Paper to the 7th World Congress of Chemical Engineering, Glasgow, 1st-4th July 2005

Published by the Institution of Chemical Engineers, vol 83, No A6, pp 646-654

S F Bush

Abstract

This paper reports both practical and theoretical results from some 82 projects conducted with 70 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) over the last 8 years. The companies are found in the plastics, chemicals, food, metal fabrication and electrical components sectors of manufacturing industry. The objective of the projects has been to develop new science-based products and/or processes, or improvements to these – occasionally all of these things.

The initial choice of a project and its subsequent management have been subject to a specific techno-economic assessment procedure evolved by the Centre for Manufacture’s partnership with NEPPCO Ltd – a company specialising in research and development for the process industries. As described in the paper, this procedure now deploys a techno-economic model (TEM) which links quantitatively the inputs and outputs of: research and design, investment and production, sales and marketing, over any given time period. The TEM allows market share and return on investment trajectories to be generated for an innovative change under various assumptions about the competition and the company management’s own characteristics. The paper demonstrates the importance of what may be termed the stoichiometric principle of innovation, i.e. optimum financial performance requires the resources devoted to product design, process efficiency, investment in plant and in selling, to be kept in strict proportion to each other.

Paper to 5th SMESME International Conference, 15th May 2002, “Stimulating Manufacturing Excellence in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises”

S F Bush

Abstract

NEPPCO Ltd is a non-profit-distributing company limited by guarantee of its around 65 member companies, which includes the Centre for Manufacture (CfM). NEPPCO has evolved from the North of England Plastics Processing Consortium founded in 1990, but its business now covers all the process and allied industries, including food and drink, effect chemicals, textiles, synthetic fibres, distribution systems and healthcare.

The NEPPCO SME Process Manufacture Centre (PMC) sits within the Centre for Manufacture. The PMC carries out techno-economic assessments of proposals to both design new products and processes and to improve existing products and processes. For projects passing the techno-economic tests, the PMC provides the research and process design required; other NEPPCO members provide product design, prototype manufacture, tooling, pilot and full-scale production and marketing. The PMC also provides the project management. Besides NEPPCO a second, more informal network – IMCO (Innovative Manufacturers Consortium) is being established for companies outside the process field.

From among 190 proposals, 12 new products, 3 new processes and 20 improved processes have been commercialised in the last 6 years. The paper assesses the results in terms of lifetime added value per unit of R&D resource used to develop the product or process up to and including the pilot stage.

Judged by this measure, the paper shows that the results achieved compare favourably with the average of British companies. Where failures have occurred the paper examines the reasons for this and advances remedies.

Paper composed under the North West England Regional Innovation & Technology Action Plan RITAP formulation process in February 1998.

S F Bush

The concepts involved are illustrated by the work of the North of England Polymer Processing Consortium (NEPPCO) but are believed to be applicable to the process industries more generally.   The brochure (A) describes the aims and working methods.

This consortium was set up by UMIST Polymer Engineering (UPE) with a number of industrialists in 1990 and today consists of around 70 member companies covering all aspects of the polymer industry: manufacture, additives, compounding, tool and die making, rapid prototyping, product design, processing of all types, and marketing.  Total turnover is around £250M, from around 4000 employees.  The Consortium’s objective is to improve the business and business capability of its members.

The fundamental principle followed since NEPPCO’S inception in 1990 is that technical knowledge of whatever kind is only useful as part of the overall business process, which will generally include marketing, investment, production and raw materials.  A description of the NEPPCO enterprise was given by invitation at the Welsh Development Agency Trans Tech Exhibition and Conference in Cardiff, in January 1994, to the 13^th International Polymer Processing Conference in the USA last June (paper attached (B)) and to the Parliamentary Manufacturing Industry Group last November in the House of Lords.

Broadly speaking there are two classes of business activity on which scientific and/or engineering knowledge has a bearing:

1. Introduction and development of new products and processes
2. Improvements to existing processes and products

While there is overlap between the two activities, we may expect (1) to occur from time to time (say every few years), while (2) is (or should be) an on-going every day activity.  The first activity employs the Integrated Design & Manufacture (IDM) methodology developed in UMIST while the second activity employs the Systems Technology (ST) methodology pioneered in ICI, and since adapted by UPE to the SME world.

