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'Brite' idea takes root: unmanned Finn-Power FMS operation reduces scrap, increases profitability.

Article Excerpt
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Not long ago, Day-Brite Lighting of Tupelo, MS, found itself at a crossroads. The company, founded in 1923, realized its business had gradually moved away from just commodity products to a more architectural grade product. It needed more productive fabrication equipment, and it needed to curb the growing amount of contract work the company turned over to local job shops and bring it back in-house.

Today, the company has evolved into a major force in the lighting industry with a facility that includes 350,000 square feet of manufacturing space, a 150,000-square-foot warehouse, and 500 hourly employees.

"Day-Brite's challenge was to find a way to go from product design, to fabricating the part, and have it ready to assemble within one day," explains Scott Bratton, fabrication manager. "Our task was to find the best equipment to accomplish this goal."

The search for a solution

"Basically, we shopped around the world looking for new equipment," adds Charles Philips, director, manufacturing and industrial engineering. "We wanted to change the direction of how we manufactured our high-volume products at the Tupelo plant.

"We had to modernize. We had two aging turret punch presses and 11 large stamping presses with progressive dies for high-volume...