped part is made of polystyrene (BASF 168 N) and the hollow body is made of polypropylene (Borealis HJ875MO).The ring combining those two parts is made of polypropylene as well (RB845MO). 

The overall cycle time is 14 s and the part has a weight of 6.6 g. 

The mould manufacturer is Hack (Germany) and the mould concept is quite amazing:

The injection of the needle shaped part (polystyrene) and of the hollow body takes place at the same time. The movable mould half is split into two separate mould inserts where one has the needle part and the other the hollow body. After cooling both parts down, the mould opens and the two movable mould sides turn 90° to each other for injection material to form the ring for assembling the two parts. And after ejection it can be scanned for quality and directly packed. In this way, production of hundreds of thousands parts is ensured.

Figure – Moulded part: Step 1: injection of melt for the needle shaped part and the hollow body, Step 2: turning the mould sides to each other and inject material for the ring, Step 3: ejection of the assembled part

Kind regards

Herwig 

Leadership in Engineering - Part 2: Working Principles

In the first part of this series about leadership in engineering we discussed the basic leadership skills you have to learn and especially train.

Now it is time to look at the working principles on a daily operative level of business. I have observed them on my own when doing my army duties, internships and as well working as research associate at university.

To start with one of the most important ones:

“Practice what you preach”
You cannot obligate your own people to come in on Sundays for working while you play golf with friends. A good leader makes it differently: A good leader goes into the office as well! You need to practice what you are preaching.

“When people do well you have to forward the credits. When things go wrong, you have to take the blame and not your colleagues”
When you are not ready to act in this manner, you will not get the trust of your employee. And also they will not treat you with the right respect because they know that every time they do something well their boss will sell it as his idea. And by the end, the boss takes the credit. On the other hand, they know that when they make a mistake their boss will address it as the person’s mistake. Make it the other way: forward the credit and take the responsibilities when things do not go so well!

“Be the first who tries it out and take the risk”
It is accepted from you to be the first to jump into the unknown lake. If you’re not the first, you’re also not in charge! It would look strange to your employees if they have to manage something new and they have no idea what they are doing. Therefore, the leader has to try it out first to get a feeling if there is even a chance to do it in this way. Your people will follow your example.

“Have everyday a plan of attack list! “
The first thing in the morning is to actualize your list of attack.
My list has three columns:
1) Administrative stuff (those are the boring activities, but need to be done)
2) mails & calls: all the important mails I need to send are listed up there. I use the batching technique. This helps me to keep control over the mail activities.
 3) Tasks: general rule with tasks: important tasks always before urgent tasks. The task which adds the most value to the project / company should be done fist. The same rule applies to your people.

“Ask and accept help”
People know more than you. Of course, not always but you will have specialists on board of your team and they know some more answers. Never forget, they are hired to know more. People will assume that you know the things. As a consequence they will not tell you the things you may not know. But when you ask them for help they will help you. It builds up even more trust because people will see more human being behind the leading person.

“Show handshake qualities”
Always do the things you say. When you always do the opposite of what you’re saying nobody will trust you. Furthermore, nobody will follow you and give the best performance for you and your delegated tasks. Having a handshake quality is still the basis for all important projects and decisions.

See you in part 3!

Greetings,
Herwig

Leadership in Engineering - Part 1: Required Skills

For sure some of you have already asked yourselves: What makes you as a good leader either in business or in private?

The answer to such kind of questions is diversified. The good news is: there were already a lot of studies, surveys and investigations to figure out which characteristics and skills all successful leaders have in common and which strategies they all undertake. 

I would like to share with you which in my opinion are the most important ones. So, when you want to be a leader and take over responsibilities such knowledge may help you.

1. Delegating tasks:

You should delegate the tasks. It does not help you when your employees deliver their tasks to you just because there are some situations involving risk or problems. Instead, ask them what they propose to solve the problem. They can work out e.g. two suggestions, which can then be discussed. When the employee finds a solution to a problem, the commitment will be more and the task has more chances to be achieved. 

2. Motivating your people
There are basically 4 things that motivate people:
1. To enjoy the task and to be enthusiastic about it
2. To take over responsibility and control
3. To achieve success
4. To receive recognition
As a leader you can only prepare the environment so that a person develops motivation.

