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Case History Medical Products
Client Manufacturer of Disposable Medical Masks
$940,000 savings in
annual labor costs. Dramatic yield increase of 10 million linear
yards.
Challenge
A manufacturer of medical facemasks (Client) was facing
intense price pressure from both competition and Managed Care.
Extensive measures were taken to reduce costs and
streamline operations, including bringing some activities in-house. But the
desired savings and throughput improvement was not achieved. Also, with an
enormous investment in 52 machines to produce these facemasks, a wholesale
upgrade of production equipment was not economically feasible.
Compounding the challenge was that the Client had a
bottleneck in its production. The production line was using pancake rolls to
feed strips of fabric into the mask making machines*. Throughput on the
manufacturing line was limited because the pancake roll had to be changed every
10 to 12 minutes. Some machines spliced the pancake rolls, but this operation
didn't function correctly. Splicing of the narrow raw materials was a
significant part of the problem. The splicing difficulties were caused by, (1)
operators not loading backup rolls, (2) tape splice being misapplied, resulting
in no splice actually taking place, and (3) splices breaking in the production
machine.
Overall, Client’s management was under pressure to reduce
costs (through labor and material savings), improve the production speed,
increase productivity, improve packaging throughput, and improve quality.
*A
surgical facemask is composed of several types of fabric, which are processed
and assembled into a final product. When purchased, the raw fabric is in large
rolls, ranging from 24-inches wide to several feet wide. A “slitting” operation
takes these large rolls of material and cuts or “slits” them down to widths
ranging from one inch to several inches. Slitting
Operations perform the slitting service and ship the narrow width material in
what are known as “pancake” rolls. These pancake rolls might be 12 to 24 inches
in diameter, but the material might be only one inch
thick, looking very much like a pancake. Splicing is a significant quality
issue. It affects both cost and the quality of the finished product.
Solution
Web Industries’ experts collaborated with the
Client to solve the problems, beginning with a solid cost analysis
including labor, benefits, overhead, machine depreciation, space
allocation, etc. After studying the problem, Web and Client jointly
developed an overall solution to the production problem, based on
the following:
a. Spools Instead of Pancakes:
The spool approach to handling slitted material would replace the
existing pancake roll approach. Spools would be changed once every
two hours instead of pancake rolls being changed every 12 minutes.
This would reduce splicing problems and downtime dramatically, too.
b. Unwind Machinery: Client’s
existing machinery was designed to use the narrow pancake rolls so
some engineering was needed. Web would assist Client in designing
the equipment necessary to allow spools to feed into the narrow slot
on the existing machinery. Web provided the spools to Client’s
specifications (width and diameter), and found a firm to build
custom unwinding equipment.
c. Standard Components: The
ultimate solution was built to use standard components wherever
possible. This helped to keep capital costs to a minimum by reducing
the amount and type of equipment that had to be purchased.
d. Proof of Concept Demonstration:
Web Industries brought demonstration equipment to Client’s premises
to prove the viability of its proposal.
e. Providing Spooled Material:
Web provided the slitting operation and spooling service.
f. Web’s Dallas Location As Critical
Distribution Point: Web’s plant location in Dallas aided
Client’s efforts to minimize shipping costs and minimize the risk to
raw material supplies.
Service Note — Web
Industries provides slitting services and a number of other
value-added services, one of which is called “spooling”. This uses a
special winding process to place, for example, inch material on a
high capacity spool instead of the relatively low capacity pancake
roll. A spool can often hold ten times the capacity of a pancake
roll, which greatly reduces splicing, roll changes and production
downtime. The advantage of spooled material over pancake rolled
material directly contributed to the outstanding results from this
project.
Results
This joint effort produced nearly $1 million of
annual labor savings, reduced waste by 1% and increased yield by 10
million linear yards of material. This was all accomplished with a
customer investment of approximately $1 million, less than 1/20th of
the cost to convert the entire production line to new equipment.
- Splicing time was reduced by a factor of 20.
- Production downtime caused by splicing difficulties was reduced
and splicing problems in total were substantially reduced. Web was
able to show that this was a case where hand splicing was actually
more effective than automated splicing.
- Waste reduced by 1%.
- Yield increased by 10,000,000 linear yards, (approx. 1% of
total).
- Production Line Uptime improved by 3%.
- Number of "good" masks shipped increased from 94.5 per 100
to 96.2 per 100. (Several factors beyond spooling improvements
contributed to this increase.
Web Industries supplied a new technology (spooling), and because of its
expertise in all aspects of slitting, was able to pull together a series of
products, services and suppliers that made the project successful.
Cost/Benefit Analysis
Non-Recurring Costs
- Engineering cost to design custom spooling stands $330,000
- 150 spooling stands to support 52 individual machines making facemasks
$525,000
- Installation of the custom spooling stands $200,000
Total Costs……………………………………………………………………………………… $1,055,000
Annual Savings
- 27 operators were eliminated from the machine lines (reduced
from two operators per machine to one operator per machine). 27 x $32,500/yr
= $877,500
- 2 slitter operators eliminated from the slitting department. 2 x $32,500/yr
= $65,000
Total Labor Savings……………………………………………………………………………$942,500/yr