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The Situation
Silgan is the largest supplier of metal containers for food products in North America and a leading supplier of plastic containers for personal care products. In addition, the company is a leading worldwide supplier of metal, composite and plastic vacuum closures for food and beverage products. With more than 22 production plants, Silgan Plastics is one of the top 10 blow molders in North America, providing stock and custom packaging for many of the top consumer goods manufacturers.
Silgan Plastic’s Toronto-based manufacturing plant is home to three types of molding systems; injection molding, injection blow molding and injection stretch blow molding. The plant produces a variety of plastic containers, lids and caps, many using PET preform molds with 72 individual cavities. Because Silgan runs a lot of PET and Pharmaceutical products, the company has developed a preventive maintenance program that meets customers’ product quality needs.
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The Problem
The company uses a software program that generates a work order based upon cycles for each mold. The cleaning cycles are set-up with each customer to ensure that their molds are well maintained and in good working condition. This effort has become a standard for all Silgan molds and customers’ molds. With the 72-cavity molds, products are made in 10 second cycles. After every 15,000 cycles, the maintenance crew cleaned the hot molds by hand in the presses using chemical and citrus cleaners, degreasers, wire brushes, drills and pipe cleaners. Given the large number of cavities, each mold would take between 2-3 hours to clean by hand. After every 60,000 cycles, the molds were removed from the presses and given a more thorough cleaning. Despite the amount of time spent maintaining the molds, it was difficult to get
them completely clean.
“When you clean a 72-cavity mold by hand, not only is it time consuming, it is difficult to get behind every slide and neck ring,” said Joe Pond, Setup Supervisor for Silgan Plastics. “In addition, the
coatings and plastics that we use tend to get on other parts of the equipment, which also adds to the challenge.”
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