While being a niche industry, thermoforming is considered an opportunity for thousands of investors every year. No matter what kind of package they want to produce, they all face similar problems and obstacles. The thermoforming industry is highly demanding for expertise and investments and if you don’t have a proper background it might be tough.
A customer has agreed to share his story.
Peter is a project manager, and he works for the factory that produces paper cups. Peter’s is looking for the thermoforming equipment to produce 10 million coffee lids. Peter is a skilled project manager but doesn’t have a thermoforming background.
Peter knows the income because he knows the price of a coffee lid; he also knows the cost of the material (both granula and PP sheet).
Peter needs to determine how much material he needs, the price for the equipment, and other costs to prepare an economic calculation.
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It is not the first equipment project that Peter is handling, and he knows that aside from the financial side, there is also a technical side, but this part is postponed until he gets clarity if it makes sense to go for the project.
Peter has heard that producer X, whose equipment uses their supplier, makes good machines, and he goes to their website and finds the equipment his supplier is using. The parameters look like this:
This information doesn’t help Peter to answer his questions. He goes to other suppliers and finds more or less the same charts everywhere.
So Peter sends a quotation request where he specifies his project needs:
- Coffee lids with the nose and steam hole
- 15-20 million products per month
- Material is PP; lid weight is 3,5 grams.
Peter hopes that suppliers will provide the information that he needs to calculate the project economy. After one week, he gets replies from suppliers. Some of them have sent their offers, others have sent quotations. With those questions, Peter finds out that more than one technology in thermoforming. Suppliers ask Peter to specify:
- Should it be a form-cut-stack tool or in-mold-cut?
- Is he looking for steel rule cut or match metal?
- What is the thickness of the material?
- Will he run it in-line with the extrusion line or offline with the preheater?
- And many other technical aspects that suppliers need to offer the proper solution.
Instead of focusing on the project’s economy, Peter drowns in technical aspects.
So Peter asks to send the quotations for the best option according to the suppliers’ experience.
Within a week, Peter receives offers from suppliers. Every supplier makes quotations. The basic price for each supplier includes different options, a standard for one supplier is an option for others. So Peter needs to decode every offer to equalize them. When he sees an option that is not familiar, he asks for comments, and it turns out that this is vital for his needs, and Peter is confused why other suppliers don’t specify that.
In those quotations, Peter doesn’t find the productivity and efficiency parameters. Because those parameters are the tooling parameters, and third parties supply molds. Some suppliers don’t even understand why Peter wants a quote for a tool – he has machine parameters, so choose a machine first, and then you can focus on tooling.
So he realizes that transition from machine parameters to the project’s economy is not that obvious.
Peter wants things simple, but suppliers cannot help him – they don’t have the answers to his questions.
Some are not ready to discuss the economy; others say they can’t help because every company has its calculations. They can provide the input parameters but the economy for the project.
Peter gives up and asks to provide the tooling quotations, hoping he will find the vital information there. Once he gets the offers, he can calculate the productivity with the number of cavities and cycle speed (by the way, this information is also something he has to doublecheck and discuss as not all the toolmakers specify it).
So at least now Peter sees that offered machines can produce the volume he needs, and what about efficiency? Waste percentage, part of the thermoforming process, is not specified in most quotations. So Peter needs another document which is called Tool layout:
Tool layout is a tool visualization that contains most of the parameters Peter was chasing.
Toolmaker explains to Peter the tool layout’s parameters, their connection with machine parameters, and estimates cycle speed that relies on both tool and machine parameters.
After Peter receives tool layouts from each supplier, it is finally clear how to compare the economy of the equipment:
The amount of cavities multiplied by cycle speed gives the productivity. Per hour, shift, or month.
Tool efficiency clarifies the amount of material needed.
Now Peter can finally compare all the possible machines from the productivity and efficiency point of view. That is not enough to calculate the project economy, though.
That was when we met Peter at one of the trade shows.
Peter’s experience is not unique. Many thermoforming projects struggle with the same quest to understand parameters and machine comparison every year.
To make it more simple for those who follow Peter’s path, we have prepared a scheme with step by step explanation of the parameters that you need and where you get them:
With the tool efficiency, there is another aspect – waste norma, which relies on the customer and his processes more than on the tool:
Bringing clarity to thermoforming parameters that affect efficiency and productivity is priceless.
This information is not enough to choose the machine and calculate the project economy, but now we have a starting point, and in the upcoming articles, we will try to clarify the rest.
