Tag: quality

Comparing Yugos to Audis

Written on by frain-sales

In a recent conversation, a prospective customer asked us match the price of a pallet wrapper found online for $3,500.

After emailing the machine details to our engineer for review, we discovered that this particular unit was a basic, low-end machine not intended to be used very often. It was meant for mostly light-duty production, not adequate for what the customer was interested in producing. Furthermore, the lack of durability may cause issues in the long run for the customer, especially if the business continues to grow.

The engineer likened the machine to a Yugo, a new car introduced in the 80’s that went for just under $4,000. It quickly became a customer favorite and certainly beat the price tag of $9,000+ for a new compact car of the time.  The Yugo infamously fell short of customer’s expectations. And although it was a new car, it was not built to last very long.

Before buying packaging and processing machinery, our engineers recommend that you and your team consider the following:

  • Machine durability
  • High machine quality
  • Product specifications
  • Product support
  • Return warranty

As they say, “You get what you pay for.” Just like the Yugo, cheap machines are not meant to last long. They are temporary or popular items that typically function at the lowest capacity possible.

Click here to watch the affordable car in the 80’s video, featuring the infamous Yugo.

Aesops Fables – Tortoise and the Hare

Written on by John Henry

Most of us, when we were young’uns, heard Aesop’s fables. Perhaps the best known is the story of the turtle and the hare: One day they decide to have a race. The hare is pretty fast and does not view the turtle as much of a challenge. He takes off but then stops along the way for a beer or two, runs fast for a bit more than has some lunch and so on. The turtle is a lot slower but is steady. In the end, the slow but steady turtle wins the race.

Packaging lines are like that sometimes. We think that running them faster will result in more output. Sometimes it does but sometimes we get the opposite.

Years ago I was a young maintenance manager in a pharmaceutical plant. One of the products was a suppository that was strip packed between two foil laminates. It was not a terribly sophisticated process and the strip packing machine was supposed to run at 60ppm. At least that is what the manual said.

When we ran it at 60ppm, there were about 25% rejects. Some of this was crushing the suppository between the jaws, some was the laminate not sealing correctly some was due to other issues.

Through trial and error when the packaging manager was not looking I found that we could almost completely eliminate the rejects by slowing the machine from 60ppm to 50ppm.

As soon as I would leave, and the packaging manager would find that I had slowed down his machine, he would crank the speed back up to 60ppm. Rejects went up as well.

Running at 60ppm with 25% rejects, meant a true output of 45 good products per minute. When the loss from damaged product and the time to rework leaking packages are included, it is considerably less. Over a 420 minute shift, it would produce 18,900 good products.

Running at 50ppm with 3% rejects true output is 48.5ppm or 20,370 good products for the shift.

I never could get the packaging manager to understand this:

Sometimes you just have to slow down to go fast.

You’re in a Box

Written on by Rich Frain

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Not that long ago, most CPG manufacturers had a relatively large number of customers. None had a killer percentage of their business. This put more power in the manufacturer’s hands. To some extent, the customer had to take what was offered, the way it was offered.

Few companies have that luxury anymore. They’ve been boxed in by the various big stores. Walmart is exhibit A but hardly the only one. Many companies depend on Walmart for 50%-60% (or more) of their revenue. Three or four other companies may account for a big chunk of what’s left.

This dependence on a few large customers is risky. Losing a 10% customer hurts but is survivable. Surviving the loss of a 50% customer is much harder, maybe impossible. The big chains know this and use it to leverage better pricing, tighter quality, shorter lead times and specialized products. Things that the 10% customer can only dream of.

The pressure that this creates on the manufacturer is intense.

Nor is it a one time thing. No matter how good the manufacturer gets, the customer will always want more.

Here are a couple of ideas to help deal with this.

  1. Get ahead of the curve. Don’t wait until customer and competition force you to become more flexible and efficient. Do it now while you still have a bit of leeway. If you don’t already have a continuous improvement program, start one today. If you do have one, make sure it has the organization and resources it needs to make a difference. Is your plant set up for stable production schedules and long production runs? That’s in the past. Nimbleness is all. You need to be able to make small production runs on a moment’s notice.
  2. Make quality a culture. The consumer wants every product they buy to be exactly the same. You must make sure this happens.

You’re in a box and it doesn’t look like you’ll get out anytime soon. You need to adapt or die.

At Frain, we have a really big box (over a million square feet) full of machinery and engineers. When time counts, we make it work for you. Give us a call at 630-629- 9900 or visit us online at www.fraingroup.com.