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Case History Consumer Products
Client: Manufacturer of Personal Care Products
Over $1 million saved annually.
Challenge
A leading manufacturer of personal care products (client) was facing competitive pressures as the result of high production, inventory and logistics costs due to a multi-step, multi-location manufacturing process that included the following steps:
- Substrate manufacture
- Offline resizing for printing
- Printing
- Offline resizing for spooling
- Spooling
- Three transportation legs between sites
Solution
Our client invited us to help them improve their expensive manufacturing process. We began by analyzing their current situation – to make certain we fully understood their process and their goals. Guided by the principles of lean manufacturing, we jointly identified the following areas as potential sources of improved manufacturing efficiency:
- Excessive inventory carrying costs due to the length of the supply chain
- Significant procurement and quality overhead costs due to management of multiple outsource providers
- Extra freight costs due to shipping to multiple locations
- Manufacturing waste due to an inefficient, multiple-step process
Web collaborated with the client to create a comprehensive solution based on the backbone of a comprehensive supply chain consolidation.
Results
Within weeks, Web was able to deliver an improved manufacturing process that featured 90-inch in-line printing and spooling out of a single location. This approach eliminated two intermediate resizing operations, two manufacturing locations and two costly freight legs generating annual savings for our client in excess of $1 million. The highlights of this solution include:
- Reduced Lead Times: Web was able to reduce the lead time required to produce the material from 6 weeks to less than 2.
- Improved Inventory Velocity: As a result of the reduced lead times and shortened supply chain, the client was able to improve inventory velocity resulting in a 70% reduction in inventory carrying costs.
- Reduced Complexity: By implementing a consolidated manufacturing process, Web was able to simplify the material management process.
- Reduced Waste: Waste was reduced almost 75% by eliminating unnecessary intermediate processes and their associated waste.
Service Note —Web Industries provides contract slitting services and a number of other value-added services, one of which is called "spooling." This technology uses a special winding process to place narrow-width material on a high capacity spool instead of a relatively low capacity planetary or “pancake” roll. A spool can often hold ten times the capacity of a pancake roll, which greatly reduces splicing, roll changes and production downtime during manufacturing. This can help make the process of manufacturing consumer products more efficient and cost-effective.
See our page on the consumer products marketplace.
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