When a production is set up for many types of products usually the biggest time savings are hiding in the changeover times. In that some clever design toolings can improve dramatically. Deery Brook has the design and production capabilities for CNC-milled metal parts for such tooling manufacturing to reduce lost times.
As an example take routing process. When each product type of multi-boards needs a reconfiguration of the routing machine, that may take 1-2 hours per product change. Also bottom support blocks of a router may just allow slow routing speed because the multi-board is not held down by the bottom support blocks. If there are trays with cover manufactured specifically for the routing process the changeover time can be reduced to 5-10 minutes and routing speed may be increased threefold by the cover’s downforce.
Example calculation without special tooling:
| Changeover time | Number of boards | Routing time per board | Total time |
| 60 min | 50 pcs | 3 min | 210 min |
Example calculation with special tooling:
| Changeover time | Number of boards | Routing time per board | Total time |
| 10 min | 50 pcs | 1 min | 60 min |
Savings: 2,5 hours of labour and machine time: 75 EUR
Price: around 400 EUR (dependent on complexity)
After 5-6 uses cost is recovered and net profit generated!