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Chester Medical’s Print & Packaging Division – Contract Packing

Chester Medical’s Print & Packaging Division

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Chester Medical’s Print & Packaging Division is a carton and leaflet production and printing facility serving the pharmaceutical industry. As well as conventional printing, the company offers digitally printed cartons and leaflets which cater to the pharma industry’s increasing demand for short-run, short lead-time manufacture. The whole facility is accredited to the PS9000 pharmaceutical grade, including the digital print facility making the company unique within this field.

Chester Medical operate a number of automated and semi-automated production lines to print leaflets as well as, fold and glue cartons. These machines run at very high speeds to ensure that products are delivered at competitive prices but with speed and accuracy comes complexity and hundreds of moving parts that are critical to smooth, accurate operation.

AddParts was approached by the Operations Manager at Chester Medical to look at ways in which digital spares could assist in reducing the cost and impact of downtime on spare parts for the company’s gluing and folding lines.

Result

Parts supplied within 4 days of order through virtual storeroom.

40% cost reduction of parts.

Why choose AddParts?

AddParts supplies digital spare parts for production and packing machines in 48 hours*.

AddParts typically reduces downtime by up to 90% and part costs by up to 50%. Critical components and change parts are 3D scanned on-site and uploaded to a secure, tailored digital inventory. The parts are supplied in like-for-like, traceable materials and are manufactured at a dedicated, UK-based facility using industrial 3D printers.

What was the problem?

The machines are typically supplied by major manufacturers like Bobst, Komori and Heidelberg and require a steady stream of replacement components. However, it is not unheard of for such components to be available with particularly long lead times of up to two months which means that either spares are held in stock (meaning inventory management, space and cash tied up in stores) or risk expensive downtime.

What did we do?

Chester Medical had identified two key components that often fail and decided that AddParts potential offered the perfect way forward even though the original parts were a combination of cast and machined steel. As Chester Medical carried spares, the two components were sent to AddParts’ headquarters in Sheffield to be 3D scanned and added to Chester Medical’s digital storeroom on the AddParts website. From there the team at Chester Medical could review the parts as well as the necessary design changes needed to offer like-for-like industrial 3D printed parts. Finally, the parts were ordered, produced using a combination of high-grade materials, assembled along with correctly specified off-the-shelf fittings (where appropriate) and supplied in batches.

Testimonial

“AddParts is an absolute game changer for us at Chester Medical’s Print & Packaging Division. For too long it’s just been accepted that spare parts take ages, that we have to pay loads for them and hold huge amounts in stock. But with AddParts we don’t have to. The parts they have supplied are great quality and are really doing the business for us, we couldn’t be happier and have big plans to get the guys over to our site to keep building up our digital storeroom.”

Ronnie Delamar

Operations Manager