The Big Chill: How DEMEP Helped a Local Manufacturer Save Thousands
By Allison Hayes
Thomas E. McDonough, interim president of Bilcare Research Inc., comes alive on his manufacturing floor. On a recent tour of the facility, he points out the pellets that become scalding hot bun-shaped lumps before being melted and rolled into sheets of plastic that are then carefully trimmed to customer specifications. The plastic will turn into the plethora of credit cards and gift cards that fills most wallets in America.
Bilcare is also an innovation-led packaging solutions provider that partners with the pharmaceutical industry and others to deliver effective and affordable packaging solutions. Bilcare’s manufacturing facilities and R&D centers are spread across Europe, USA and Asia. These facilities, together with a global sales force, help the company serve a large global customer base, including local and international pharmaceutical companies.
The machines at Bilcare’s Delaware City facility run 24/7, with the equipment working just as hard as the employees manning it. One broken part could cost the company thousands. Under McDonough’s leadership, the company is making sure that doesn’t happen. Helping him with that endeavor – the Delaware Manufacturing Extension Partnership (DEMEP) – an organization committed to helping Delaware’s manufacturers improve their global competitiveness though comprehensive business improvement tools.
Bilcare initially turned to DEMEP for help developing an in-house ISO9001 auditor team. Later they sought assistance with developing a Lean manufacturing culture within the Bilcare organization. This Lean culture helped the employees develop the skill set for identifying and eliminating waste within the company. The waste they were training to identify were processes and procedures that did not add value for Bilcare’s customers. This freed up valuable time and resources that can be spent on satisfying the needs of their customers.
Eventually, Lean training and implementation made its way to the maintenance practices on the shop floor. It was during this phase of the implementation that the magnitude of energy consumption began to appear as an obvious opportunity to everyone and the notion of seeking out ways to reduce energy consumption began.
To assist in this endeavor DEMEP brought in one of its partners – the University of Delaware’s Mid-Atlantic Assessment Center – to perform a full energy audit. The energy audit looked at all of the company’s systems from boilers to chiller systems, and provided a report with a list of 11 recommendations as well as cost of implementation (including potential hidden costs).
“DEMEP helped us to increase profits and improve capacity so we can hire more employees.”
– Tom McDonough
Interim President, Bilcare Research Inc.
With the results of the audit in hand, Bilcare began to implement the recommendations that could be done without seeking capital. For the remaining recommendations, the company began to explore – with DEMEP’s assistance – state and other grants to assist with the capital cost of replacing the older inefficient technologies. Recently, Bilcare successfully received a state grant for a chiller system upgrade, which is currently being implemented. The grant provides over $100,000 for the company to use to upgrade their chilling systems. The rest of the funds will come from Bilcare, but the cost will be made up by the efficiency of the chillers in about a year. In addition to the financial savings, the conversion to new chillers will have a positive impact on the environment compared to the older technology.
On the sweltering shop floor, it’s hard to believe that there are chillers plugging away at all times. Making plastics, says McDonough, is a “battle of hot and cold.” A finely tuned balance of hot oil, steam and cold water is always at work in the finely-tuned process.
McDonough is looking forward to seeing the carefully studied impact of new chillers become a reality. And he’s not finished. Future planned projects include switching to energy efficient lighting, updating boiler systems, and growth oriented projects that will increase the company’s human capital – a major priority for McDonough. DEMEP will be with Bilcare every step of the way—not only in helping them to connect with the right resources, but also in training employees on a variety of topics such as quality systems, Lean manufacturing and more.
Things are certainly hot – and cold – at Bilcare Research.