(unofficial) news from lego
Jess Kvatek
thanks to a friend of a friend (who wished to remain nameless) i was able
to get a tour of the lego facility at enfield, connecticut this past
weekend...
my frined works there as an industrial engineer... his job, among other
things, is to set up the different sorting machines that put the
appropriate pieces into the bags that make a certain set...
he also figures out the logistics of whether or not enfield lego is capable
of producing the sets that denmark tells them to... he gets mockup sets
from denmark and he looks at the piece requirements and then figures out if
it's possible to make it here and if not what needs to be changed about the
set to make it producable...
he (and i believe 2 others that are coworkers) also pull sets off of a
production run and build them to be sure all the machines are in fact
packing the right pieces...
the entire facility is huge... incredibly huge...
there are many giant rooms that each have their own purpose...
one room stores the raw plastic pellets that lego pieces are made from...
at the end of this room are 7 (i think) giant metal cylinders, maybe 6 or 7
feet across and about 12 or so high... these are bins that feed the various
molding machines the basic colors (red, blue, white, yellow, black, grey
and clear)... in front of each of these machines is a card board
cylindrical box filled with the raw pellets... each metal cylinder has a
large vacuum type hose that workers use to suck pellets out of the card
board shipping boxes... this is done about every other hour or so to be
sure the cylinders are at the right level...
coming out of the top of each cylinder are small metal pipes that are
controlled by the individual molding machines... as they need more pieces
they suck them up... this was an ongoing process and sounded like the
world's largest rain stick for those of you that know what that is...
off to the side were about 8 or so smaller set up for all of the non
standard colors... i think green was there as well as the clear red, clear
blue, etc...
the ratio of colored pellets to clear to make clear blue is raelly
drastic... like 1 pellet of blue for every pound of clear pellets...
the molding room had maybe 30 or so machines churning out between 4 and 10
pieces at a time depending on the size of the piece...
it took about 5 - 10 seconds for each piece to get made and dropped out...
these fell into a waying bin that would check the weight of the pieces...
if it was within tolerance they would get dropped onto a conveyor belt...
if not the were dropped into a reject bucket... the conveyor would drop the
pieces into special plastic bins... it machine would count the number of
pieces it had made and when it made a certain amount (enough to fill the
box) the filled box would automatically slide over and an empty box would
take it's place...
from here these boxes are taken by hand to the sorting machines...
this is going to be replaced by floor path sensing robots...
the sorting machines came in 2 sizes... and in left and right hand
versions... they were upward and outward spiralling circles that took a
piece to the top and then sent it out to the conveyor that would drop it
into a bin... there would be 16 of these sorting machines in a row and
those could be linked with 16 more to create up to 32 differnet pieces in
one bag...
there would be many of the weighing tests done along the way...
once it got to the end it would be dropped into the bag, heat sealed closed
and dropped into a box... these machines also counted the bags and filled
up the boxes and put new boxes into place...
(my timelimit is about to run out...
i'll post more later...
if there are any questions, email them and i'll try to answer them...)
-jess
--
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
jess kvatek |godzilla will be there to meet you, |3D/lego/
dz...@cleveland.feenet.edu|so be friendly or he just might eat you!|hpl/pb&j/
i accept junk mail |-monster island / the dickies |dinosaurs
Jess Kvatek
more on the lego manufacturing process:
once all the pieces for a particular set have been made and properlly
bagged, a person takes these boxes full of bags to a station where they are
inserted by hand into the cardboard trays that slide into the boxes... one
person could be doing 2 or 3 bags i believe...
there is a machine that folds the cardboard trays into shape but while i
was there it wasn't working so they had an extra person there doing that by
hand...
once the trays are folded, they're put onto a moving pathway that takes it
past the workers who put the pieces into them... then another machine takes
the actual box outsides (the one with the illustrations and all) and it
gets them ready to have a cardboard tray inserted into it...
these are also flat... a suction cup arm picks on up and then an air jet
opens the box... while the air is spraying, the arm lowers it onto another
moving pathway... here, the path with the cardboard tray meets up with it
and it is inserted into the open outside box... it then gets carried along
and the tabs get creased and folded in and then it gets taped shut... there
was another bit to the machine but for the package i saw being put together
(the hot rods garage set, i don't know the number) it wasn't getting
used... this last bit though glues on the open flap tops if the box has one
of the see through plastic tops...
after this, there are machies that sort the finished packages into
groups... they are then stuffed into the shippig boxes and sealed... form
here a rootic arm grabs them and properly stacks them into a pallet about 5
boxes high... the robotic arm is entirely independent of human input...
depending on what type of box it senses, it does all the calculations to
figure out the best stacking arangment... this was a wonder to watch... it
was fascinating...
