Trademark Plastics' latest investment will not let it see the future, but by giving it a view of its internal parts, the new CT scanner represents a more transparent tomorrow for its verification work. #Plant Journey

The Zeiss MetroTom 800 computer tomography (CT) scanner is not the only investment in technology and personnel by Trademark Plastics in Riverside, California since the implementation of its five-year plan in 2017, but it is definitely Bryan Barrera, COO , Like to talk about. When asked about the scanner he was about to install, Barrera enthusiastically said: "This is a very cool theme," and then expanded the machine will provide the countless benefits of Trademark's first medical ingredient verification and how it will be integrated Go to its special inspection laboratory. After a few minutes of praise for the new instrument, Barrera came back to his senses: "I'm going to shut up now because I think I'm leaving."

Trademark Plastics is using the Zeiss MetroTom 800 CT scanner to optimize its first part verification process as a medical molder and to inspect molded parts in processing. 

Barrera and Trademark have a lot to talk about on this topic, and anything related to the reinvestment of its facilities and personnel. Barrera estimates that the company has spent US$2 million on capital equipment in the past few years, and another US$1 million has been spent on Trademark’s “human capital,” which Barrera calls employees. The latter form of investment includes training at RJG and Beaumont's American Molding Institute, ISO 13485 and Six Sigma personal quality certification, and continuing education. Trademark received a Barrera MBA from Pepperdine University and is currently funding him to pursue a PhD.

"In the past few years, we have been focusing on reinventing our own brand," Barrera said. "We also pay more attention to our customers and become an extension of our customers." The focus on customers and efficiency has paid off. Barrera said that 2017 Trademark ushered in a glorious year, with more than 230 employees generating US$22.7 million in revenue. In 2020, trademark sales revenue was 21 million U.S. dollars, and there were only 136 employees at the time of production. Some of the leaner workforce and higher efficiency are intentional, and most of them, like many things that happen in 2020, are not.

Barrera said: "Our operations before COVID were very streamlined, but once COVID happened, it was difficult for us to obtain the resources we needed, so we were forced to further automate, and this new CT Scanner will really completely change our development. Way of business."

"In the past few years, we have focused more on being an extension of our customers."

Barrera said that with the new scanner, good manufacturing practice (GMP) medical verification previously required the use of statistical process control (SPC) to complete each installation certification, operation certification, and performance certification (IQ, OQ, PQ), and now requires two It takes three weeks to complete each and only one day. In 2020, Trademark did more than 75 verifications and became more and more experienced, but it was still not skilled enough, which prompted him to visit Zeiss, a supplier of measuring equipment. "I went to Zeiss with our continuous improvement manager and said,'I really need to automate this verification process further; we spent too much time on inspections,'" Barrera recalled.

Five new Wittmann Battenfeld Cartesian robots are one of the equipment trademarks added in 2020.

On a whim, a Zeiss representative showed Trademark one of its more expensive systems — I didn't expect Trademark to actually buy it — but Barrera and his team were impressed, despite being cautious about the price. "I asked this person,'How much is this-say 1 million dollars, half a million dollars?" He was like,'It's there-not 1 million dollars-but it's there.'"

Trademark sent complete samples of some of Zeiss's most demanding products for inspection. After developing a program, it took a few days and MetroTom 800 was able to measure seemingly endless dimensions in just 7 minutes. "It can read more than 200 dimensions at a time, which is crazy," Barrera said. "So this process requires us to take 30 shots in two weeks-you can do one shot every 6 or 7 minutes. We are just knocked down."

"The scanner will draw a drawing of the part for us, and it will tell us what is inside the part."

In addition to sending its verification process to the twist drive, the CT scanner can also be used for in-process inspections, allowing Trademark to see the inside of the part to capture defects that are not visible on the surface of the part after molding. "We can let our most experienced veterans grab some of the parts being processed and put them into MetroTom," Barrera said. "The scanner will draw a picture of the part for us, and it will tell us what is inside the part-you can see voids and cracks that are invisible to the naked eye."  

