Automatic glue dilution: how much you save with SuperSix

In this article:

• Glue preparation: a source of expense you may never have really considered
• What are the cost savings guaranteed by SuperSix in Tissue Converting? Let the numbers speak
• Manual dilution: an operation with zero added value 
• The other advantages of automatic dilution 

The hidden costs of manual dilution and the advantages of automatic dilution

If someone asked you how to improve your company’s production cycle, you would probably answer that you need to focus on production speed, to increase the amount of tissue paper in a certain time frame. True: machine efficiency directly affects production capacity.

But there is also another issue that concerns an even earlier, often overlooked yet essential step: glue management, i.e. glue preparation. A step that, if poorly managed, not only interferes with the quality of the final products (with relative downtime), but also triggers significant and often invisible costs.

SuperSix the glue dilution system (liquid and powder) for Tissue Converting makes this process fully automatic and allows the glue tank to be filled on board the machine without manual intervention.

This translates into greater efficiency and, above all, money savings.

Glue preparation: a source of expense you may never have really considered

We all know that savings (and thus, conversely, profit) is one of the most powerful engines to change things, even within established companies and processes.

For years now, the Tissue Converting industry has switched from buying already diluted glue to concentrated glue, precisely in order to cut the costs of transporting water. A clever move, but one that necessitated extra work on the production line: the mixing of the glue by an operator.

There, the sentence you just read contains an error: ‘the elephant in the room’ that many still ignore. That operator, is he/she really indispensable? Or is there, as in the case of transport costs, a potential for optimisation? Needless to say, this is how it is: automatic glue dilution with ad hoc systems such as SuperSix saves money and time.     

How much money and how much time? We measured this through a realistic simulation.   

What are the cost savings guaranteed by SuperSix in Tissue Converting? Let the numbers speak

We know that when things work, or rather, seem to work, there is no reason to change them. That is why we decided to measure the operational inefficiency caused by manual mixing in economic terms.  

To do this, we built a matrix where we entered some industry-standard data to calculate the money savings generated by SuperSix.  

This is the starting point:   

• purchase price of glue in Europe (1/kg): 1.50 euro;  

• hourly cost of operator: 25 euro per hour;  

• work days per year: 250;  

• shifts per day: 3; 

• concentration ratio of mixture: 1/3; 

• glue+water consumption per hour (line speed): 30 litres per hour of consumption; 

• time taken for manual mixing (including handling of the glue drum) expressed in h/shift: 0.5 hours per shift.

We then correlated this data with the human error rate estimated by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). In fact, the Institute found that human error can lead to production waste and reprocessing with costs ranging from 5% to 30% of total production costs.  

To simplify matters, we have therefore taken an average of 10%. 

From this it follows that manual dilution results in a loss to the company of 1 kg per hour. Add to this the costs related to the mixing operator – the famous half-hour mentioned above, multiplied by shifts, work days and hourly remuneration – for a total saved of more than 18,000 euros in one year thanks to automatic dilution! 

This scenario starts with hypothetical and rather conservative data, but it can be replicated for each company and production cycle, so that it can be immediately understood how much the overall saving ensured by the introduction of the automated SuperSix system amounts to.  

The case of a major Spanish company

Even a large Spanish group with four converting lines (which we cannot explicitly name for confidentiality reasons) realised the real benefits brought by the introduction of the Movingfluid system.  

In 2017 they installed the SuperSix and all the criticalities of the manual method came to the surface, along with the advantages of its replacement.

Over the years, in fact, the company had been dealing with a preparation flaw: the mixers tended to correct the recipes by eye, adding more glue than necessary to avoid incurring problems with conformity or hold of the finished product.  

An honest mistake, of course, that managers were completely unaware of (the classic issue that you don’t always know you have !) and which could have been avoided.  

When switching from manual to automatic dilution they were therefore convinced that the right ratio was 1/2: for 15kg of glue they used 30kg of water.  

A formula surgically replicated by the system, which being much more constant and precise than humans, illustrated how much excess was being used. This is how the company realised that it could reduce the amount of glue without compromising further processing or the product.  

After several trials, it was able to reduce glue consumption and, consequently, costs by 40% in one year.   

Manual dilution: an operation with zero added value

What does this tell us? That manual mixing is an operation with zero added value. On the contrary, it even causes avoidable economic and operational losses.  

Let’s try to reconstruct the classic work procedure of a mixture preparation operator. In most cases, this requires: taking the line tank, bringing it close to the IBC tank containing the concentrated glue, performing the dilution with rather approximate tools (e.g. general electric stirrers), returning the tank to the rolling area for glue supply.  

The result: loss of time (at least half an hour per shift, as we said earlier); greater exposure to the risks that each individual operation – and the relative movement from one area of the system to another – entails; waste; imprecision and non-homogeneity of the diluted glue because it is subject to potentially discontinuous mixing, in excessive or reduced quantities, with possible repercussions on the quality of the finished product.

And thus, once again, on your wallet.

The other advantages of automatic dilution

Hence, investing in an automatic dilution system pays off from all points of view, not only in terms of money savings. OK, time to invest, but how much? – you may ask yourself.  

In our experience (and taking all variables into account), SuperSix pays for itself on average between 6 and 19 months.   

And the benefits are many:  

• the level of viscosity of the glue is always perfect, thanks to precise and constant dilution ratios; 

• continuous mixing, without interruption, up to the required solid residue;  

• drums of glue always ready at short notice, also useful as a backup in case of impromptu needs, and in varying quantities (larger or smaller than standard); 

• waste reduced to a minimum; 

• a more functional organisation with less downtime. 

Rolling is a delicate process and a single mistake risks wrecking entire production cycles, so why rely on a leaky system such as manual mixing?

To obtain all the benefits, economic and otherwise, of automatic dilution: 

GET IN TOUCH WITH US FOR A FREE CONSULTANCY