Discover how Fabricated Extrusion Company drive productivity and sustainability using our partner DELMIAWORKS (formerly known as IQMS) to help them manage every aspect of their plastic extrusion manufacturing business.
“Our sustainability program is our water reclamation, it’s our energy conservation, it’s our solar energy, it’s our trim buyback program it’s managing our granules in our system and throughout our process. And DELMIAWORKS has been vital to making that a success.”
Fabricated Extrusion Company has transformed its manufacturing processes from a guessing game into a data-driven process. With DELMIAWORKS they have:
- Increased profits by improving productivity
- Eliminated waste from every part of the business
- Tracked and managed their materials at each step of the manufacturing processes
- Been able to utilise the full value of materials.
Achieving sustainability using the right manufacturing software
Fabricated Extrusion Company is a plastic extruder, making custom profile and sheet extrusions for a number of sectors including automotive, heavy equipment, refrigeration, aerospace, rail and construction. Based in the US, the company has manufacturing facilities in the Midwest, East Coast and West Coast.
They have a rich history with its roots extending all the way back to the company that invented PVC, TPE and dual extrusion processing over 60 years ago.
Thomas Peot, Vice President, said:
“We would not be where we’re sitting here today without DELMIAWORKS. We all know that we could never have grown the way we’ve grown over the last four years.”
DELMIAWORKS has positively impacted every aspect of the business, and it operates every aspect of our business, including:
- Order entry
- Production scheduling
- Inventory management
- Barcodes and scanners
- Shipping
- Accounting.
Peot added:
“We also utilise the real-time to monitor production and productivity. We’re totally dependent on it.”
Minimising waste throughout the business drives sustainability
Both financially and as human beings, the Fabricated Extrusion Company feel that sustainability initiatives are the right thing to do. They are focused on sustainability in four major areas: water reclamation, energy consumption, trim buy back from customers, and solar energy.
Poet explains:
“Waste is something that we want to avoid in all aspects of our business. And so any time we can implement a program like sustainability, it achieves greater productivity, greater profits, and it appeals to us as people. That’s the main impetus. We are focused on sustainability in four major areas: water reclamation, energy consumption, trim buyback from our customers and solar energy.“
In order to cool their extrusions, they would use millions of gallons of water per month. They now capture that water before it goes out to the sewer. They chill it, clean it, and pump it back into the facility to continue to be used
The biggest thing they have going is solar energy generation plants. They’re getting about 35-40% of their power needs from solar. It actually gives them a leg up because power is a big cost factor in the business.
A lot of their extrusions are used by their customers. They’re fabricated or processed on the other end. That trim scrap gets collected, they will actually bring that back, which helps customers to keep it out of the landfill.
And on the subject of solar energy, Poet says:
“The biggest thing we have going is our solar energy generation plants. We’re getting about 35-40 percent of our power needs from solar. It actually gives us a leg up. Power is a big cost factor in our business.”
DELMIAWORKS has also enabled the Fabricated Extrusion Company to track granules throughout the process.
“… there are start up and tear down materials that get wasted as you’re trying to get your profiles on-size and so that material then gets granulated and reprocessed. What the DELMIAWORKS system has done for us is allow us to track that and every step of our process. And by doing that, we know to the pound what’s out on the floor. And so it’s made us much more efficient, much more profitable, way less waste just by knowing where everything is, being more efficient in the reuse of it, we’re able to capture the full value of those materials. And DELMIAWORKS has been a huge part in our success in that area.”
Conservation of Time
The other area that DELMIAWORKS has been beneficial to Fabricated Extrusion Company is in the conservation of time. DELMIAWORKS changed the game in terms of how people in the company do their jobs.
Charles Peot, Director of Operations, says:
“We have very dynamic production scheduling because we have so many different tools and not only are the different tools, but we typically run different plastics or different colours through the same tools. With DELMIAWORKS, we’ve taken a lot of our processes from essentially a guessing game to data-driven processes. We’re all in constant communication with each other on what is coming up next. And in that, we’ve had an enormous boost to our efficiency because it’s cut down on time wasted.”
Fabricated Extrusion Company’s sustainability program encompasses their water reclamation, their energy conservation, their solar energy, their trim buyback program, how they manage their granules in their system and throughout their process, and DELMIAWORKS has been vital to making that a success.
Learn more about DELMIAWORKS here or get in touch to speak with us.
You can learn a little more about Fabricated Extrusion Company’s sustainability program here.
Posted by Joe on 9th February 2021.