The changes in Trademark's quality operations have had an impact on the entire factory. As efficiency increases and employee value expands, employee value is maximized. The new and improved inspection process will allow members of the quality team to cross-train and add packaging to their tasks. By adding automatic tape dispensers purchased through the equipment supplier's representative Hirate America, Trademark's packaging itself has become more automated. Two years ago, Barrera said that Trademark uses three packaging machines per shift, dedicated to packaging products. With the introduction of automated tape drives, the company now uses the equivalent of half of the operators per shift.

After visiting a customer and deciding to add an automated tape device, Barrera said that a common element on the factory floor was obviously missing. "I told the client,'I have been here for two hours and I haven't seen anyone on these machines,'" Barrera recalled. "The client said,'This is the point.'"

With the addition of an indexing conveyor belt, Trademark Plastics can manage more molding machines with fewer operators. 

In the absence of automated machines, workers used to manually fix and move boxes with tape, stacking them in different sections. The new taping equipment is equipped with a laser, which can be adjusted according to the size of the box. Now, when the product is ready, the boxed parts are sent through an automatic tape machine, and the automatic tape machine applies tape on the top. Then turn the box over and fill it up.

"We hope to help customers with product development."

In the same interview, Barrera noticed that the customer was using an indexing conveyor on each machine and decided to copy it too. Today, at Trademark Plastics, as parts are formed, Wittmann Battenfeld robots (trademark adds five of them in 2020) place them on an indexing conveyor that can hold up to four bins. As the bins fill up, the conveyor moves forward, minimizing the need for worker intervention. Barrera said: "This makes it easier for our team to grab a shot or remove a shot from the conveyor belt and start measuring parts for process inspection before entering the trash can." "Previously, our operators were still able to Manage machines in a stressful environment. Now they can easily handle four to five machines because the indexing conveyor will do all the work before packaging, and we have an automatic tape machine."  

Trademark, which has gained greater efficiency from inspection and parts handling/packaging, once again turned to WITTMANN Battenfeld’s automation to optimize its material handling. Trademark, which processes nearly 4 million pounds of resin each year, and will use 52 machines with clamping forces ranging from 7 tons to 500 tons to form 500 million parts by 2020. The company operates four molding rooms in its 100,000-square-foot factory, two of which are white rooms—the larger one holds 20 machines—and Class 7 and Class 8 clean rooms, each with 13 presses . Before investing in Wittmann's centralized material handling system, all these rooms were silos in managing resin.

The trademark has multiple white rooms and clean room forming areas, including this 7-level clean room. 

"Because of the loading system, we would have a clean room closure problem," Barrera said, "so we had to close it, and then, maybe a week later, we had to close another room-everywhere." For that Difficulties in staffing specific departments have compounded the problem. "Our toughest position here is material handling," Barrera said. "We have some very loyal material staff. They are excellent, but it is difficult to fully staff them, so I am trying to automate as much as possible." In addition to WITTMANN BATTENFELD’s new loading system, Trademark has also increased through Hirate The pelletizer next to the press. "Before, we had a separate system for each room, but now everything is integrated. With Wittmann, a system will notify you."

In addition to upgrading inspection, automation, and material handling, Trademark also partnered with FimmTech (Carlsbad, California) to utilize its Nautilus process development and mold certification software. Nautilus was created by Suhas Kulkarni and is based on the principles of scientific molding and design of experiment (DOE) to help "automated" process development.

"So we did more DOE," Barrera said. "Through [Nautilus] software, we have a very, very strict technical process engineer program."

2017 is the first year of the trademark five-year plan, and the focus is to better understand its business and human capital investment. The second year focused on efficiency, and the third year focused on increasing sales. Sales did jump by $6 million. In 2021, the fourth year, expansion is the key. To this end, Trademark is looking to expand to Mexico for assembly operations and build another clean room in Riverside. What's the next step? "The goal for year 5 is to start preparing for product development," Barrera said. "We hope to help customers with product development. So far, we are on the right track. In some areas, we have already advanced."

Trademark Plastics deployed robots and indexing conveyor belts on its presses to increase efficiency. 

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