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Changeover to More-Efficient Filling

New equipment and new procedures can improve your changeovers.

by William Leventon

Where filling equipment is concerned, "everybody wants to change," says Bruce Teeling, product manager for Key International Inc., a filling-equipment manufacturer in Englishtown, NJ. "In the old days, you would run a dedicated machine for your 1-oz containers forever and ever. Now you run 7000 pieces of one size, change over, clean, and run 7000 pieces of another size." Changeovers can involve products, containers, or both, he says.

Why are such changeovers so popular? For one thing, they add flexibility to a filling operation. Buyers of changeover-capable systems know they won't be limited to one container size and one fill quantity for the life of the equipment.

Changeovers also make good economic sense. "Most clients are looking for a return on investment in a short period of time—12 to 18 months—so they try to put a lot of products on the same packaging line," explains Marc Lapierre, senior product manager for NJM/CLI Packaging Systems International (Lebanon, NH, and Pointe-Claire, QC, Canada). Some companies run as many as 10 products on the same line, he says, while most will use one line for three or four different products.

While changeovers may be common, well-conducted changeovers are much less so. Are your changeovers as fast and efficient as you'd like them to be? If not, there are plenty of ways to improve the process.

QUICK-CHANGE EQUIPMENT

One way is to buy quick-changeover equipment. Manufacturers offer many types of equipment designed to make changeovers faster and easier. "The manufacturers are coming on board," says Ron Rispoli, director of maintenance and engineering for pharmaceutical maker G&W Laboratories Inc. (South Plainfield, NJ). "They realize this is a very important part of a manufacturing person's day. We don't want to spend an hour and a half filling and three hours doing a changeover."

With this in mind, filling-equipment manufacturers are trying to eliminate tools from the changeover process. Toolless changeovers don't require wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers, or chisels. Taking their place are quick-release handles, knobs, and clamps that speed up the process of replacing parts and changing equipment positions and settings.

NJM/CLI, for example, has introduced pneumatically clamped nozzles that can be moved without using tools. Users simply press a button and slide the nozzles into position. When they release the button, air pressure clicks the nozzles into place.

Another trouble-saving device is the dedicated change part. Instead of adjusting a part, the operator simply replaces it with another part. "In the past you would loosen a screw and tinker around until the adjustment was correct. And everybody would adjust it a little bit differently," says Matt Neumann, vice president of sales and marketing for Aylward Enterprises Inc. (New Bern, NC), a maker of pharmaceutical packaging equipment. "Now you take the entire part out and put another one in, and you know it works. You don't have to make adjustments."

Besides eliminating judgment calls, change parts save time. And time is money. "It may be a little more expensive at first, but in the long run it's a big-time winner," says Christian Normandin, sales director for Capmatic Ltd. (Montreal), which makes dedicated change parts for its filling systems.

To guide factory personnel through a changeover, some filling systems include software menus that appear on a screen. The menus contain all the steps needed to switch from one filling operation to another, and the operator simply follows the instructions.

Sometimes, software "recipes" are part of sophisticated automatic changeover systems. Each recipe contains the setup for a particular product brand or container. To change from one to another, the operator simply selects a new recipe using the control interface. The system then automatically makes the required adjustments.

Some automatic systems even have servo drives that move the guide rails. "It's a pretty expensive arrangement, but it can reduce a changeover crew from as many as eight people down to one or two," says Doug Robbins, P.E., a packaging engineer for PacTech Engineering Inc., a packaging consulting firm (Cincinnati).

An example of a high-end changeover setup is NJM/CLI's automated adjustment system. The PC-based system has a touch screen interface. Before a product runs for the first time, the operator enters all the proper settings into the system and gives them a name. To conduct the same filling operation in the future, the operator simply punches in its name and the system automatically makes the proper adjustments.

Quick-release handles, such as this one from Key International, facilitate fast changeover.

The system can handle up to 100 recipes. This setup costs $15,000 to $20,000 more than a manually adjusted system, according to Lapierre. "But it pays you back quickly with less downtime and less product waste," he says.

