Four at a single stroke: proactive nature, performance, efficiency, excellence. Our colleagues Friedrich Neufeld, Ali-Murat Süsler, Thomas Veit, and Volker Klaas are putting these values into practice with their improvement suggestion for their sealing line in the industrial packaging department in Lengerich.

Across shifts, they had been thinking about how to avoid “jams” on the line, which frequently led to interruptions. “During shift changeovers, we talk about special issues and problems, and also about things like this, of course,” explains Ali Süsler. He is the youngest of the four packaging processing engineers who developed the proposal.

At the main sealing mechanism of the Kst. 8620, an air comb uses compressed air to move the sacks into position after the sealing process so that they can then be transferred from the main machine to the packing robot. In the past, the bags sometimes stuck to the sealing bar or were not conveyed optimally. This resulted in jams that caused the air comb to bend. This in turn led to the circumstance that the bags were not conveyed correctly.

The four colleagues’ idea was that a guard rail could prevent the air comb from bending. This solution was implemented directly without a great deal of effort and has proved well worthwhile. There are no longer any jams, which means fewer downtimes and less scrap resulting from restarting the machine. The machine also runs faster on the whole, leading to significantly higher performance across all orders.

That looks suspiciously like excellence!