Crane Plastics, One word: plastics

Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer US

The management of Crane Plastics doesn’t need to be convinced of the value of improvement. It’s been practicing it for some time, John Previte and Vick Dhanapal told Ruari McCallion

The modern world without plastic would look very different than the way it does now. Back in 1947, when Crane Plastics Manufacturing Ltd. was founded, the uses were fairly limited and often regarded as low quality. Today plastics are so far developed that they are strong enough to be load- or impact-bearing in automobiles. They’re widely used in aircraft; they protect buildings from rain and corrosion and coastlines from erosion. No new building would be complete without plastic in various forms and in everything from electrical cable conduits to window and door frames.

“As a custom manufacturer, we’re making our products to customer specification,” said John Previte, CPM’s marketing manager. The company’s selling propositions are its experience, expertise, and innovation. “We’ve been in business for almost 60 years. Over that time, we’ve developed a unique set of manufacturing capabilities. We’re able to deliver custom coloring, special decorative or surface treatment, and various types of fabrication.” To be fair, a lot of companies have the ability to apply surface texture to profiles and to supply custom colors. “Our advantage is the ability to wrap the texture around corners and over profiles. Our coloring is second to none. We produce profiles in over 140 different colors for one customer.” And there’s more that sets CPM apart. PVC has the ability to retard the spread of flames, but the trade-off for that is that it releases dense, toxic smoke in a fire situation, and that’s a problem: it’s smoke, rather than fire, that kills people. “Crane has developed a PVC with Class-A flame spread and low smoke qualities. It’s listed with Underwriters’ Laboratory.”

CPM’s specialization is in custom plastic profiles in PVC, wood composite, foam PVC, ABS, PP, and TPE materials in single, dual, and tri-extrusions. With its unique and extensive capabilities, it’s hardly surprising that its two plants (in Columbus, OH, and Jacksboro, TN) are working three shifts, 24 hours a day, five days a week. It employs a total of around 300 people, most of them in Ohio, generating sales revenues in the $40 million range.

Heritage and expertise are valuable, but not at the expense of inefficiency: the plastics business is one of the most competitive around. The very name suggests “commodity,” no matter how colorful, safe, or clever it may be. CPM’s response has been to look at every aspect of its operations and to implement continuous improvement (CI) programs across the board.

“There are three other divisions within CPM that also extrude plastics, but they’re classified as OEMs,” said Previte. “Up to 2000, we were all one large company. We reorganized because we had several businesses with different customer needs and expectations. The divisions are now able to focus on their particular customers’ needs. Subsidiary to that were the business systems we employed to run the company. As a single, large organization, we had a single system that didn’t suit everyone. We now have our own systems, which speak to our parent company’s, but they’re more tailored to our requirements. We started on our CI path when we reorganized.” CPM uses a JD Edwards ERP, but it was the customer requirements that were critical, according to Vick Dhanapal.

“We’re always being asked to cut costs and improve efficiency and quality,” he said. Dhanapal began with the company as an intern, while he was still in college studying for a degree in engineering, and he’s been CPM’s CI engineer since 2004. “One of our first projects was a statistical process control (SPC) system. The existing one was paper-based: at the end of each day, we had stacks of paper, all with SPC information on it. We were collecting data, but we didn’t have the resources to analyze or act on it.” CPM now has an SPC system with computers on every line.

“We’re now able to track in real time, more efficiently, and make improvements that really will make a difference, based on real data,” he said. The sheer weight of data collected through paper meant that nothing significant could be done—at least, not before things had moved on. The lack of action led to a decline in data collection. The computerized system has revitalized the CI effort, because CPM’s people can see the results.

“One of the first things we did was look at our dies,” said Previte. “Previously, when we were working on product, we could not predict when the die would wear to the point where it would make defective product. This put us at the risk of turning out bad product. By collecting data effectively, we now have trends on die performance and can replace them before they fail. That’s saved us a lot of waste. We also used to have a problem with length variation. The electronic collection of data has helped to reduce length defects by 25 to 30 percent.” Inventory turns are the current CI project. The immediate goal is to improve them from five or six to 12 per year.

“That may seem low compared with, say, auto suppliers, but we’re basically a process-based company. As a custom manufacturer we are constantly setting up and tearing down tools. As a result there’s a significant cost involved with job changeovers. Twelve turns would be a huge improvement,” said Dhanapal.

“We are seeking to free up capital invested in WIP,” Previte continued. “Our plant in Columbus is 325,000 square feet; around 40 percent is warehousing for raw materials, WIP, and finished inventory. As we improve our inventory turns, we’ll be able to reduce our storage space.” Lead times are also an issue in CPM’s industry, and that’s one area it can point to significant improvement.

“We can deliver in as short as a day for customers as far as northern Minnesota. Two weeks is a long lead time,” Previte said. “When I started in this business, 27 years ago, standard lead time was eight weeks; two weeks was an all-stops-out rush job. Customers require this sort of improvement, and we’re responding.”

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