1. New products and/or processes

NEPPCO has now generated an offspring – the Plastics Design and Manufacturing Unit (PDMU), the functioning of which is described in the brochure (C).  This Unit was set up in 1996 with ERDF support, as the first stage of a Process Manufacturing Centre for SMEs.  The total business process under which the PDMU functions is shown in the figure entitled “The Innovation Process” attached as (D).  This is fundamentally the business process commonly found in the large industrial corporations.

Experience has shown that with some exceptions there are three main problems for SMEs in the innovation process.  Referring to figure (D) the Development phase is often beyond their financial means; secondly they lack the relevant research and marketing expertise, and thirdly, they have little or no experience of managing the three phases as one business process.

The purpose of PDMU is to assemble these three ingredients from among the members of NEPPCO or any other companies/people needed to carry out a particular project.

2. Improving Processes and Products

Given an adequate rate of new product generation, there are five things which need to be continually improved in order to remain competitive.  These are:

1. Raw material efficiency
2. Energy and other utilities usage
3. Product quality
4. Capital efficiency
5. Labour usage

While all companies do this to a greater or lesser extent, the particular challenge is to deploy engineering and scientific knowledge to help this process forward in a systematic cost effective way.

For this purpose UMIST has developed what may be termed the “science of process development” (SPD).  This is outlined in the attached article (E).  Essentially a methodology has been developed which allows plant experience and scientific knowledge to be systematically combined  so that over time quantitative relationships are built up.  Collectively the techniques involved are referred to as Systems Technology.   (ST) allows relevant data to be gathered in a systematic way without disturbing production, and then used to effect improvements in any or all of 1-5 above.

The principles of Systems Technology (ST) as applied to Process Manufacture are summarised on the attached sheet (F).  While most of the quoted applications were to major production facilities, most recently, as mentioned in the article, ST has been successfully used to solve a factory moulding problem on a much smaller scale than the examples given on the sheet.  What has now been formulated is a Process Improvement and Competitivity Unit (PICU) for extending this approach to SMEs in the process industries in the NW more generally, if agreed.   This would constitute the second stage of the Process Manufacture Centre for SMEs and is a natural complement to Stage 1 of the PDMU.

Items attached:

1. Brochure of the North of England Polymer Processing Consortium  (NEPPCO) 1994.
2. Developing New Polymer Products and Processes with small companies: The NEPPCO Enterprise.
3. Brochure of the Plastics Design and Manufacturing Unit (PDMU) 1996
4. Figure : The Innovation Process
5. Working on the Process: the Science of Process Development and Systems Technology Applied to Process Development
6. Summary of Principles of Systems Technology

Presentation to the Parliamentary Manufacturing Industry Group, Houses of Parliament on 25th November 1997.

S F Bush

To see the presentation, please click on New Products.

Article in Plastics & Rubber Weekly

S F Bush

Two years ago Foresight’s Materials Panel emphasised (PRW May 5 1995) the importance of fostering ‘continuous incremental advances rather than one or two giant leaps’. While not ruling out the latter, the North of England Polymer Processing Consortium (NEPPCO) has put particular emphasis on what may be termed the science of process development (SPD) as the best way of securing for existing processes systematic improvements in product quality, raw materials usage, energy usage, and capital efficiency.

While it has been mainly applied in the large chemical companies, SPD is particularly relevant to the on-going debate about technology transfer to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), of which the polymer processing industry, including the trade moulding sector, is largely made up.

Actually the idea, implicit in the phrase ‘technology transfer’, that there are large quantities of something called ‘technology’ stored in universities and large companies waiting to be transferred to SMEs is largely wrong. Useful technology can only exist in industry. What universities may have is a store of scientific knowledge, some of which can assist in the development of industrial technology. What a number of large companies may have is a store of experience in applying systematic methodologies to operating plant. The science of process development as espoused and practised by UMIST Polymer Engineering marries these two important stores of knowledge with that which exists in the NEPPCO member companies.

To take a particular example, a trade blow moulder may have been blowing bottles successfully with a given grade of polyethylene and then one day finds he can no longer get a satisfactory parison. On the face of it nothing has changed in his process, so he naturally blames the failure on a change in the polymer. The polymer manufacturer checks the sample of the relevant batch, which he has retained (we hope), and declares that it is fully within the specification supplied previously. Meantime the moulder’s machine is idle, not producing anything. How can SPD help?

