Case Studies

CHALLENGE:

Austin Graphics faced increased demand for rigid display graphics, but its existing production process, which included printing on flexible substrates that had to be mounted and laminated, was creating production bottlenecks, high production costs and extended turnaround times. They required a superwide format printer that could print directly on rigid substrates in order to leverage market demand into continued business growth.

Growth Brings Challenges

“One area we have excelled in is the production of vehicle wraps,” said Pesnell. “In fact, we have about 95% market share in the region. This area of business is growing as more companies use vehicles as an effective means to promote themselves.” Austin Graphics also produces signage for a wide range of businesses and trade show exhibits.

“The move into superwide format was the best thing we could have done for the business,” adds Pesnell. As business grew, so did the demand for rigid displays. Pesnell explains, “We were able to produce terrific rigid displays, but it was a time consuming and costly process, especially with the cost increases we have seen in mounting adhesives and laminates. Not only that, it was a five-step process for us to create a rigid display – printing, mounting, laminating, die cutting and finishing. We needed to find a more efficient way to handle this business.”

Providing managed document services for Generali Switzerland, Ricoh transformed the insurer’s document infrastructure, improving access to information and enhancing document security whilst cutting print expenditure by 24%. The ongoing benefits of the optimisation programme are such that Generali Switzerland had no hesitation extending Ricoh’s contract.

Document Intensive

Generali Switzerland is part of the Fortune 500 global insurance and financial services organisation Generali Group. The leading provider of unit linked life insurance in the Swiss market, income from premiums exceeds CHF 2 billion per annum. The company employs 2100 people at its headquarters in Zurich and Geneva and in its 75 regional offices.

The insurance and financial services market is document intensive. Personalised proposals and policy documents are printed and sent to customers. Inbound communication is scanned and saved to the customer record. Like many organisations, the company’s document infrastructure had grown organically with little consideration given to cost or effectiveness.

A staple in Hawaiian music, the ukulele’s name roughly translates as “jumping flea,” a tribute to the player’s fluttering fingers as they play the small, traditionally wooden instrument. It goes to say that given the busy, flea-like strumming involved, you can’t just make a “uke” out of anything. It’s got to be durable, and it’s got to sound good.

Outdoor Ukulele makes ukes designed for the outdoors, engineered for durability and tone so active uke enthusiasts around the world—backpackers, campers, mountaineers, sailors, students and more—can take them anywhere. When the company was perfecting its new tenor ukulele, they required the same durability in a quickly produced prototype. Enter Indiana rapid prototyping service provider and user of 3D Systems SLA machines, Realize Inc., which made a complete instrument for Outdoor Ukulele.

Realize Inc.’s project lead, Brian Cazzell, says that Outdoor Ukulele was having trouble finding someone who could build a full-scale prototype of its tenor ukulele using polycarbonate-like resin. The final instruments are injection-molded from glass-filled polycarbonate, and the prototype needed to be as close as possible in size and strength to the final instrument.

“Our biggest challenge with prototyping an instrument is receiving a part with the tolerances required to make it playable. The scale length and fret locations need to be exact,” said Outdoor Ukulele’s Scott Seelye. “Realize was the only company that was willing to attempt a part this size, which we would use as a working instrument.”

Rus Emerick, Global Process Owner for 3D Imaging at Schneider Electric, spends a lot of time thinking about tolerances. Starting with tolerances of individual parts, his brain moves swiftly on to the effect of chains of tolerances that, once you get to 4, 5 or more parts in an assembly, could cumulatively affect the reliability of the products being made at any of their manufacturing and design sites in 22 countries around the world. But how can the consistency of assemblies be verified before and during production? Using traditional destructive testing was proving inefficient, slow and often did not help the team verify consistency in the parts and assemblies. Dynamic tolerance analysis of these assembled parts was even more of a challenge. Money was being wasted. There had to be a better solution and Emerick knew that 3D data would continue to provide the answers he needed.

Schneider Electric (http://www.schneider-electric.com) has been in operation for more than 170 years, evolving through iron and steel, heavy equipment and into electrical and automation management products. Products and services cover electrical distribution, industrial automation, critical power & cooling, building management and security, with manufacturing plants at key manufacturing centers across the world.

Emerick, a specialist in process improvement, is something of a trailblazer in the organization, finding and implementing solutions that are designed to improve 6 Sigma practices, working with production teams on supporting lean manufacturing techniques in an effort to reduce costs and waste in the engineering-to-production workflow. His work is to design processes that can be methodically implemented across each of the manufacturing plants, allowing best practices to become standard at each site. His focus is on verification of products using 3D data. For 10 years, he has worked very successfully with automated inspection in the production lines, using Laser Designs’ Surveyor 3D scanners and Geomagic® Control™ (formerly Geomagic Qualify®) to measure, inspect and report on products. Since the demand for better, more efficient manufacturing never lets up, so Emerick keeps the pressure on his team, some 125 strong, to find new, faster and better ways for 3D data to improve product quality.