after a pallet is filled, it gets pushed to the side where a manned
forklift comes over and picks it up... the forklift sets it onto another
moving pathway where the pallet gets straightened until it is very square
and even... it then moves into a large clear cylinder where an arm starts
spinning around it wrapping the boxes in shrinkwrap... a heatgun follows
right behind this arm and shrinks it up...
the forklift driver has a small keypad on his lift as do all of the
machines in the whole building... at this point from the info supplied by
the forklift driver, a label is automatically printed up and applied to the
pallet and it gets automatically put onto one of the new conveyor belts and
sent to the appropriate truck depot to be loaded and shipped out...
for sets not immediately shipped out, they go into another huge room that
is a storeroom... the same label put on by the shrinkwrap machine also
keeps track of where in the storeroom that set gets put... each bin in the
storeroom has a barcode and the forklift driver swips that barcode and it's
kept track of...
for all of the above there was also equivalent machines pumping out and
packaging the duplos buckets and bricks... in the storeroom they had
thousands and thousands of empty buckets waiting to be filled with
bricks...
one thing we didn't get to see was the labeling room as i'll call it... it
is here that the desgins get put onto the minifigs chests... it's a 5 color
die process... a suction arm grabs a minifig and passes it past 5 different
arms that each have a dye soaked sponge with a different cut out pattern in
front of it... each sponge arm in turn imprints it's pattern onto the
minifig until it comes out with the whole, correct image on it...
have you noticed the black spots that are on the minifigs necks? i
remember when these first appeared and i also noticed that it made the
heads stick on slightly better... that's what i thought it's purpose was...
what that spot really does though is act as a sensor deflector... when the
minifigs are picked up to be painted or assembled with its arms or packaged
into one of the see thru covers, that dot is read by a sensor beam and
that's how they know that the figure is face forward before the do anything
to it...
speaking of see thru covers (by this i mean the packaging that has 6 or 7
special pieces in it that's ontop of the boxes with the opan flap tops...
this area was done by hand... i saw them doing one of the dragon masters
sets... about 3 or 4 people each had 2 parts each and as the clear tray
passed by them they put their pieces into it... once all the pieces were
there, it passed underneath a video camera that was hooked up to a
computer... it would 'grab' an image of the filled tray and check it
against a stored image to be sure that all the pieces were there an
oriented correctly... if not, it came out a side door to a person who had a
small bucket of each piece and she filled in the mistakes and put it back
on the conveyor belt... the correctly done ones would them be sealed up and
stacked and wait to be put onto the boxes...
the factory was very neat and clean... every hour it would be cleaned and
swept... in the room with the parts sorters, there were pieces all over the
floor under each machine... i saw a lot of the elusive quarter cirlce
pieces, the ones that were like a 4x4 block with one corner rounded down...
lego consistently rates as one of the best factories around (and not just
out of toy factorys) for having one of the best error producing rates...
they currently only had a 18 parts per million error record... for every
million made, only 18 were bad... almost makes me think that for the rare
times you get a bad piece you should keep it as a momento...
lego starts working on product lines 5 years in advance... although my
friend had no knowledge of anythign that far into the future, the danes are
already plannig on the 1998 product line... while i was there, my friend
said the final list for the 1995 product line was due in a week or 2... he
also said that in 1995 there would be a whole new line of lego... not an
addition to a line like islanders was to pirates, but a whole new series...
unfortunately he couldn't remember what it was... i'm going to be speaking
with him in a week or 2 and try to get more info...
he said that the americans wanted cowboy and indian sets but he made it
sound like that that would be politically incorrect and that wasn't the new
line... but when i find out i'll let you know...
he did give me a 1994 retail catalog... it listed the floating boats
(nothing new here) and the trains (2 new sets, one retail, one mailorder,
these are the same new ones in the 1994 shop at home #4544 train cargo
wagon and #4525 raod n'rail repair, it lists #4537 twin tankers as new but
it's been in the shop at home for at least a year)...
he had a built copy of the #5591 mach ii red bird rig model team set and
it's real nice! the plane is scaled to fit a minifig but the cockpit
doean't open... i'll get one to add the plane to my minifig airport and
park it next to the space shuttle...
the back 2 pages are a mini shop at home catalog and the back page lists a
different lego club... this on is in canade and the magazine is called
innovations... you get a membership card, 6 issues (over 2 years), lego
maniac stickers, lego club t-shirt transfer and a chance to win a lego set
each month for a year... the add is written in both english and french...
it costs $10.70 (doesn't say if that's american or french) and the address
is:
lego club
p.o. box 3700
markham, ontario
l3r 6g9
include your name, address, zip code, birthday, gender, and specify if this
is a renewal or a new membership and specify if you want english or
french...looking at the order form, everything is in the canadian style so
i would bet that the $10.70 is canadian dollars...
if anyone finds this interesting, please feel free to ask questions and
i'll try to answer them... my memory is sporadic so i may have forgotten
something i wantd to say...
if anyone feels this info is .faq oriented feel free to include it there...
my apologies if this was too long or rambled on...
b. chan
>he (and i believe 2 others that are coworkers) also pull sets off of a
>production run and build them to be sure all the machines are in fact
>packing the right pieces...
