About
Starting Semester: Spring 2025Assigned: No
Location: Gainesville
Fox Factory
Client Profile
Fox Factory designs, engineers, manufactures, and markets suspension products. The company provides performance-defining products such as suspension systems and components, cranks, wheels, cycling components, and other components for bicycles, snowmobiles, on-road and off-road vehicles, trucks, side-by-side vehicles, motorcycles, and other specialty vehicles. Fox also provides products to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Fox Factory is headquartered in Duluth, Georgia with operations around the world including a large manufacturing facility in Gainesville, Georgia that produces shocks for off-road power vehicles.Project Description
Title: Machine Shop Labor UtilizationThe Fox Factory Facility in Gainesville, GA is a greenfield plant that started up in 2020 making high performance automotive and off-road vehicle shocks. The facility is able to vertically integrate several critical parts into the assembly of shocks by machining and anodizing parts that were purchased from outside suppliers. This project will focus on improving labor efficiency in a large machine shop starting with internal bodies for automotive shocks. In particular, a prototype cell is running with a robot for loading two of the CNC machines in a machining cell. Robotic loaded is needed to reduce labor and improve efficiencies but additional improvements to the machining cells are being implemented and need to be considered to determine the potential labor savings.
Goals/Deliverables:
- Simulate future planned improvements in all Inner Body cells including:
(1) Robotic loading of CNC lathes
(2) Elimination of inner body wrapping for rust prevention
(3) Implementation of machine deburring
- Improve labor efficiency
- Improve machine utilization
- Reduce changeover time
Impact: Potentially 1.5 million per year in direct labor efficiency