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Moving On

Professional Installer magazine reports on the radical changes in progress at Duraflex's Tewkesbury headquarters.

Cutting waste in all areas of a business is accepted as being one of the most important Key Performance Indicators at all stages of the construction process, from the sourcing of raw materials through to the fitting out of new buildings, but few companies can have embraced the concept as comprehensively as Gloucestershire based Duraflex Limited.

In fact one of the key drivers for the PVC-u systems extruder in the decision to consolidate its operations within an advanced new facility on the Tewkesbury Business Park was to slash the time its vehicles spent travelling between the three original sites.And even the operatives on the production line have been fitted out with pedometers for representative periods in an effort to save them covering ground unnecessarily; and to thereby optimise their productivity.

Duraflex's Operations Director, Barry McCarthy believes that bringing the majority of the workforce together on one site has had a number of positive benefits. Getting workers to relate their activities to the needs of the business as a whole, rather than having an isolationist mentality, has had direct impact on quality as well as output. The focus now is on continuing to cut down on material waste in the production process and to recycle more.

Barry McCarthy is a Polymer Technologist who joined Duraflex from the pipe industry, where fierce competition drove down waste to a minimum years ago. He comments:"Extruding PVC-u profiles has become a very competitive business and you simply cannot hope to take Eighties extrusion technology into the 21st century and survive. There aren't the tolerances and money is too tight."

Barry highlights two very different aspects to production that have both had an impact on end quality. Precautions in the design of the new plant went as far as placing each of the scales, taking material from the huge silos, on individual, vibration free bases to ensure absolute accuracy of weighing.

Then the people operating the extruders have become responsible for their own quality control, while two of the men who were previously employed as inspectors now take the role of quality auditors.

Furthermore, while the machine operators have been allowed to set the cleaning regime for the extruders, the engineers who maintain the multi-million pound tooling have been given a workshop just a few steps away from the lines.

As well as visual checking, two hourly sampling of the different profiles produced is again the responsibility of the machine minders who will cut a slice and take into one of two QA booths located nearby.

The sliver of profile, magnified five times, is compared with the appropriate transparency on a back-lit viewer that offers an instant check on size and shape. Another inspection procedure involves inserting a long length of reinforcing bar down the chambers of profiles going into the stillages, negating the chance of twists making assembly difficult for fabricators.

Regularity of shape is not of course the only concern to Duraflex's customers and the company has invested in other testing equipment.

Spectrophotometry is another priority area of quality control for Duraflex and colour spectrographs are to be found in both the production floor inspection rooms and the main laboratory.

These highly sensitive pieces of equipment verify that all the attention to control of the process in terms of batching and pigmentation has been successful. Customers can therefore be confident that all the profile within a shipment, or from production runs months apart will be totally consistent in terms of appearance and colour stability.

The other nuance to the aesthetic appeal offered by the Duraflex range, other than the elegance of the profiles, is the choice of woodgrain finishes available.

In a separate part of the factory where the risk of contamination is kept to an absolute minimum, top quality Rosewood, Mahogany and Golden Oak films are applied to the section profiles. With the ambient conditions strictly controlled and using up-to-the-minute adhesive technology, Duraflex can seamlessly foil right around almost any shape of surface.

While Duraflex has reduced its yield loss at the plant considerably, its engineers are seeking to cut this still further through initiatives such as changing dies without having to purge the extruder.

Despite the 40,000 tonnes of capacity at the Tewkesbury plant - and distribution to its fabricator network with a 97.6 per cent complete on time delivery record - giving the company a 14% market share, Duraflex has planning permission in place for a further building on the site to nearly double capacity.

Industry experts predict there could be as few as half a dozen systems companies active here in just a few years time. Duraflex can be expected to remain one of them.

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