How a Southeastern Blown-Film Extruder Saved Over $200,000 Annually on Color Changes

Introduction

A Southeastern blown-film extruder was struggling with difficult color changeovers on one of their lines. Customer orders and processing limitations saw them changing from black to clear 3x every week. These changeovers routinely took up to 40 hours. See how their processors used Asaclean® to reduce changeover costs by 65%, saving them over $200,000 annually on this one troublesome line.

Asaclean® UF2 Grade gave them:

• Reduced Downtime – after several purges and virgin resin were unsuccessful in solving their issues, Asaclean® reduced their changeover time from 4 hours to 30 minutes.
• On-the-Fly Color Changes - Asaclean® UF2 Grade allowed this extruder to complete changeovers without having to restring the bubble.
• Lower Material Costs - As film extruders run hundreds of lbs of material per hour, we saved them 75% on their processing time & replacement material costs.
• Significant Cost Savings - This bag manufacturer realized annual changeover savings of $207,360 on this line alone.

Meet Our Customer: A Blown-Film Extruder in the Southeast Specializing in Polyethylene and Custom Bag Production

A prominent blown-film producer in the Southeast has spent the more than 25 years earning the trust of customers and delivering excellent quality and customizability. This company takes great pride in providing outside-the-box solutions to their customers’ needs and take an approach that focuses on how to make things happen even when faced with production and processing challenges. Simply put, they do whatever is necessary to rise to the occasion and deliver excellent products to spec. They’ve filled over 200k custom orders and have a stellar customer-satisfaction rating. They proudly acknowledge a 99.9% on-time delivery rate. In blown-film, this JIT kind of model leads to numerous color changes that are far more complicated than similar changes would be in injection molding.

The Challenge- Reducing Changeover Times on 3 Weekly Black to Clear Color Changes

Blown-Film processors understand the importance of maintaining the bubble on your production line. When performing a color or a resin changeover, processors do not like to lose the bubble- as it adds extra time on to production to get the bubble up and running again and it can be frustrating. It has always been a preference to go from one color to the next WITHOUT having to stop production, and therefore to just allow a color to run i.e. from black to red OR white to yellow, until you get to the desired product. Depending on the color you are trying to get out of, this can take anything from several minutes to several hours. Although the time taken for the color change is not ideal (and produces significant resin waste and machine downtime), it is often seen as a better option than the alternative of stopping and starting a continuous process—possibly several times a day—to clean the machine.

This customer was extruding plastic bin bags and performing anywhere between 5-10 color changes each week. They wanted our help with one line that was going from black bag production into clear bag production 3 times every week. This changeover was typically taking the processor up to 4 hours. This was incredibly costly. The engineering team reached out to Asaclean® via a form on Asaclean.com and requested a free sample. An Asaclean® Purging Expert reached out within 10 minutes and learned more about their difficult changeovers.

Solution- Asaclean® UF2 Grade

The Purging Expert worked with a Senior Process Engineer and immediately scheduled a free on-site trial at the company’s Mississippi location.

In blown-film extrusion, production machines are running hundreds of pounds of material per hour, leading to the processor losing thousands of pounds of resin on every changeover. Even if the resin cost is low, this adds up to a vast amount. investing in a good purge will drastically reduce that waste, allowing you to not only cover the cost of the purge, but also increase your production capabilities and output.

As the bags were Low Density Polyethylene, UF2 was recommended, which has been known to hold the bubble extremely well in LDPE applications. Depending on specific processing conditions, we also highly recommend PLUS Grade for Blown-Film Extrusion, but for this customer’s needs, UF2 Grade was the correct choice. Our Purging Expert worked with the Senior Process Engineer to develop a Purge Program and trained his 3 shifts on how to correctly use Asaclean® to see maximum cost savings.

The Results- A 65% Reduction in Overall Changeover Costs

Using Asaclean® UF2 Grade, the customer was able to purge the system and hold the bubble with no changes to process conditions. After just 30 minutes they were able to see NO remaining color in the purge. We then let the clear LDPE follow the purge compound, again the bubble was maintained, and as soon as the clear resin exited the barrel the processor was able to begin collecting useable product.

After just 30 minutes, the customer had no visible remaining color in the purge. They then let the clear LDPE follow the purge compound, again the bubble was maintained, and as soon as the clear resin exited the barrel the processor was able to begin collecting useable product. An impossible dream of a black to clear changeover WITHOUT losing the bubble within less than 30 was achieved.

Asaclean’s Purging Expert worked with the customer to complete a Cost Savings Analysis and determined that we reduced their processing time and replacement material cost by 75%. Their overall changeover cost dropped from $2,200.00 to $760.00 for a savings up 65%. While $1,440.00 in savings might not sound dramatic, when you factor the 3 weekly changeovers and 48 weeks per year, they were able to save $207,360.00 annually in processing costs on this line alone.