MEMORANDUM

TO: Dr. H. Jack, P. Eng.

FROM: Scott Woodard

SUBJECT: Steelcase Tour

DATE: 4-1-97

Professor Jack:

Several things come to mind concerning the recent tour of the Steelcase facility. The immense proportions of that 600 ton transfer press that was being used to stamp out those desk panels is still etched in my mind. To see how fluid its motion is as it continually stamps out those parts, is a sight that makes a mechanical engineers' mind begin to work overtime! An incredible amount of thought and work goes into designing a machine such as that. Another thing that really impressed me was the "high rise" warehousing facility. It is hard to imagine that in as little as fifteen years that this operation would now be considered inefficient and obsolete. It really shows how the trends in manufacturing are going.

After the recent Padnos tour when I saw just how aware they were of what they are doing to the environment, it was also nice to see that Steelcase is also concerned with their paint operation. I had no idea that in a conventional wet-paint operation that you loose as much as 40-50% in overspray. I knew that overspray was a problem, but I had no idea how much of a problem. I found it interesting that in a powder-coat operation that you only loose 1% during the process. It seems like this type of a system would justify its cost in no time. I feel that the tour was well organized, and very informative.

Regards,

Scott Woodard