8 signs you may need a Viprotron scanner
You want to sleep better?
You have produced glass for many years and certainly you know what you’re doing. Nevertheless, you have a certain feeling that here and there things could run smoother or that you ask yourself, why this or that happens again and again. There are many frustrating situations in the glass manufacturing business and sometimes help can come from sides, where you do not expect it to come from. Here are some signs, where support comes from simply using Viprotron scanners. Check carefully, especially if you do not have them yet on your schedule…
You just lost an important customer to your competitors or you did not win new customers in a long time?
When checking your sales you recognize that one of your major customers is buying less than before or even stopped buying from you completely. That is a major sign that, next to prices or poor service, your product quality certainly could be an issue. Using scanners helps to create and establish a customer orientated, objective quality levels, which leads to higher customer confidence. The same holds true in acquiring new customers. Reliability in delivery, quality and differentiation to your competitors helps to generate and retain new customers. The strategy of just being cheaper than your competitors an un-winnable strategy. The use of scanners to help guarantee quality and differentiate you will win new customers.
Excessive turnover on the shop floor?
Production Managers look for productivity, the Quality Managers for a certain product quality level. When not having a reliable evaluation system, what level of quality is acceptable and how do you train your production staff with divergent targets? This can lead to frustration and ultimately excessive turnover. Employees need a clear understanding of what has to be done and what is „good“ or „bad“ in relation to quality. A Viprotron scanner is a critical evaluation tool which can lead to a balanced outcome between the needs of production and the needs of quality.
You see the need for automation?
Seeing the new equipment available on the market and the tendency towards „industry 4.0“, you certainly may consider to enhance or automate aspects of your production. The more you automate the production process, the less people can have an influence on the end products. But having limited people in the production process means that nobody looks for a certain quality level in the process. Your shop floor becomes very productive, but the quality is out of focus. Is that your target? Viprotron scanners positioned in the value chain help overcome that issue. Defect detection, classification and mitigation is a critical foundation for a successful integrated quality plan in any automated process to ensure you maximize your productivity while at the same time ensuring the products you manufacture meet the required quality levels your customers expect.
You’re opening a new facility or thinking about investing in new production equipment?
This one is pretty self-explanatory. You’re growing and ask equipment suppliers for their quotes and layouts. Unfortunately, most equipment suppliers only focus on productivity and what their machine can do, without addressing your quality requirements. This often leads to post implementation stop-gaps or costly changes to build quality back in. Viprotron is ready and able to work with all major equipment manufacturers and integrators to ensure quality can be build into any of your glass manufacturing processes from coating, to cutting, to lamination, to tempering, to fabrication, to IG and beyond.
Your claim costs are rising or at least not decreasing?
Many companies only have a vague idea about their claim cost traceable to glass defects. Some only see the numbers of containers of scrapped glass coming back from the customers, while others try to find out the main reasons for their claims in a manual and very costly way. Using scanners in your production processes provides a complete overview of your glass defects and helps you to classify them in order to find the root cause of the issues before the glass leaves your facility. By containing and ultimately resolving you root cause for glass defects, the scanners help you to avoid costly field mitigation and build stronger relationships with your customers.
You need to track the product quality?
You already complain about all the documentation you have to provide and feel it as an act of bureaucracy? Now your customers demand you track your products during production? The Viprotron scanners are an important tool to help you accomplish this. The scanners can connect the quality data with the PPS system to allocate the control results to each piece of glass scanned and store this data directly on the customer’s network. The result is full traceability of all your glass quality through each production process that has an enabled scanner.
You want to sleep better?
How often did this happen? You enter the factory in the morning only to find out that during night shift due a significant amount of glass or even the complete shift production has to be scrapped due to serial defects! The root cause problem was found too late and you are left with significant costs and significant backlogs in production. No surprises! The Viprotron scanner will let you sleep better. Putting scanners in your production and ensuring they are used properly will help you avoid unnecessary stress.
You want to be more environmentally aware?
Glass is a very environmentally friendly material. It can help you both gain or eliminate energy and make the environment for the occupants seem more natural. But, glass does require significant energy inputs to be produced and, as such, should not be unnecessarily wasted. This is not only for cost, but for environmental reasons as well. Viprotron scanners can help bring down the scrap rate, because the scanners can find defects before cutting, during the production process or at the end of the production process. When detecting defects before the glass is finished, cleaning or rework can save the both the glass itself and all the material used for any other production process (lami foils, spacers, etc.). So scanners can even help to save the environment.
