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| | France's LISI is one of the world's largest manufacturers of fasteners and assembly components for the automotive industry. In addition to being a supplier to the automotive industry, LISI also delivers fasteners to the aviation industry and assembly and packing components for the perfume- and cosmetics industry. LISI contacted BILWINCO when they needed to convert from manual, linear technology to a modern and fully automated multihead system. Read what M. Gilles, LISI’s head of production, has to say about the many advantages their BILWINCO solution has brought to the company.
After delivery, installation, and running-in of the system, LISI’s head of production M. Gilles was interviewed about the experiences he has had with the solution and with BILWINCO as a supplier:
Why did LISI choose to invest in a new packing system?
“LISI had decided to invest in a packing line in order to replace a manual process with an automated one that would be able to deliver better quality to our customers.”
What has the investment in the new packing line meant for LISI?
“The purpose of this investment was to:
- increase production capacity from 1,500-1,800 ready packages in 16 hours to 2,000-2,500 ready packages in 8 hours.
- reduce demand for personnel from 9 to 3 employees.
- optimise production flow and simplify trade with other countries.
- ensure higher product quality and reduce the risk of products getting mixed.
- minimise product loss and reduce give-away through high accuracy.
Our BILWINCO packing line has fully met these objectives, so the investment’s positive impact can truly be seen in both our productivity and our efficiency.”
Why did you choose BILWINCO?
“Among the suppliers we contacted for this project, it was only BILWINCO that could enable us to pack almost all of our products. With any other supplier we would have had to accept limitations in the number of products that we could pack. It was the BILWINCO packing line’s large dimensions, and the size of the weighing machine in particular, that made all the difference.
And finally, BILWINCO also helped LISI in balancing out all the economical and financial aspects involved: the best system for the money.”
How do LISI’s customers benefit from the new automatic line?
“The greatest advantage for our customers is reduced risk of errors, especially reference errors, such as incorrect product labelling. Thanks to our BILWINCO system, we can show our customers that we can now increase the quality of both labelling and accuracy for every package. Increased packing speed also translates into shorter delivery times, which is much appreciated by our customers.
How does BILWINCO work as a supplier?
“One of BILWINCO’s major strengths is their responsiveness and efficiency, which we especially noticed after first putting the system into operation. Whenever we have had problems or wished for a change to be made, we have always received a rapid and effective answer from BILWINCO. Some of the problems were admittedly rather challenging to solve, because the system is designed around such an unbelievable number of functions, but every time BILWINCO went about finding a solution without ever trying to draw things out or ignore the problem.”
What has the packing line’s large capacity meant for LISI?
“The system was, from the very start, intended to be highly flexible. By working with the problems we had with manual packing, we were able to present BILWINCO with specifications for the new solution and thereby solve and avoid future problems. It would have never been possible for us to reduce the number of manual processes if we had not invested in this system, which truly ensures faster and more efficient production. We’ve been able to realise this in practice, as the system was specially customised to our needs, and as BILWINCO has extensive experience with such systems and packing of large and heavy products. Some of BILWINCO’s components are, of course, standard, but the many different modules that BILWINCO has in their product line made it possible to develop a customised solution that met our needs exactly.”
Some facts in brief about the LISI packing system
The LISI system is basically a standard automatic packing system with a multihead weigher for loose filling of various plastic and steel products for the automotive industry. The products are packed in various cardboard and plastic packages. They are closed, labelled and placed on a pallet.
The packing line does, however, have a number of special and customised functions:
• Processing of large products and large batches.
• Rapid and fully automatic changeover of product, label and packaging.
• Automatic checking of whether or not a package can be closed automatically before the closure process.
• Possibility of packaging plastic products in a bag with water injection into the plastic bag.
• Evacuation of dust from some of LISI's products that might otherwise present an explosion hazard.
• Fulfilment of LISI’s requirements for maximum dust level and other safety and health-related demands.
• Full integration of the packing line’s process data with LISI’s IT system.
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