North Tonawanda, New York based Niagara Sheets LLC, a sheet feeder established in 2008, announced that they have set an all-time record by breaking the 700,000 mark with their full line 110-inch BHS Corrugator which runs A, B, C, and E flutes along with varieties of double wall combinations.
The company’s B shift crew established this significant milestone at the facility on September 13 with these statistics:
705,783 lineal feet
58,750 lineal feet per hour
980 LFM – average speed
530 msf\hr average
6.2 million square feet
100 percent Uptime
“This milestone that has broken the 700,000 mark is one that we have been striving to hit for several years and it did not come without extended efforts of the entire staff at the corrugator, maintenance, and through shipping,” said Jim Proefrock, Operations Manager at Niagara Sheets. “Even when all things are clicking it is a huge accomplishment to be able to produce footage like this while also holding 100 percent uptime for a full 12-hour shift.”
Niagara Sheets averages around 3,100 lineal feet per dry end order change and 23,000 lineal per wet end change in the sheet feeder’s typical order mix. This makes it difficult to have everything align itself to be able to break a record of this magnitude, Proefrock said.
A relative comparison of the 6.2 million square feet of board produced during this shift would cover 107 football fields or about 142 acres.
Niagara Sheets actively participates in memberships with both AICC, The Independent Packaging Association and Fibre Box Association as these groups are great resources to ensure they are always growing and learning the industry trends that help them stay at the top of their game. Using FBA published KPI data, Proefrock said they recognize how they compare to others in the industry that are similar in structure to Niagara Sheets. “We are proud to say that we continually keep ourselves in the upper percentile,” he said.
Another story that comes along with this new milestone is that this same crew only a few months earlier had also broken the pre-existing plant record of many years as well. On May 31, they recorded 686,000 lineal feet with 100 percent uptime.
“Some keys to our success at Niagara Sheets with a machine that is over 16 years old now has been to continually make the proper investments both on the machine and with supporting equipment through the facility that allow us to increase throughput,” Proefrock said. “It is imperative that we focus investments towards replacement of obsolescence items on the machine to stay current. The last thing we want is to be in a position where a failure item is no longer available and leads to extended downtimes.”
Using new tools from their software vendor, Amtech, the company has provided visual dashboards in the plant using their Scorekeeper application to help the crew strive to meet production targets and achieve such records.
“With the extended efforts of Niagara Sheets maintenance staff to continually ensure that all of our support equipment like the boiler, baler, banders, conveyors, etc. are operating at a matching uptime with our BHS corrugator, we are able to continually push ourselves to these new targets,” Proefrock said.
BHS’ M2P in-house maintenance support has been another key player its success. “With a machine uptime holding at nearly 98 percent year-over-year we can make good things like this happen in production,” Proefrock said.
“We are happy to have a partnership with BHS that also recognizes our team when efforts like this are achieved by providing us with their long-standing Platinum Performer Award. A plaque to hang in our facility showing the key metrics included in the record-breaking performance.”
Niagara Sheets has raised the bar from the previous “600 Club.”
“We are very proud of the dedication our crews have in pushing the limits to this new goal. The ‘700 Club’ has now been created and we look forward to adding other production shifts to the new category in our future,” Proefrock said.
Niagara Sheets is a joint venture with an ownership group that includes Jamestown Container, Smurfit Westrock, Cascades, and Buckeye Corrugated. The plant operates six to six-and-a-half days per week with four rotating 12-hour shifts.
For more information, visit NiagaraSheets.com.
