Productivity Booster

For Koltanbar Engineering Co. of Troy, Mich., the future is now--glimpsed in all its three-dimensional glory on computer graphic screens behind a locked door a few steps from the company's executive offices. Koltanbar, with 1980 sales of $6 million, designs tooling equipment for the auto industry, and without the help of computerized design systems company executives are convinced that the future could be worrisome indeed for the firm.

General Motors is the company's principal customer, and Koltanbar thus must co-ordinate closely with GM from the earliest stages of assembly line design. When Koltanbar noted 3 1/2 years ago that the giant automaker was starting to invest heavily in CAD/CAM, the company concluded that if it did not keep pace it could not compete. Says Company Executive Vice President Pat Flynn: "By the end of the decade, anyone in the automotive industry will have to have a computer graphics system in order to survive."

With a $300,000 loan, for which Company President James A. Kollar had to put up personal collateral, Koltanbar bought an Applicon design system with a computer, two work terminals and a printer. Once installed, the system began to produce immediate savings. Soon draftsmen working from a designer's sketch, who previously needed 120 hours to produce a particular polished drawing, were knocking them off in a day. A major project that once would have taken 190 to 220 weeks could now be done in 80. Though the company is producing more work than ever, its number of employees has dropped from a high of 700 to no more than 140 currently. To get the most out of the equipment, Koltanbar runs the system 24 hours a day, using three shifts of designers to man its screens.

The arrival of Applicon has not produced the sort of worker backlash that might have been expected. Adapting to the new techniques was initially difficult, but now many of the draftsmen disdain the traditional drawing board. Says Ron Hendricks, 25, a Koltanbar draftsman: "I prefer what we have now. It takes everything out of drawing that was tedious. We never have to start from scratch any more." Adds one of his co-workers happily: "Once you learn how to use the system, it's great." Koltanbar's principal customer seems to think so too. At the GMC Truck & Coach Division plant in Pontiac, Mich., where the company is producing trucks, Koltanbar-designed robots man the assembly line, which itself was laid out by Koltanbar designers peering silently into their screens.

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