Spartan Plastic

Reasons for high scrap rate and recommendations

Reasons for high scrap rate:
The major reason for high scrap rate is increased start-ups and labour turnover ratio. We
first examine the reasons for high labour turnover and later we will discuss the other
reasons.
High Labour turnover:
The most critical reason for high scrap rate was high labour turnover ratio. This turnover
was due to many factors. First thing was this the labourers were just not able to adjust
themselves in the new changed and systematic atmosphere. Spartan was successful to win
the ISO 9001 certificate in just one year but it rises to intense environment for the
labourers. Lengths of training sessions were up to four hours and nobody can digest such
intense long trainings.
Start-up: (Cold machine and product change overs)
Start-up scrap for a production run could range from 75 ft to 250 ft. this figure had not been
changed significantly from earlier. The figure had not changed significantly from earlier.
However, as the machines were being changed over and set up more often now, for a given
production volume, a large amount of start-up scrap was being generated. Start-up scrap
now account for 60 to 70 percent of total scrap, sometimes even more, as against 30 to 40
percent earlier. About 25 to 30 percent was attributable to cold machine start-ups, such as
at the beginning of the day, while the rest, 35 to 40 percent, was attributable to product
change over.
Lack of expertise among new employees:
Apart from start-up, there were also other problems producing scrap in regular run. Most of
the labourers are new and have experience of less than one year. The consequences of
operator inexperience could get quite expensive. For example, an experienced operator
could replace and splice a new Mylar tape, generating under four to five ft of scrap. And an
unexperienced operator could sometimes generate up to 200 ft of scrap.
High rate of machine breakdown/ continuous flow process:
The scrap problem was also linked to the continuous flow process. Under this system, if a
problem occurred anywhere along the production line, the extruder would have to be either
stopped and restarted, generating start-up scrap, or alternatively, kept running until the
problem was fixed, generating scrap material in the interim.

Product M77:

Percentages of scrap of specific product
Cold machine startup 30%
Product changeover 40%
Break down and labour 30%
23757
Dec Jan Feb profile Cold Machine
2 1 1 M77 7127.1
1654
Dec Jan Feb profile Cold Machine
2 1 1 M77 496.2
product Change Over
Breakdown & Labour
Breakdown & Labour
496.2
Start up scrap
Start up scrap
Scrap in $
scrap in Footage
9502.8 7127.1
661.6
Product Change Over

Trade-Off Facing Mr. Angove. And Suggestions for Him
Mr. Angove was facing the trade-off between the Order filling rates and high scrap rate. In
the old procedure the order filling rate was very low. Spartan was about to lose market
share. To increase order filling rate Mr. Angove shifted to new procedures and techniques.
But meanwhile the scrap rate was too high to survive.
Suggestions
First of all he should take certain steps to stop labour from leaving the factory.
Training sessions should be more interesting and shorter to make it enjoyable.
If he is considering for quality then he should use high efficiency equipment and
machines.
Some techniques can be defined to control the scrap while changing the Mylar strip,
pallets of raw material or double side adhesive tape.