To lower the cost of changeover automation, Robbins recommends limiting the number of settings that must be changed. In two different filling operations, for example, you could use bottles that differ in height but are identical in plan view. This way, he says, "you've minimized the features on the line that have to be changed over. And then you can fully automate because it doesn't cost as much."

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Are your funds too low right now for high-end hardware? If so, there are lots of things you can do to improve your changeovers that don't require new equipment outlays.

Some of these may actually cause you to slow down the process a little. "You want to be able to do your changeover fast, but speed isn't necessarily the most important thing," notes Clint Draney, who handles technical support for Tradimex Equipment & Supply Inc. (Orem, UT), which sells capsule fillers. "I'd say that the most important thing is to go at a speed you're comfortable with so you're not making any mistakes. Because even a bolt left loose or something that's not aligned can cause terrible damage and run into the thousands for repairs." Draney estimates that half the company's repair calls are made to customers who made a mistake during changeovers.

Changeover takes place within the glass doors of this capsule filler.

To prevent major mistakes, Draney recommends rotating your machine by hand after completing a changeover. "If you're rotating it real slow by hand and there's friction from two parts that aren't going together correctly, you'll feel it in the handle and you won't provide that extra 'umph' to force it through." Doing this before you press the start button can prevent extensive damage to your equipment, he says.

Draney also cites another good reason for slowing down a little. "Changeovers are a perfect time to do a little preventive maintenance," he says. "If you're in a whopping hurry, you're not taking the time to observe what you should be seeing."

Draney believes the key to good changeovers is simply being observant. "While you're changing things, keep your eyes open," he says. "If you catch something during a changeover, it might save you two days of downtime a week later."

For example, he says, a perfect time to check your tamping springs is while changing your tamping pins. "That will save you time in the long run. If you realize your springs are bad in the middle of a run, it takes a lot longer to change them [then] than if you had caught it when you were changing over."

Taking time for maintenance becomes a high priority when the changeover process is properly understood. According to Robbins, most people don't realize a changeover isn't simply the act of moving or replacing equipment. Rather, it's the entire process of stopping a packaging line, making adjustments and component changes, and bringing the line back up to the speed and production reliability it had before.

Production reliability is adversely affected by poorly maintained components--for example, fill nozzles that aren't properly washed out. "If your line is at speed but the reliability is low because a fill nozzle is messing up, then you really haven't effectively completed the changeover, even though [the line] is running," Robbins says.

Cleaning wetted parts like fill nozzles doesn't necessarily have to slow down your changeover. Instead of cleaning during the changeover, Key's Teeling recommends replacing dirty parts with a second set of clean parts. Cleaning can then be done at a later time.

GETTING READY

Before they even begin, changeovers can be improved by preparation. For instance, it's helpful to take notes when running a filling operation for the first time. "There are many adjustments to a filling machine," says Teeling. "It's trial and error until you get the optimum filling speed, the optimum container integrity, and so on. So it's critical to have documentation of how the product ran the last time."

"If you have a precise written procedure for everything you do, changeover should be very quick and efficient," notes Normandin. Therefore, Capmatic provides customers with "setup sheets" listing all the steps in their changeovers. "So if you want to go from A to B, you look at your B sheet and make all the adjustments according to what the sheet says. This makes it quite foolproof," he says.

Even with good written documentation, changeovers can go wrong if those who are performing them don't know enough about the process. "Some changeovers have a lot of parts and a lot of steps," notes Ralph Dicks, director of operations for Schaefer Technologies Inc. (Indianapolis), a seller of filling equipment. "Make sure everybody knows what's going on and what needs to be changed."

Since technology makes it easy to import digital images into documents, Neumann suggests creating a handbook for your changeover personnel. The handbook could include all the steps in a changeover, as well as pictures of the assembly procedures.

Even with sophisticated new filling equipment for pharmaceutical manufacture at his disposal, Rispoli doesn't neglect the human factor in changeover success. "Train your people," he counsels. "Your changeover is only as good as the people you have doing it."