Jenny is a big fan of Lean Six Sigma, which is all about constantly striving for improvement.
Unfortunately, one of her suppliers had a major problem with their packaging seal, resulting in a huge amount of damage. The supplier had to throw away a lot of defective packages, which ended up impacting their pricing.
But don't worry, Lean Six Sigma has got this. It's a philosophy that focuses on reducing waste, improving productivity, and increasing customer satisfaction. Six Sigma, in particular, aims to reduce process variation and boost control. And the better we implement these principles, the higher our sigma score - meaning we're closer to achieving perfection.
The Six Sigma methodology takes on an efficient approach to business problem goes through following phases: DMAIC
Define: Defining the problem and the project goal, the schedule of the project, needed resources and the scope [scope = what is part of your project and what is not]
Measure: Collecting the data and resources which is relate to the project.
Analyze: Using the data which was gathered in the Measure phase to find the root causes of the problem.
Improve: Addressing and eliminating the root causes
Control: Encompasses a well-designed plan to manage and maintain the improved process.
This systematic approach guarantees a successful resolution to any business obstacle.
Jenny made a project team with the stakeholders include maintenance engineer and the installation technician. The group of stakeholders provided input for new ideas during the research. By keeping them informed, they would validate the research and remain motivated to work with the new plan.
Define: The team defined the problem of poor sealing with a fused layers, and leakages encountered with current sealing machine by the supplier. A poor sealing affects negative images of our food brand. Developing better sealing techniques to maintain product quality, and reduce the food waste and cost was an important goal of this project.
Measure: During the measuring process, all the defect samples were collected, and the causes of the defects were measured. Heat sealing is the most common method to shape and close the plastic packaging materials. Heat sealing is achieved by the combination of temperature, pressure and time. These parameters have a key role on the melting of the sealant film layer and promoting adhesion.
The collected factors which can affect the sealing qualities negatively were:
- Materials: Sealant thickness, surface character, molecular weight
- Process: Temperature, time, pressure, cooling rate, tension rate, package design
Analyze: Through the analysis phase, Jenny and the cross-functional team identified the main causes of the problem.
A strong positive linear correlation between the strength of the seal and the dwell time is found, It means that the seal strength obtained in hot tack tests will decrease when the dwell time is increased. However, there was a weak negative correlation is found between the sealing pressure and the sealing strength. It means that there is no further analysis on this matter. There was a negative correlation between molecular weight and chain travel. However, as the Mw increases, higher adhesion and stronger seals are observed.
Improve: Supplying sufficient seal integrity is a prevalent issue in food packaging because leakages reduce product quality, those factors require more attention to prevent small leakages, which decrease the shelf life and create food safety issues. A sealing defect rate is 50% decreased, and food waste is also 50% decreased, and the cost is also saved.
Control: Jenny and cross-functional team made a control plan and developed a control mechanism to keep the problem under control with the solution which we have found.
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