Nelson Global

Nelson Global Products Australian facility located in Scoresby Victoria designs, manufactures, and markets a broad range of fabricated high performance OEM and aftermarket products for the global commercial vehicle, on-highway, off-highway, outdoor recreational vehicle and power markets.

Nelson Global Products (NGP) successfully operates today as a strong product development and validation manufacturer with significant market and application knowledge.  NGP works collaboratively with its customers to optimize product performance to exceed expectations for reliability, durability, costs and availability. Its breadth of products -- combined with global manufacturing capabilities -- provides customers with integrated systems solutions.

The Scoresby site primarily manufactures complex shaped tubes which includes many compound angles. In an effort to provide continuous improvement, in not only their manufacturing excellence but product quality, NGP undertook an extensive investigation into a portable measurement solution in an attempt to phase out the laborious conventional methods.

After a period of consultation and discussions with a number of suppliers it was decided that a new Romer Absolute 6 axis arm complete with dedicated tube probes and tube inspection software was the right system for their needs not only for current requirements but for future projects such as the recently introduced grab bars and handles.

According to their Quality Manager Steve Lyons the Romer arm has been a terrific acquisition for NGP stating that they have seen drastic time reductions saved in both jig design and off tool sample inspection. Tasks that previously took between 50 - 90 minutes now take a maximum of 15 minutes. In addition Steve stated their set-ups are not only significantly quicker but they are achieving drastic significant  improvements in repeatability.

The Scoresby site produces tube related product ranging in diameter from 12mm through to 250mm. With the addition of PolyWorks Inspector probing not only can they measure the small diameter tubing they can also probe the larger diameters giving them a holistic approach to their process. This enables NGP to supply a quality product to world renowned manufacturers such as, Caterpillar, Volvo, Cummins, Kenworth, Iveco and Western Star, to name a few.

One of the key factors in the evaluation of the supplier Steve states was the ability of Hi-Tech Metrology to not only supply local technical support but their local calibration facility. "We just couldn't afford the time to have our arm shipped overseas as it's critical to our day to day functionality."

NGP continues to achieve significant benefits from this technology not only in productivity but also in product evolution.