3. Figuring out the values of people:
You need to figure out the values of your people. When you know the values of your people, you can motivate and acknowledge them much better! Start by knowing your own core values.

4. Training your communication:
As higher you move in your career-ladder as more you need to communicate with all type of people. One of the most important things in communication is to give Feedback:

How to do it in the right way?
1. Explain the behaviour of the person without an evaluation of the person: E.g. you came late on Monday and on Tuesday.
2. Evaluate the behaviour of the person (I-message): I attended the meeting alone and this was not ok for me.
3. Behaviour recommendation: E.g. I suggest that next time you are on time.

Important note in the end: Feedback needs to be accepted by the person who receives it.

5. Using the right asking strategies:
As a leader you can control and direct a situation by asking the right questions!
I recommend a mix of:
• Open questions: How can we make this or that? No go is: Why did you do that? This leads to a justification and your colleague will build a wall.
• Closed questions: Mostly used at the end of a conversation: Is there a further statement of you?
• Scaling questions: E.g.:

o A: How does the group feel today from 1 to 10?
o B: We feel around a 8.
o A: That is good. Last month it was only a 5. So, I see our new changes starting to work.

6. Leading by aims using the SMART-strategy.
In general, we need to set aims to be
• Specific
• Measurable
• Assignable
• Realistic
• Time-related

This is a well-known formula and concept, but it often fails because of the M (measurable) and the T (time). Our project contains aims which have no or the wrong evaluation criteria. Therefore, it can be impossible to make a clear and structured evaluation. The timeline set also can prevent the project to be successful. There are too many tasks scheduled in too less time.

7. Develop the maturity level:
People can be usually classified within 4 maturity levels:
1. Low competence, low commitment
2. More competence, more commitment
3. Competence and commitment are in the right balance: This level is the best for coaching!
4. High competence and high commitment: leading by aims!
Your challenge as a leader is to develop your employee to level 4. Then, you can focus only on leading by establishing aims.

Herwig Juster & the summary of the required leadership skills.

You need to train those skills and you will get measurably better in you leadership. For daily training I put it on my office-door and every time I leave office I get a short reminder.

Part 2 and 3 can be found here:
Leadership in Engineering - Part 2: Working Principles Leadership in Engineering - Part 3: Systems theory & compensatory feedback effect 

I wish you all the best!

Greetings,
Herwig

Injection molding filling simulation - My method for clear identification of regions with high shear rates

For showing you a method for a clear identification of high shear rate areas , I want to use again the perforated plate as a demonstration part.

We put lots of emphasis on parameters like filling pressure needed, gating position and temperature raise during filling.

But when you work with polymers which are sensitive to mechanical stresses like shear rates then it is worth to have a plan of action how to locate critical areas and solve them by using simulation or in a simple way with analytic methods.

In this post I show you a way of using CFD- based filling simulations, not only with contour plots but  also with shear rates tracers.

First, let's have a look at the video I made to have a better insight:

In the video you can see the perforated plate in the version of side gating and central gating. This applied method of shear rate tracer release is possible in the virtual molding package Sigmasoft.
For sure, the other suppliers like Moldflow or Moldex3d have similar options, which you can use in the following way.

General definitions:

A tracer is nothing else then a velocity vector colored when passing through a defined cell of your part. In case of the shear rate tracer, defining an area of cells is not possible. Furthermore, the definition of a critical shear rate is done.

You know at which level the shear rate can be dangerous regarding degradation of the polymer. This value you can use as a maximum border and a value underneath (25% less) presents as the releasing border of the tracer. So, you still have a safety pillow.  

My procedure:

This is my 4th step procedure I use in the post-processing after I have done a process simulation:

1) Watch the shear rate contour plot to get the "big picture"
2) Activate the shear rate tracer
3) Analyze the release places and where the sheared material will end up in the part (to predict if there will be a decrease in the mechanical properties of the part)
4) Make geometry changes or process changes (melt temperature; inlet velocity profile)

The final aim of every part and mold design should be that the critical areas are located at the gating. Here we use higher shear rates for decreasing viscosity and ensure a final mixing of the polymer, especially if it is colored). There should be no critical shear rate areas in the part itself.

Conclusions:

The shear rate tracer method is helps you to locate the punctual critical areas. So far, those are the advantages of such kind of approach. Another aspect is that the allover simulation will take more time and more memory as well as more working space.

Greetings,
Herwig