THAT would be my dream job. Any employment opportunities available?
I'm willing to move to Cleveland.
Jess Kvatek
moving to cleveland is fine but would you be willing to move to
connecticut? that's where lego is...
Daniel LaLiberte
out new legos by the minute.
Did you get any idea why they couldn't package sets of individual pieces,
say 10 or 20 universal joints? Is it just a marketing problem?
dan
Pete Lancashire
100% marketing. There is no reason with what Lego charges, that a
North American fulfillment center could not be set up to sell almost any
part in any quantity.
Either they do not understand the NA consumer, or it is a marketing
move to make you buy the many of the current buckets to get the
number of basic bricks you want.
And with their est. sales, why change ? Everytime a >= middle class,
male kid is born in the US, it is a good bet that they will three
years later they will have make a sale. (This is not ment to be sexist
or anything, but just a reality of the market).
-pete
Pete Lancashire
pe...@netcom.com
Edward Tsong
: at the end of this room are 7 (i think) giant metal cylinders, maybe 6 or 7
: feet across and about 12 or so high... these are bins that feed the various
: molding machines the basic colors (red, blue, white, yellow, black, grey
: and clear)... in front of each of these machines is a card board
Drool... (gurgled sound of exctasy)
-Ed
Wishes more of the Castle sets came with black swords
Daniel LaLiberte
From: ro...@informix.com (Ross Hagglund)
In article <LIBERTE.94...@ebony.cs.uiuc.edu>, you write:
|> Did you get any idea why they couldn't package sets of individual pieces,
|> say 10 or 20 universal joints? Is it just a marketing problem?
If you are looking for baggies of universal joints, I got 20-30 of them in a
bag from the local science museum (OMSI), they are sold under the DACTA(?)
line and most everything that TECHNICS has is sold in single type multi
quantity bags. (not cheap, but then legos never are :) )
////////////////
////////// // Ross Hagglund
////// / /// Database Kernel Engineer
///// // //// Informix Software
//// // /////
/// // ////// 921 SW Washington Suite 670
// // /////// Portland, Oregon, USA, 97205
/ /////////// Tel.:(503)221-2605, Fax.:(503)221-2633
//////////////// e-mail: ro...@informix.com
---------------------
I don't know that DACTA even advertizes these bags - at least I didn't
notice them in the catalog I got a year ago. Has anyone just tried to
ask them?
dan
Tim Westcott
ET> -Ed
ET> Wishes more of the Castle sets came with black swords
Heh, don't we all... My brother-in-law has a couple of solutions to the problem of boring LEGO swords. One, he buys CoCo (another construction toy) castle sets. These include battleaxes,chrome swords, solid(!) cart wheels and more. Second, I got a local glassblower to make a glass sword, that fit in a minifigures hand. The hilt and handle was painted in 24k gold, looked great good. It was a gift for my bro, and he loved it.
Just a couple of examples that you don't have to settle for dull plastic grey swords.
(A warning tho, CoCo is really pathetic as far as plastic quality goes, and the minifigures are rather hideous...)
tim.we...@iflex.wimsey.com
Mathew Clayson
>
> ET> -Ed
> ET> Wishes more of the Castle sets came with black swords
What kit comes with black swords?
>Heh, don't we all... My brother-in-law has a couple of solutions to the problem of boring LEGO swords. One, he buys CoCo (another construction toy) castle sets. These include battleaxes,chrome swords, solid(!) cart wheels and more. Second, I got a local glassblower to make a glass sword, that fit in a minifigures hand. The hilt and handle was painted in 24k gold, looked great good. It was a gift for my bro, and he loved it.
>Just a couple of examples that you don't have to settle for dull plastic grey swords.
>(A warning tho, CoCo is really pathetic as far as plastic quality goes, and the minifigures are rather hideous...)
So much so that they are now very hard to find, if you know of any stores that have
the COKO pirate ships please let me know. I have 1, and while it's not as nice as the
LEGO peices, the hull sections can be split in half.
>
---
+ Mathew Clayson KA6EBS + "If you can't buy something nice... +
+ mathew....@Eng.sun.com + don't buy nothin' at all." +
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