Chemical Company Increases Production Capacity by over 35%

The Challenge

The worldwide demand for a commonly used temperature and chemical corrosion resistant fluoropolymer resin was at an all-time high. Unfortunately, the production capacity of the industry-leading Fortune 500 supplier was rapidly approaching its limit.

Facing the possibility of missing delivery dates and losing customers, the company had begun a large capital investment project to expand capacity on its primary production line in West Virginia.

However, the company needed an immediate increase in capacity to meet its short term needs.

The Strategy

While the capital project was still in the design phase, the plant manager and engineers decided to experiment with the process to determine how to squeeze more production out of its existing plant.

A team of engineers and operators used MSLLC tools and techniques to understand what process changes could be made to produce more 1st quality product with minimal capital cost to the business.

The team brainstormed over 50 different changes that they thought would increase throughput while maintaining first pass yield.

The Experiment

Eventually, the team chose 7 of the original 50 ideas to test in a designed experiment. The team selected the ideas using the philosophy that the changes must be able to be changed quickly, cheaply and permanently.

In order make to minimize the management approvals required if the process operated outside of normal ranges, the team chose levels of the factors that were at the extremes of the current operating procedures.

To understand the effect of each individual factor and gain insight to any interactions between different factors, the team designed an experiment with 16 different production recipes. The factors and their levels are shown below:

The Results 
In less than one month of testing, the existing production line capacity was increased by more than 35% with an expected annual sales impact in the millions. The capacity increases were achieved by both an increase in first pass yield and an increase overall rate of production, a scenario deemed impossible by the plant engineers. The increased capacity also reduced the need for the entire capital expansion that was planned. The design team reduced the scope of the expansion which saved several hundred thousand dollars.