Improving Operational Efficiency in Medical Equipment

An innovative blood cell medical equipment manufacturer noticed that one of their fully-automated production lines was regularly creating a manufacturing defect at a specific station. Operational efficiency (OEE) of their machine was reduced by 3-5% due to the generated scrap.

They selected DISHER to find a solution that would reduce the scrap rate which could inturn increase revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars annually per assembly line.

DISHER engineers teamed up with our client to analyze the machine hindered by limited throughput. At first glance, the upstream stations seemed to be operating correctly. Equipped with high-speed vision cameras, DISHER observed the function of preceding stations, paying close attention to the positioning of the product.

It was discovered that a previous station was slightly dislocating the product from the nest. This unintentional change in position of a good part remains undiscovered until after it transitions to the next machine, thus increasing the problem’s negative impact. While it would be easier to reduce the problem’s impact by only catching the error sooner, the team sought a solution to the dislocation problem at the source.

With the root cause determined and an understanding of what needed to be accomplished, DISHER worked to design a solution. Requirements and constraints were established to maintain and improve the machine’s functionality. The team of engineers brainstormed many possible ideas and landed on an innovative idea that met all the requirements while needing no additional I/O or complex integration.

The top concept was developed with versatility and adjustability in mind and designed in CAD. With the CAD design and detail complete, a prototype was fabricated. Once the prototype was proven and validated, DISHER developed an integration plan and necessary measurements. Then the new process was built and permanently installed in every manufacturing line in the facility.

The machine improvement was a great success. It met our client’s objective by eliminating the dislocation error, increasing throughput, and driving a 3-5% OEE improvement.

The new process met all the manufacturing requirements with its no-contact design and was also low-cost due to capturing existing motion from the assembly line. The manufacturer is now realizing an increase in revenue of hundreds of millions of dollars annually per assembly line.