The second place goes to SEKISUI Specialty Chemicals Europe for “Improve The Accuracy In Cover Ratio Analysis”. SEKISUI Specialty Chemicals Europe produces Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVOH). It is a water soluble synthetic polymer with various applications in industries like building and construction, coating, paper or PVB.
In conformity with their plant’s policy of a continuous quality improvement of PVB they joined the KAIZEN activity to get an approval of SEKISUI S-Lec for PVB application. Through an optical cover ratio analysis they identified a high percentage of insoluble particles retained in the filters during the process of dissolution to filtration in the PVB production. These particles caused a high frequency of filter cleaning resulting in losses in PVB processing because of higher production costs for replacement and cleaning activities.
Due to big variations between repetitions during the cover ratio analysis their first target was to improve the accuracy of the method in order to select correct batches effectively. After setting up an action plan they identified three crucial causes for the ambiguous analysis findings: optical measurement errors, open-air sample preparation and unfocused images.
The KAIZEN team tackled the precision issue through the exchange of the microscope’s camera adapter from 0,5 x to 1x. An external contamination caused by open-air sample preparation was reduced through automatic mixing in close containers. The image focus was improved by time extension and temperature reduction during the drying process. Moreover, practical tests revealed that the use of gloves improved the accuracy as well.
Taken together, these measures improved the accuracy of the cover ratio analysis from 2.04% to 0.39% enabling the KAIZEN Group to select the correct batches. As a result, they not only achieved their set objective, but learned a lot about good teamwork and the right implementation of changes. Their efforts truly deserved an award.
Learn more about KAIZEN: KAIZEN 2016: Continuous improvement through exchange
