Capex Avoidance: Soft Drinks Packaging
"What Adrian brought was a whole new way of thinking, a systematic approach I had never seen before" - Engineering Director
INDUSTRY:
Fast Moving Consumer Goods
Support Level:
1 Consultant, 2 days
Objective:
To increase the thoughput of a ‘PET’ line palletiser, avoiding €700k capital upgrade cost
Results:
17 % increase in palletiser throughput avoids €700k of capital expenditure
Why was chartwell brought on board?
A client had seen a shift in production format to smaller pack sizes and the palletiser on one of its lines was not designed to be optimised for this size. The palletiser became the bottleneck of the line. Whenever the new bottle size was run, frequent build-backs would lead the operators to reduce the filler and labeller speed, until they felt that the line would run “smoothly” without the filler stopping all the time.
The client asked Chartwell to determine whether it would be possible to increase throughput and therefore avoid the palletiser manufacturer’s proposal for an upgrade, which would have cost €700k with several months’ lead time.
Results of the project
- Palletiser throughput increased by 17 % in 3 weeks, filler speed increased by 25 %
- Further improvement on small packaging format including doubling of infeed system speed