Industry 4.0_RotoWorld 4, 2020

INDUSTRY 4.0

EPISODE 3

by Rob Miller, Wittmann Battenfeld Canada Inc. / ROTOLOADTM

Put your Money‌Where your Money is!

As I ended Episode 3, I explained that my intention over the next few episodes will be to explore some examples as to how the implementation of Industry 4.0 principles, equipment, and theories can benefit your manufacturing and improve your bottom line.

Using Industry 4.0 to manage your most valuable resource.

After discussing this topic with several molders, the average rotomolded part has a cost of anywhere from 40%-70% related to the raw material, so this seems like an important and valuable place to start.

I thought that I would get started with a small case study, a return on investment investigation, to see where 4.0 can lead, and indeed benefit your business and financial goals.

As an industry, plastic is the heart of our business. Without raw material to put into our molds, we would have no business to discuss.

No matter which batch weight, blend, mix, color, polymer, or mesh size we use in our process, we need to have resin to make parts. Even if every part is a different color, we still need to know where our resources are being consumed.

Therefore, all molders have some volumes of materials, from small bags, to gaylord boxes, to super sacks, up to a silo, or multiple.

A 12 ft diameter silo, 64 feet tall, holds roughly 200,000 lbs of powder resin.

At a dollar a pound, that is a lot of money sitting in a metal tank outside of your building.

The big question is, do we all have an accurate picture of where that powder is going.

It is reasonable to expect that there is a wide spectrum of answers related to this question.

38 ROTOWORLDÂŽ AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2020

INDUSTRY 4.0

EPISODE 3 Some molders perhaps have a very accurate and realistic picture of where that powder is on a day to day basis, how much goes into good parts, how much goes into bad parts, how much goes on the floor, and how much ends up in various places, other than your end product!

It is also realistic to consider that some others don’t have as good of a handle on this costly and important topic.

While we know that a specific part, by design, requires a specific weight of powder, we may not truly understand how much is actually going into each and every mold, what resin we are losing to the floor, cross contamination, tool leakage in the oven, careless use of the typical manual bucket process, etc.

As mentioned at the outset, the best way to accomplish some ideas of true resin costs through a hypothetical case study might be a good place to start. I will do my best to keep the numbers organized and easy to follow. For the purposes of this case study, we will take a typical 3 meter machine, with 4 independent arms.

Machine Type

Carousel

Machine Size

3m

Number of Arms

4

Arm Type

Straight

Molds per Arm

4

Mold Size

25 lbs.

Total Resin per Arm

100 lbs.

Typical Cycle per Arm

20 min.

In the listed example, the machine will (should) consume +/- 300 lbs/hr of resin. In a typical 8 hr shift, by simple calculation equals 2,400 lbs / shift.

At roughly a $ 1.00 per pound, $2,400.00 of resin will be consumed in that shift, on that machine.

The big question is, do you know exactly what is happening. How accurate and consistent are your operators weighing out the buckets? How much powder may be falling on the floor? If

you run a single shift, five-day schedule, 50 weeks a year, the math works out to 600,000 lbs of powder consumed annually by this one machine. Or roughly $600,000.00.

The question is, what is your margin of error? What numbers do you use to allow for accurate cost calculations.

A 2% margin of error, could result in +/- $ 12,000.00 in annualized losses that do NOT need to be realized.

Remember that this is one machine, one shift, one part…If this ONE machine were to run three shifts, five days per week, the losses could be close to $40,000.00.

Larger parts, more expensive resins, number of operators on the platform, all contribute to these simple numbers.

Now, what any molder can do, is have staff, that may walk around to every machine, perhaps multiple times a day, collecting data, collecting manual work sheets that may or may not be filled out consistently, or accurately. Then, take that manually collected data, and transfer it to a spread sheet, or directly into an ERP system, which may or may not have manual entry errors, etc, etc.

All of this hard earned data, is based on the honesty, care, and integrity of your operators.

It is unlikely that every operator is recording when they put 2% or 4% or more powder in the mold, or spilled on the floor.

This process will indeed offer some record of what is going on, and some ideas of how your people and process are working, however, in many ways, its like we are heading back towards the manual typewriter again.

How 4.0 principles…

As I have communicated several times, Industry 4.0 principles, are for a large part, based on collecting large amounts of data.

It doesn’t matter how many colors, how large or how small your parts or part runs. Depending on your specific process, your facility may be able to see significant

benefit from a material conveying/ management system, potentially with an aggressive return on investment, but this is not necessarily the case.

Alternatively, collecting DATA automatically, electronically, can be an inexpensive process, a simple concept, and one that can be easily implemented with very little effort.

It needs to be a conscious decision and effort to move forward in a specific direction, with a defined, colaborative plan.

If we go back to that original +/$12,000.00 (losses) number, and make a decision to spend a portion of that on an 4.0 technology investment, a significant improvement could be made in the accuracy and consistency of the data that you are collecting.

Not only that, but the cost to collect that valuable information, quickly becomes automatic and without cost.

That for me is a key component to this 4.0 theory and technology being designed and functioning well. Collecting the data should take place in the normal course of day to day operations, without any additional effort of your team, or interruptions to your process.

In actual fact, all theories and indicators would show that it should be quite the opposite. This data and the related methods of collecting it should allow you to free up and use your valuable people for more efficient, safe, productive, and profit building tasks.

But this small example of collecting resin consumption data is only one of the many possible benefits.

Part consistency, weight accuracy, better inventory tracking of raw materials, and finished parts, better tracking of good parts/bad parts, operator efficiency, machine efficiency, specific mold performance, standardized work instructions, less plant movement and traffic, and more are ALL additional exponential benefits, and profit increasing initiatives as a natural result of thinking outside the box.

Isn’t that why we are all here? www.rotoworldmag.com 39