Solving a Tricky Tubing Challenge

Sometimes the common solution isn’t the solution our customer needs. Many times, the solution they are looking for doesn’t exist… yet. That’s where our team of problem-solvers come in! A KEP customer in the food and beverage industry came to us with a new challenge to solve.

Product/Background: Our customer is a supplier to the food and beverage manufacturing industry. Their core business is extruding food quality film to be used in bag-in-box food product production.

Challenge: The customer faced a big problem. They had large orders to fill, but their one machine and two assembly machines to extrude tubes and assemble the caps were running to capacity. Then it got worse. Their machinery broke down and they quickly began missing production and delivery deadlines. They just couldn’t fill their orders.

One of their raw material suppliers recommended KEP. So when they contacted us, we knew there was no time to waste.

Solution: The customer did not have a formal production process playbook captured in detail. We thought – no problem – because WE do. So we leveraged our own expertise to recreate their entire extrusion, crimping, and wrapper set-up.

Timeline: Historically, it had taken the customer 12 months to design and build this process from scratch. But within TWO months, we designed, built and were up and running extruding, crimping and wrapping the customers product. Most importantly, our customer was able to fill back orders and meet delivery dates to their customers once again.

This is an example of KEP’s expertise in extrusion and creativity shining brightly. In two months, our talented people created from scratch what normally took the customer 12 months. We qualified the material for the customer and helped them out of the backlog while their machine was and continuously has been shut down. We are proud to say this is truly the KEP way!

Have a tricky challenge for a product? Contact our experts today.