First it recognises that, with the moulder having eliminated the most obvious single cause and effect candidates, the problem is most likely caused by a combination of factors. Systems technology is a methodology especially evolved to deal with multi-factor problems such as those encountered in synthetic fibre factories with several machines operating in parallel, or those found in a series of processes such as in the manufacture of polyurethane elastomers. The methodology uses both the knowledge of polymer behaviour, which may reside in the university, and the processor’s own knowledge of the past behaviour of his machines in order to formulate a series of relationships between product outcomes and those machine variables which are under the processor’s direct control, such as screw speeds, and machine temperatures. Often these relationships will be quite primitive at first, but because they will be based on well-founded scientific mechanisms, they can be improved as more clues from the process are provided.

A recent application of the approach in NEPPCO was to multicavity insert mouldings where on occasion the injection moulding was incomplete for some inserts and process conditions. The systems model allowed experiments to be carried out within normal operating conditions in order to quantify the effects of the contributory factors: polymer, insert type, cavity position, injection temperature, and thus to formulate a remedy at acceptable cost.

Such an approach provides a ready means of increasing understanding of any currently operating polymer process and is thus a primary means of improving it and its product. But of course many trade moulders have built up a large store of in-house knowledge which enables them for particular polymer grades and types to quickly establish high quality and productions rates for each new mould they see. Increasingly however, customers demand a level of recyclate to be included, or a relatively expensive polymer, such as nylon, to be replaced by a cheaper one such as fibre reinforced polypropylene, which could perform the required duty in the given temperature range. In both these cases, there is a significant change in polymer rheology, and past processor experience may not be enough on its own to find a satisfactory operating window. The approach outlined above could be very helpful in rapidly getting to a satisfactory operating condition.

The systems model approach provides the framework for this to be done within the timescale which SMEs have to operate under.

Paper to the Polymer Processing Society 13th Annual Meeting, Secaucus, New Jersey, USA, 10th-13th June 1997, paper 12-01.

S F Bush

Introduction

NEPPCO stands for the North of England Polymer Processing Consortium. It was founded in 1990 by the writer and a number of industrialists, most of whom continue to be associated with the enterprise. At present there are around 70 member companies spanning all the main functions and processes involved in the polymer industry.

Besides UMIST Polymer Engineering itself, the membership includes: designers with state of the art CAD facilities, rapid prototypers, low cost mould makers, production tool makers, polymer and resin manufacturers, about 80,000 tonnes per annum compounding capacity, and the full range of polymer processes: injection, roto, blow and compression moulding, extrusion and thermoforming.

There are about 4000 employees in the consortium companies which have an aggregate turnover of about £250 million per annum. With only a few exceptions, all the member companies fall into the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) category which is defined in British terms as meaning companies having fewer than 500 employees.

Reason and Purpose

There were three original reasons for founding the consortium and these remain, in the UK at least, valid today: (i) the low levels of research carried out by the polymer processors; (ii) the low levels of product innovation; (iii) the low level of the graduate engineer/scientist population in the processing sector.

The purpose of the consortium was, and is, to put the future of the polymer processing sector on a more secure basis by creating a common research and development function devoted to pulling through into commercial production new products and processes. In doing so the enterprise will determine what problems actually need to be solved, so helping to secure the future of polymer engineering research itself.

Presentation to the Transtech International Conference, Technology Transfer, Cardiff International Arena

S F Bush, UMIST

Synopsis

IDM treats the process of going from a design requirement to manufactured product as a single system. It relates initial product concepts to choice of materials and process route in a single strategic design before detailed design commences. The expensive step of mould or die manufacture thus ocurs with the assurance that both detailed design and strategic design are optimised.

The North of England Plastics Processing Consortium (NEPPCO) exists to make this concept a practical reality. NEPPCO includes in its membership a unique spread of thermoplastic and thermoset processors, toolmakers, of product design and raw materials supply capabilities, and of finishing techniques. No individual company has this coverage, which allows a completely open-minded approach to fulfilling customers’ requirements.

UMIST Polymer Engineering conducts research on polymeric materials and processes and is able to transfer its results directly to NEPPCO members. Technology transfer also takes place between members, particularly on areas of common concern such as recycling. Examples are given of research results entering the commercial domain and of new products designed for the market.