Cool, hard cash

Proper cutting tool coolant management can save end-user customers thousands of dollars and position distributors and suppliers as exceptional solution providers

by Paul Markgraff

Finding and implementing real cost savings for end-user customers has become a top job for suppliers and distributors in the industrial channel. Cutting tool coolant management represents an untapped reservoir loaded with facilities waste that suppliers and distributors can help customers eliminate.

The costs related to cutting tool coolant are generally spread throughout the manufacturer’s plant, making them unapparent.

Purchasing knows the dollar value of the facility’s coolant on hand. Production and maintenance know the cost of maintaining the coolant. Recycling and disposal costs, if any are recorded, can usually be found with environmental health and safety personnel.

“All of these costs are rarely itemized on the company profit and loss statement,” says Steven Madden, president of Texas-based Ashburn Chemical Technologies. “But they are a real expense.”

Ask the right question
The first step toward helping a customer reduce his coolant spend is gathering information. Cutting tool coolant makers Ashburn Chemical Technologies and Oemeta North America Inc. rely upon onsite customer audits performed in conjunction with distributors to gather pertinent information.

“The audit process will identify and record all of the expenses associated with the metalworking fluids the customer uses,” says Madden.

At Ashburn Chemical Technologies, the fluids audit begins with a sales engineer and distributor salesperson. These two get an appointment with the customer to visit the plant site to gather current process information.

This team gathers cost data such as:
• purchase cost of coolant;
• cost of coolant recharge;
• cost to maintain the coolant and appropriate record keeping;
• cost of periodic machine cleaning;
• cost of coolant recycling or reclamation;
• cost to dispose of spent coolant;
• equipment and supplies costs;
• labor costs and other costs.

Ontario-based coolant manufacturer Oemeta North America provides a questionnaire to potential customers that asks questions such as:
• How many machines are currently running coolant?
• What are the processes running on these machines?
• What are the different types of ferrous and non-ferrous metals used in production?
• What types of coolants are currently used?
• What specific issues would the customer like resolved?

“We find this questionnaire to be quite beneficial,” says Gordon Paquette, Oemeta director of sales. “We don’t expect distributors to be chemists. We know they have many different products they need to sell. We just want to teach them to ask the right kinds of open-ended questions.”

These types of cost- and process-related questions can provide distributors who are not versed in the intricacies of coolant chemistry with baseline customer data. Whether the coolant issues stem from maintenance issues, bacteria, fungus, tramp oil, improper tooling, sumps or simply price, the supplier and distributor can address the issues quickly and efficiently.

Real savings for customers
Once the distributor and supplier gather the proper information from the customer, the team can implement solutions to solve problems and reduce costs. According to Madden, the most common conclusion of the fluids audit process is the customer has insufficient coolant maintenance. By improving coolant maintenance processes, overall coolant cost diminishes.

“The correct amount of coolant maintenance results in minimum dollars spent for new coolant concentrate and disposal of spent coolant,” he says. “It is also possible to reduce the maintenance expense, which can reduce total costs though the customer may spend more on new coolant.”

In one example, Ashburn’s service division Fluid Service Technologies (FST) worked with a distributor to audit an Alabama-based customer’s coolant management practices. FST found that by reducing maintenance hours, coolant consumption and coolant waste, the company could provide cost savings of $1,755 per month.

“In most cases, neither the end-user nor the servicing distributor understand the cost effect of proper coolant selection and maintenance,” says Madden. “One of the major challenges to this process is to get the end-user customer to acknowledge they are actually incurring the expenses uncovered by the audit process. A lot of the expense is hidden in the budgeting process and the customer is often shocked at the dollar total when they see it presented in this manner.”

In another example, Oemeta approached a California-based manufacturer of semiconductors through its distributor and found the company was having problems with coolant staining the 6061 aluminum materials used in fabrication.

Prior to Oemeta going into the facility, the customer used approximately 324 gallons of coolant per month on its cutting tools. The customer’s main issue was contamination. The large amount of coolant was necessary because the customer needed to regularly replace contaminated coolant with fresh coolant to prevent staining.

“This company is located in an environment in California where there are a lot of mushroom farms,” says Paquette. “This creates a lot of fungus contamination issues. So this company needed to watch the types of coolants they used and the types of additives they used so as not to infect their systems with fungus.”

Oemeta and its distributor cut the customer’s coolant usage in half by installing a proper recycling system that takes coolant out of the sumps, recycles it, skims off and decants tramp oil, and reloads the coolant back into the sumps to be used again.

“The recycling system and the maintenance program we set up with them has added to their sump life by more than two years,” says Paquette. “On top of that, we get coolant samples from the end-user through the distributor to run lab diagnostics to make sure maintenance is proceeding properly.”

Get the right info
Cutting tool coolant costs money, but you’d think it’s free by looking at the way some manufacturers abuse and discard it. The problem is easy to understand. Machinists don’t want to worry about cutting tool coolant; it is only a necessary evil in what they do. Purchasing just buys the stuff; they have no responsibility over how it’s actually used. Environmental and safety experts are only concerned with how to dispose of the spent coolant, not with how to reuse it.

While many large manufacturers have coolant maintenance programs in place to monitor coolant on a daily basis, most have a lot of room for improvement, says Madden. Most small to mid-size metalworking facilities still neglect daily coolant maintenance.

“Information is key,” says Madden. “The more information we can gather about our customers, especially about their processes and their culture, the better personalized solution we can offer them.”

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2007 issue of Progressive Distributor. Copyright 2007.

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