Growing Pains for a Packaging Maker

Client: A national flexographic printer and converter recognized in the industry for a $20 Million plant upgrade to top-of-the-line equipment by Heliostar, Totani, Lusch, Fuller, Triumph, and Karville.

Problem: After delivery, the equipment stood under-used for more than 6 months. The operators were all 20-year veterans, but their experience and instincts, honed on obsolete machinery, did not serve them with after the upgrade. Raw materials were wasted, gears were stripped, and one operator was injured during what should have been a routine process.

Solution: Sunnyday’s experts understood that all the problems had a root cause: The manufacturer had trained the client on maintenance as part of the installation process, but not on its operation. Sunnyday took a two-fold approach to the solution:

• First of all, they developed a new set of standard operating procedures. Comprehensive in scope, it ensured that key components of the machinery were inspected at the beginning of each shift, and that operators new how to adjust setting “on the fly” to meet changing printing conditions. On a plant-wide scale, the new SOP ensured that regular/repeat orders had everything needed to complete the job on hand prior to starting the run, so that the most common types of production could be turned around quickly and without interruptions.
• Secondly, they implemented a program of pre-emptive maintenance to ensure that “downtime” did not coincide with “busy season”, allowing salespeople to guarantee delivery dates with confidence.