How We Work

The problem

This product had only ever been made in small batches, slowly, by people. Nobody had industrialized the process — there was no equipment on the market for it, and the obvious approach produced output that failed inspection. The insight that unlocked it: the critical variable wasn't the setpoint everyone had been chasing. It was precise control over the rate of change on the way there.

Our approach

Two structured R&D phases — prove feasibility on a bench rig first, then scale to a production-size rig. Off-the-shelf process controllers could not hold the ramp rate the process actually needed, so we built a custom PLC-based control system that could, and instrumented it so every run produced data rather than an opinion.

The result

27 documented test runs. Cycle time came down from 8+ hours to a measured 4.75-hour minimum, 5.2 typical — the single number that decided whether the economics worked. Full electrical load characterized at 203 A / 480V three-phase. Output met spec consistently across every run once the custom controls were in. The R&D program then informed a $2M production system design carrying a written performance guarantee — which is the entire point of doing R&D first.

The problem

The client needed to hit 280,000 lb/day for their next season and was ready to buy another filler to get there. Their internal capacity model assumed 95% OEE.

Our approach

A station-by-station Theory of Constraints analysis across the entire line. The bottleneck wasn't the filler — it was the chill loop. Batch-mode chillers ran at 96 cups per minute while the six-lane filler rated at 120 cpm sat idle waiting on them. We decomposed true OEE: roughly 75% availability × 82% performance × 95% quality — about 58% actual, against the 95% assumed.

The result

A path that moves the bottleneck to 200 cpm and roughly 270,000 lb/day, with the sensitivity levers quantified: one added hour per day is worth 13,500 lb, each OEE point worth 3,600 lb. And the filler they were about to buy turned out to be sitting in their own facility already — not a buy decision, an integration decision. We also found a gas-rate reclassification worth $3,500–$10,700 a year with no capital at all.

The problem

Caps were losing about five degrees of torque traveling through the dryer before the induction sealer, putting seal integrity at risk across 3,000 cases per twelve-hour shift. An operator was retorquing every jar by hand.

Our approach

We proved the clamp design on 100 of the client's own sample jars, on our shop test conveyor, before the 50% design review — because a cap retorquer that works on paper and slips on real glass is worthless. Then we sized the machine to their measured shift average rather than their nameplate ambition.

The result

This one is still in build, so here is what is committed rather than what is proven. A 35 jar-per-minute design basis against a 25 jpm shift average, with roughly 47 jpm machine capability — 34% headroom. Acceptance criteria written into the contract before work started: 30 minutes continuous at rate with the count logged from the PLC, and removal torque within ±10% across a 30-jar sample. It is done when it passes that, and not before — which is the only version of “done” we will put our name on. We had quoted this client two machines previously and told them both were wrong — one too slow, one too big.