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What is a Plastics, Pharmaceutical And Home Health Care Products Manufacturer

Automated DataMyte System Reduces Scrap, Improves Process, and Gives Manufacturer Competitive Edge  

A plastic pharmaceutical and home health care products plant produced parts for self-injection devices, syringes, and inhalers. The company had a successful manual SPC system in place, but produced only x-bar and r charts. The company wanted to explore an automated SPC data collection to gain automatic real-time inspection for process control.

Problem

Because the company produced parts for pharmaceutical and home health care, quality was important. The manufacturer was using a pencil-and-paper program, monitoring six machines every two hours, 24 hours per day, seven days per week. Inspectors took all measurements manually, such as weighing components to determine plasticizing parameters.

The manual system was time-consuming, and the prolonged reporting time resulted in excess scrap and increased production costs. The manufacturer needed a competitive edge.

Customers were looking for manufacturers that give them an element of control. The manufacturer had to be able to show customers that it produced good parts, demonstrate how parts were made, and prove that its products were consistently of good quality

Solution

The manufacturer decided to try an automated DataMyte data collection system. The company purchased off-the-shelf components from DataMyte, and tested the system with a single 900 data collector connected via DataMyte TurboNET™ software to a computer in the systems technician’s office. The initial system was installed, and began collecting data in only three hours, including installation of cabling to the host computer.

The immediate result was automatic real-time inspection for process control. The manufacturer was able to monitor machine condition and see the process moving toward an out-of-control condition. The TurboNET log screen allowed the systems technician to control the process from his office by reading the green and red station indicator boxes, rather than resorting to trial and error.

The single-station test worked so well that the manufacturer decided to implement the system on all six molding machines in the clean room. The DataMyte data collector at each machine was connected directly to the Klockner’s FMT140

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