Waste Management in Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET)-Plastic Preform Production

Abstract

Enhancement of production is a challenge in the industrial world. The world where efficiency, productivity, & improvement are major standards to work by. Production systems naturally face bottlenecks within their processes that might occur due to various social, strategical or technical reasons. The identification of losses and reduction of such activities can only improve the productivity of factory by increasing utilization of the system that can be done by eliminating non-value-added activities and reducing taken time in existing ones. In MEDCOPLAST factory a Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) preform & plastic packaging production line based in 6th of October city industrial district, Giza. Consisting of 12 German Husky all electrical Hot-runner system injection molding machines, averaging 200 metric tons of input raw material used that can produce around a million product (preform) per machine daily. Based on data collected, observations and analysis of production line sequence and activities. Major wastes were detected within the mold exchange cycle leading to cycle time that can take up to 12 hours (720 mins) per machine till start of first quality patch of production, which is a high exchange time in comparison to other similar in-house exchange cycles. This project target to reduce the taken time of the mold exchange cycle, by implementing SMED technique to study and manage the mold exchange cycle, supported by using data-driven improvement cycles.