Batch Cycle Time Improvement for Powder Coatings

• Need to increase the production of difficult to produce green brand paint for Industrial and Farm Equipment – very tight specifications
• Product Sold Out – Every additional increase in capacity could be sold
• Operations claimed facilities were bottlenecked and at limits although design capacity of extrusion appeared to suggest otherwise
• Client was working on a design project to install new powder paint lines to expand production – Multimillion CAPEX project
• Caravel was asked to analyze the data and determine the “entitlement” – What are the true capabilities of the existing production assets?
• Caravel was to evaluate all aspects of the process including cycle times for all steps in the process as well as uptime and corresponding reliability programs.
• Caravel to recommend steps to capture hidden plant.
• Based on Design On-stream Factor was in high 50% to low 60%

• Six Sigma statistical analysis, Operations Stability Analysis along with Weibull all suggested additional capacity existed within the current system.
• Stable Operations Factors and Cycle time variability were poor
• Larger lines within the factory had demonstrated ability to surpass current entitlement expectations by 15% or more consistently.
• Simulation was built to understand pinch-points and bottlenecks. Extruders, the key step in the process were not the bottleneck.
• Uptime of key equipment in the process was also evaluated.
• Supply Chain and Production planning and its contributions to increases in changeover times were also analyzed to reduce changeover downtime.

• Biggest contributor to low cycle times was Feed Preparation.
• Extruder speeds were often reduced to accommodate feed preparation
• Simulation indicated key recommendation was to reorganize feed preparation
• Key recommendations were also made to improve maintenance downtime and changeover times.
• Result of reorganization, key changes moved critical pinchpoint to Extrusion
• Overall increase in production of 28.4% with an additional 5% increase in production due to reduce changeovers and uptime.
• Client abandoned multimillion dollar CAPEX expansion – deemed unnecessary.

TOTAL IMPACT: $11 MILLION / YR

(not including CAPEX project impact)