Our Client was experiencing a high production loss due to various process issues. The current operations were profitable but seen as inefficient.  In addition, the product yields were limiting their ability to meet increasing requirements of the products.

Reason for Project:

• Our Client decided to hire an outside engineering consulting firm to study the manufacturing facility during canning season. Observations of the entire process from truck unloading of raw materials through palletizing of cased products.

Project Deliverables:

• A comprehensive list of process improvement ideas around the dicing lines; addition of in-line weight checking equipment; and oven and cooling process enhancements to increase throughput.
• Also identified manpower reduction opportunities through staffing changes, installation of larger magazine feeders and the replacement of two low speed lines with one high speed canning line.

Project Results/Benefits:

• Productivity Improvements: Process improvement showed an increase of 12,790 cases (4%).
• Labor Cost Reductions: Total proposed labor cost reduction would reduce annual labor cost by $600,000.
• Throughput Enhancement: Increased production capacity within the same footprint.
• Quality Improvement: Reduced can filling losses by $60,000 annually and empty can loss by $40,000 annually.

A rapidly expanding confidential client required assistance with improving existing systems and developing new capacity.

Reason for Project:

•  Efficiency gains through improvement of existing systems and creation of capacity through the design and construction of new facilities were required to keep pace with growing customer orders.

Project Deliverables:

• Improvement Plans for Existing Facilities and Systems
• Design of New Facilities – From conceptual block layouts to final detailed design.
• Estimating of Material Handling Systems.
• Simulation Modeling – Prove out design concepts.
• Equipment Specifications – All aspects; development of performance specifications through the bid, evaluation and award process.
• Vendor Equipment Development – Acted as Client representative to facilitate and monitor detailed design development, construction and testing of purchased equipment systems.
• Construction Packages – Developed “material handling” packages and contributed to the detailed design of other disciplines.

Project Results/Benefits:

• Increased Capacity: Improvements and Expansions provided the Client significant leaps in processing capacity (enabling them to fulfill customer orders on schedule).
• Innovative New Systems: Epicenter was the originator and/or developer of multiple ideas and systems that greatly improved and expanded the Client’s production capabilities.

A multinational glass manufacturing company’s export sales had grown significantly over the past few years. As a result, the workload associated with preparing outbound shipments had risen exponentially.

Reason for Project:

• In order to best handle the shipping operations, the Client decided to commission a study to determine the “best practices” for loading shipping containers and the proper staffing levels for all warehouse operations.

Project Deliverables:

• Created a Loading Model to evaluate the best method for loading trailers and shipping containers and the expected load time.
• Developed a Hauling Model to evaluate the staffing required on a daily basis to stage outgoing materials. The model was fully integrated into the Client’s existing scheduling spreadsheet.

Project Results/Benefits:

• Capacity Increase: Significantly reduced the time to load shipping containers from 50 minutes to 15 minutes (50%-80% improvement). In addition, Epicenter helped to evaluate the proper forklift driver labor required to reduce shipping delays.
• Productivity Increase/Labor Reduction: See above. Also reduced the labor associated with staging outgoing materials through the use of the Hauling Model tool by the warehouse supervisor.
• Quality Improvement: Improved loading quality through development of standard loading process across all three shifts.

A leading manufacturer and marketer of premium-quality building insulation, commercial roofing, roof insulation, and specialty products for commercial, industrial and residential applications.was experiencing a reduction in throughput on the 800 machine. They also realized the machine was running 24/7 and not meeting production needs.

Reason for Project:

• The Client decided to hire an outside engineering consulting firm to study the reasons for the delays and identify possible solutions in order to increase throughput.

Project Deliverables:

• Created a list of delay reasons and calculated the downtime associated with each cause.
• Delivered an itemized list of ways to improve throughput.

Project Results/Benefits:

• Productivity increased: Estimated downtime reduction of 25.3% (from 34% to 8.3%)
• Capacity increased: Increased production capacity within the same footprint.
• Quality Improvement: Increased good raw material rolls resulting in a decrease of scrapped finished goods.

Our Client wanted to look at the current process flow for the boxing operation in order to increase production. The boxing operation was the process of filling boxes with plastic resin.

Reason for Project:

• The Client was concerned that the boxing operation was not being utilized to the fullest potential. They were looking to increase the amount of production from this process.

Project Deliverables:

• Time studies were used to develop an updated procedure for the boxing operation.
• A series of opportunities were developed/provided for improving the operational capacity and efficiency.

Project Results/Benefits:

• Productivity Increase: By combining the process and having the two operators work simultaneously, the amount of boxes processed per hour could be increased by almost 200%.
• Capacity Increase: If the amount of resin that the hopper (machine that feeds the boxing operation) holds could be increased by 2.5 times the current amount, the boxes could be produced at a faster pace.

The Client had a need for transparency in their manufacturing process that would allow them to better manage their production throughput and costing procedures. There was a lack of documentation with respect to process steps and accurate time standards for completing each step.

Reason for Project:

• The Client had the goal of integrating an MRP system into their facility. This required standards to be in place for the each process step, many of which are very manual operations, for every product that they produce. The project objective was to provide the client with data that would give them the ability to associate a cost with each element in their manufacturing process. The client brought in an outside engineering consulting group to study the processes. Epicenter Development Group was hired to complete the on-site data collection.

Project Deliverables:

• A comprehensive list of the products was collected which allowed for the development of product families based upon components and process steps. This allowed the facility to update their product naming standards for intermediate processing steps, which allowed for a more streamline product flow between processing areas.
• Detailed process time studies were gathered for each product family for all of the processing areas under examination. The value added and non-value added elements were recorded in a way that will allow the client the ability to use this valuable information if they choose to implement process improvement projects in the future.

Project Results/Benefits:

• The standards developed allowed the client the ability to compare the actual time spent on the each product to the times that they were previously using for their costing analysis.
• In addition, the standards developed can now be utilized in the MRP system to allow the plant management a more transparent view of their production system as a whole. The client now has the ability to more clearly view their lead time by product family. This makes the hiccups that occur along the way more visible and allows the facility and take a more proactive approach in solving problems when they arise.

Our Client  was experiencing an excessive amount of downtime during the launch of a new Plate Freezer System.

Reason for Project:

• The Start-up Team was working hard to minimize/eliminate downtime and system inefficiencies and looked to Epicenter to identify and quantify problems to enable more targeted corrective action.

Project Deliverables:

• Over the course of 2 weeks, the system was observed and all downtime was recorded, summarized and analyzed.
• Recommendations were developed and ranked for the highest impact to improve the system throughput.

Project Results/Benefits:

• Throughput Improvement Opportunity: The root causes of downtime identified uncovered a potential throughput improvement of 20-25%.
• Start-up Improvement: Root cause information provided Engineering/Maintenance necessary information for a targeted correction strategy. Cost and timing were improved from knowing what the real problems were.
• Achievement of Capacity: Upon correcting the identified problems the system would be capable of operating to the designed capacity.