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Refining Manufacturing
Getting the material's composition right and developing the manufacturing
process took Edward two full years.
Then he re-did it all over again - which took another year! This was to
make sure that the whole production process was as simple and consistent
as possible but mostly to be sure it would be reliable so that they could
go into volume
production (G). And ever since they started production the
company has been working to make every part of the process even better
- more consistent, more reliable and faster.
New manufacturing techniques - first make your own
machines!
One of the difficulties Edward and his colleagues had was that their
manufacturing process was new so no-one made machines that were ready
to carry it out. It is not uncommon for companies to have to customise
(G) standard machines or make add-ons such as special moulds. However
in Remarkable's case many parts of their production machinery had to be
built from scratch.
To see a simulation of the Remarkable production process click here.
You can see, even from this much simplified animation, that the manufacture
of the pencil is in a series of stages:
-
grind up the cups and mix with some graphite
-
soften the plastics with heat and extrude
(G) the pencil core
-
add more ground-up cups without graphite
-
soften the plastics and extrude the stock or barrel over the core
-
cool the emerging continuous length of pencil
-
cut to length
-
sharpen
-
print on the surface designs
-
package
Stages 2 to 6 are shown on the Web site. These are done by what is essentially
one machine - with different parts. After the pencils are cut to length
they can be held in small stockpiles ready for the sharpener. And after
the sharpener they can be held in a stockpile ready for printing. These
stocks are called 'work-in-progress' which many companies shorten to WIP.
It is best to avoid large stocks of WIP as they take up space (you might
even need a bigger factory) and delay delivery to customers thereby delaying
your profits.
Stages 2 to 6 are referred to as an 'integrated process' - which means
that all stages happen or none of them do. However, different parts of
the machine can be speeded up or slowed down, as it is absolutely essential
that they all run at exactly the same rate of flow.
Complex control technology is used for this. It involves sensors
(G) to monitor the flow rates at different points and feedback
(G) from them to alter the speed controls to keep the flow even. Getting
this under perfect control is one of Remarkable Pencils Ltd's great successes.
Each of six machines must pass pencils through it with no more or less
than 0.1mm difference in length. Any faster or slower and disaster will
follow. This is referred to as a tolerance
(G) of ±).1mm (notice the special symbol meaning 'plus or minus').
Inventing a way to extrude
(G) the barrel around the core was another of Remarkable's great innovations.
It was essential to achieve a continuous
flow (G) of production for efficiency reasons.
Inventing an entirely new pencil sharpening technique was another innovation.
This machine is capable of sharpening a batch
(G) of 17,000 pencils an hour. Done with a hand pencil sharpener that
would make your fingers sore!
After the pencils are sharpened they are printed - again in batches -
of the same colour, or with the same text or graphics.
Here is another example of Remarkable Pencils Ltd's need to design and
make their own machinery. If you watch the animation on their Web site,
you will see the 5 main stages (2 to 6 above) that the pencil manufacturing
process is divided into. Between the 4th and 5th stages there's now a
machine to transfer the continuous length of pencil coming from the extruder
(G) through a cooling bath to the cut-to-length machine. Nothing like
this exists on the market so Remarkable just had to design and make their
own.
This machine again had to be controllable to run at exactly the
right speed to ensure that the pencils were cut to exactly the
right length. Too fast and the pencils would get shorter, too slow and
the pencils would get longer. No-one would buy a box of random-length
pencils.
This machine also had to grip the pencil length with exactly the right
pressure. Too hard and it would spoil the surface of the pencils, too
gently and the feed could slip and be unreliable - producing more varied-length
pencils.
Another 'one-off'
(G) machine example is the feed mechanism which pushes the heat softened
plastics through the extruder at the correct rate. Differently spaced
screw threads do this.
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