Design innovation changes the competitive field for Morris

Here we see Morris Industries' newly launched Quantum air drill, designed using laser-cut tube. The tube laser joints basically make this drill 154 per cent stronger than Morris' previous air drill while being only 5 per cent heavier. Image courtesy of Morris Industries.

Morris Industries is an interesting Canadian success story. For 89 years it has been producing agricultural equipment, primarily for planting crops. With its head office in Saskatoon and plants in Yorkton, Sask., and Minnedosa, Man., it has managed to compete internationally. It currently exports to 28 countries. With a new approach to its manufacturing processes, it’s preparing to make an even bigger impact on its market.

Morris Industries President / CEO Ben Voss was the keynote speaker at the Saskatoon Metalworking Manufacturing & Production Expo (MMP Expo) in May. There he shared his perspectives on what is essential to compete globally as a landlocked company far from any ports.

The first essential element for success Voss mentioned is having the right people on your team. The challenge he sees in managing key people is getting them to adapt to the changes taking place around them.

“The jobs in manufacturing in 1945 looked a lot different to those that exist today,” said Voss. “Punches and shears used to be a keystone to success. These have been replaced by lasers. We always encourage our people to not feel threatened by technology. Rather, they should see it as something that renews their jobs.”

Voss encouraged knowledge exchanges between senior staff and newer, more technology-focused younger staff members.

“Succession planning is really critical,” he said. “Older employees have a lot of old knowledge that explains procedures for making older equipment. It’s important to create an environment where senior employees see their value and see their knowledge passed on. At the same time, older employees have to be shown how their job will change and evolve. It’s not easy, though. It makes a lot of people uncomfortable when you tell them that what they are doing now is not how things will be done in five years or less.”

Another key component of success in the present business environment is being comfortable with failure. In other words, don’t be afraid to try new things.

“In the U.S. failure is considered almost a rite of passage – if you haven’t had a business failure in your career, you’re almost considered untrustworthy,” said Voss. “In Saskatchewan, if you’ve had any failures in your past, it’s a black mark that follows you everywhere. The challenge is making people comfortable with the idea of failing. The key is to fail fast and fail cheap. I would say it’s a fundamental change in our philosophy as a company – getting everybody to feel comfortable with the idea of taking risks, doing some things differently, and trying new methods of producing our equipment.”

Automated Decision Making

Ben Voss explained to Saskatoon MMP Expo attendees what he considers to be some of the keys to running a successful business today.

Automation is another key piece to thriving, said Voss. “The whole world is doing this, and if we’re not doing it, we are missing out on market share,” he said. “This can be difficult for smaller companies because if you don’t have the infrastructure to run a lot of automation, it will just be a number of very expensive toys that sit on the shop floor.”

When we think of automation, usually robotic assembly lines come to mind, but Voss sees it from a broader perspective. Yes, robotic welders and CNC machines are a big part of creating efficiencies, but the flow of information throughout a facility is important as well.

“What we’re really evolving to is automating decision making, the automation of data management and all the processes inside the business that link up to the machines,” he explained. “The smart factory is a term that has become popular. We’re not big enough to say we’re a smart factory company, but I’d say we’re using the best of whatever we can get from our technology. If you look back at the year 2000, we weren’t using bar code scanners or use data to plan and manage our daily production. We are now leaping ahead and embracing that. We are at the stage where we’re getting ready to roll out some very sophisticated technology. But at the same time, we’re not a GM or a GE. We have to do that in stages and manage that transformative change. And when you have 66,000 part numbers going back to 1929, some of that data isn’t digital and doesn’t lend itself to conversion.”

Voss’ discussion of technology led back to his point about the willingness to fail.

“ERP systems are famous for costing five times what they are quoted and taking five times longer to implement than what was planned for,” he said. “I’ve seen many successful implementations, but usually it was because someone was OK with working through the failures along the line. Getting all this stuff to talk to each other and training a parts warehouse manager with the bar code scanner and having him understand the importance of each step in the work he does is not as easy as we all want it to be. But the fact is, if we won’t do it, there’s a company in Germany that has already been doing it for 10 years.”

