IMI Cornelius, Thirst for change

Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer US

Things are changing at IMI Cornelius, and Abbo Taille is keeping an eye on developments

As the long, hot days of summer draw near, thoughts turn to long, cooling drinks. If you’re in the catering business, you know that demand for Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Lipton Iced Tea, and other thirst-quenching drinks is going to soar. The soda fountains on the dispensing counter of the drugstore, fast-food restaurant, convenience store, on the main street, at sporting venues, and in shopping malls are the key to keeping the customer satisfied—and coming back for more. The name that’s trusted to deliver more cooling drinks and beverages than any other is IMI Cornelius.

Headquartered in Mason City, IA, IMI Cornelius has nearly 70 years of experience in beverage dispensing. Its first products were primarily for Coca-Cola, but it’s come a long way since then. Coke is still a mainstream, but the company now designs, manufactures, and distributes dispensing equipment for a range of brand names that are popular around the world.

It also offers innovative and original solutions for new ideas, such as chewable ice. Pretty much everyone is familiar with the ice dispensers you find in hotel and motel elevator lobbies. They’re all right, in a pinch, but they’re mostly not quite on the button. IMI Cornelius says that its WCC-1401 creates a higher-quality, chewable ice that’s very easy to dispense. The 30-inch-wide air-cooled version is styled to complement the look and size of the current wave of beverage dispensers. The ice is dispensed in very convenient half-inch cubes that arrive relatively dry, and, because they’re so cold to begin with, they take a while to melt. And there’s no need for separators, which often add cost: the WCC-1401 discharges ice from two locations, 22 inches apart, which enables even hopper or bin filling. It’s suitable for high-volume locations: the air-cooled version can produce up to 1,290 pounds per 24 hours in 70/50°F operating environments, or 1,040 pounds per day at 90/70°F.

The remote cooled unit has a slightly lower capacity, at 1,100 pounds a day at 70/50°F and 950 pounds daily at 90/70°F. It’s highly efficient and environmentally friendly, also; it uses every drop of incoming water in ice making and fully complies with the 2008 California Energy Commission requirements for utility consumption. The remote cooled version even helps reduce energy usage for air conditioning.

All the company’s products are made in the same way. IMI Cornelius undertakes a lot of its own fabrication—more than is common today in engineering and metalworking. It takes cut sheet metal and punches, bends, deburrs, and does everything else to turn it into the finished product. And rather than acquire complete sub-assemblies, it buys compressors and gear motors to sub-assemble itself. That means it has a pretty short supply chain, but, on the other hand, it is using expensive US labor at its plants in Mason City and Chicago, Glendale Heights, and Schaumburg, IL. Labor-intensive activities, like cold plate, filling, and turned parts production, are carried out at its Renosa, Mexico, facility, but the benefits of low cost are balanced, to an extent, by transport costs.

It all adds up to increased emphasis on efficiency and bearing down on waste and non-value-added activity. IMI Cornelius keeps stocks low, and low value, bringing everything together only when required. Suppliers operate a minimum/maximum replenishment system, which is used in shipping also, so the company is able to supply Coke or Pepsi dispensers within 24 hours, but without having warehouses packed to the rafters with finished inventory. Cycle time for manufacturing beverage dispensers is four hours on the assembly line, which is supplied with fabrications and components from the back shops. Ice dispensers take approximately five days from start to finish.

Although the supply chain is flat, those cycle times, against two- to four-week supply times, requires clever management. IMI Cornelius has recently invested in a new vice president of operations, charged with recruiting new talent and raising the bar on continuous improvement. Six Sigma is being deployed in manufacturing and production, to drive efficiency and accuracy into the system. It started using the Theory of Constraints more than a dozen years ago but is moving on to lean principles, with the aim of achieving true one-piece flow and removing bottlenecks from the system. It has been able to cut the assembly time for icemakers from over 16 hours to less than six through the lean toolbox and retraining the workforce.

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