LEAN Manufacturing

Sil-Pro Silicone Professionals announced a major round of Lean Improvements to its medical Liquid Injection Molding (LIM) facilities.

Within its 12 LIM cells, new post cure ovens have been added to each cell. The manufacturing process has been streamlined and consolidated to minimize part moves and wait time between operations. Following Liquid Injection Molding, adjacent post curing, microscopic trim/inspect, and wash and package operations are completed all within one cell. Throughout these operations, rolling loop video monitoring displays component print and specifications to facilitate both production and inspection operations.

Benefits of this latest round of Lean Improvements at Sil-Pro are faster throughput and highest quality medical products while reducing in-process inventory. "Lean has been an ongoing initiative at Sil-Pro since it began operations in 1998,” reports Brian Higgins, sales manager. “These new capabilities will help our customers with accelerated time-to-market projects and provide many cost-effective benefits. As a large scale molder of medical silicone components and assemblies, Sil-Pro has the experience and resources to provide medical companies with the quality and turnaround time they require."

LEAN Success & Initiatives

The fourth quarter of 2009 saw some interesting changes as we continued to set new sales records and records for on time delivery performance. A major change was the addition of hour by hour measurements of performance at the trim and molding operations through the use of a control chart. This control chart allows us to view the hour by hour throughput performance and identify any major issues immediately. This is a giant step forward, in terms of LEAN, as we move from a review of our performance after the order has been completed to an hour by hour review of our performance as the order is being processed. (read more)