Voss encouraged potential and current suppliers to adopt the same attitude toward innovation in their work.

“When someone comes to us and says, ‘I just found out about a new machine I can buy that will allow me to make your parts cheaper – if I commit to this machine I want to get a commitment from you so I can buy it,’ that’s innovation,” said Voss. “We put a number of measures on how effective a supplier is for us, and innovation is a part of that.”

Lean Processes

Voss was part of a group that acquired Morris in 2017. The management team has stated its “commitment to growth and reinvestment in the company,” as the company’s website proclaims. And this commitment can be seen clearly on the shop floor in the Yorkton plant.

For instance, many areas of the shop are being made to fit a lean template. The manual welding booths, for one, were recently redesigned so that all the tooling a welder needs resides in that booth; the welder can simply grab it off a shelf rather than having to go to a tooling room for it.

The manual welding booths at Morris were recently redesigned so that all the tooling a welder needs in that booth resides there – the welder can simply grab it off a shelf rather than having to go to a tooling room for it.

There are also dedicated zones for small-part welding so that when changeovers from one part to another are easier to manage.

In the company’s robotic welding stations, carts deliver all the necessary parts for a weldment. During our tour of the shop, one of the welding robots was welding a sequence of two parts in concert, as the equipment they are being fabricated for requires one of each part.

In addition, part numbers are etched on all parts during laser cutting so that each one can be properly sequenced, regardless of where in the shop it is headed.

Lean Design With Tube Lasers

Morris has also been busy making its designs leaner. Voss pointed out one assembly that originally had two U-bolts, four nuts, and four washers. In a recent redesign, that part was changed so that it now requires one big bolt, one nut, and one washer.

This lean design process was first demonstrated to Morris customers in June with the unveiling of the company’s newest air drill, a piece of machinery that plants seeds with soil and fertilizer and then covers the planted seeds with soil. The machine is revolutionary for Morris as it’s built primarily of tube rather than cut and bent sheet metal. As far as Voss can tell, this is a first among all the companies Morris competes against.

Morris recently invested in a TRUMPF TruLaser Tube 7000 tube laser, which has a 30-ft. infeed and a 21-ft. outfeed. During our tour we watched it cut individual assemblies. The parts for each assembly were gathered together so they could be picked up with a forklift and taken for fixturing in the next bay.

“The cut time on one whole tube is about 45 seconds,” said Voss. “A part cut in less than 30 seconds today would have taken at least 15 minutes to produce before, involving several different processes.”

The new air drill fabrication process uses a whole new fixturing method compared to what the shop used before. The detail available in the laser cutting process makes it possible to create slot-and-tab constructions for parts. For instance, one part we saw in the shop had tabs that went straight through a pipe to create extra strength where a bracing previously had to be added. With the parts being interlocked in this manner, it is also easier to secure each part for welding.

“The tube laser joints basically make this drill 154 per cent stronger than our previous air drill while being only 5 per cent heavier,” said Voss. “The design innovation creates a huge strength advantage, which is important for our customers.”

In the company’s robotic welding stations, carts deliver all the necessary parts for a weldment.

From this article one might think that Morris wasn’t always an innovator, but Voss was keen to show me a variety of clever “automation” ideas from decades ago – a handmade drill press that drills two holes in a pipe simultaneously, and a sequenced welder built of spare parts back in the 1970s, to name but two. In a way, this shift in production honours the drive it took Morris to thrive in its first 88 years. And all indications suggest that, as big a change as the air drill redesign is, it is just the beginning of Morris Industries’ smart factory evolution.

Editor Robert Colman can be reached at rcolman@canadianfabweld.com.

Morris Industries, www.morris-industries.com

Slide Show | 11 Images