The Challenge:
A Manufacturer of Injection Molding machines received increasing complaints from customers about the excessive use of raw Materials (resin). Machine yield capped at 88% of capacity, partly due to production scheduling but mostly due to rejected end-product.
The manufacturer investigated the problem at multiple customer production processes and found that the machine operators detected deformed product very late in the process. They started looking for early warning systems that could sense production failures early in the production process.
The Solution:
The company decided to buy 2 FS2D COOLBOXES with a specific configuration of digital sensors and the FS2D Router that connects both sensor output as well as PLC output from the Injection Molding Machines at 2 different customers. By analyzing the data output from both Machines in the Cloud based INSIGHT platform the company found that the temperature fluctuation in the cooling-section around the Mold of the machines caused the product to be cooled down too slowly before ejecting the product from the mold, causing product-deforming.
The company decided in alignment with its customers to improve the cooling process in one machine and to reduce the speed of the rotation in the other machine to reach the same result of a cooler end-product. This reduced the waste of raw material with 50% and improved one of the Machine’s yield from 88% to 93%.
The Reward
With the knowledge gained from the test the Manufacturer has been able to improve the average yield of its line of injection molding machines and add new customers as a result. Furthermore they are building a yield database from the data they are collecting from each of their machines in the field, to be used for future generations of their Molding machines.