Significant recent investments in process control technology at Visy’s five glass manufacturing facilities are improving quality and delighting customers.

We caught up with Sean Pidcock, Quality Manager for Visy Glass Australia and New Zealand, to chat about the investments. This is what he had to say…

Why is quality in glass such an important issue for the glass manufacturing industry?

Our focus is on ensuring our customers have an excellent experience when interacting with our product. This means consistently delivering glass containers without defects, that perform to a high standard on our customers’ filling lines, withstand the rigours of the supply chain, and provide a pleasant experience for the end consumer.

Each of our five glass manufacturing sites produces several million containers per day and the glass manufacturing process has a multitude of inputs and variables that introduce complexity. Aligning our quality systems with our people and technology is key to consistently producing high quality glass containers.

What sort of technology has been introduced at Visy Glass plants recently?

There have been significant recent investments, with more exciting improvements in the pipeline. We’re replacing slower, manual systems with technology that is automatic, fast and positioned early in the process to aid in the rapid detection and response to any issues.

An example of this technology is the use of a thermal camera system in the hot end where glass containers are formed. The camera system assesses every container on a high-speed line by creating a thermal profile that is then used to assess the individual container’s shape, glass thickness and to check for anomalies or defects. If the system identifies a defective container, it will be rejected from the line immediately and the glass recycled. The system enables the use of live data to identify trends with the glass thickness early in the process, allowing our machine operators the best opportunity to react to these trends early, ideally before the container is out of specification. This reduces the variation within our process, improving quality and reducing costs.

It is a massive difference and this is just one example.

We have also introduced gob radar technology to assess and control the shape and weight of the glass gobs (preformed glass) prior to being pressed and blown into the shape of the end product. By reducing the variation of glass weight, the likelihood of creating defects, or running into container capacity issues, reduces.

Another game changing investment is the introduction of equipment that can perform full dimensional analysis on freshly produced glass containers. This equipment can handle hot glass and rapidly assesses a set of containers for a large range of dimensional attributes. It provides a wealth of useful information early in the process, enabling the next level of clarity into our process capability and manufacturing quality.

And how is the Visy team making a difference?

Our performance is first and foremost led by our people. Our team is comprised of passionate employees who value what we do and take pride in our product.

Each of our five glass plants have strong quality leadership who are supported by a network of Technical Services Representatives (TSRs). The TSRs work closely with our customers and are the interface between our customers and manufacturing sites. The TSRs each support different customers but they do not work alone. When one of our customers is facing an issue, the TSR is their primary contact and conduit to our network of technical experts.

Our ethos is that we want our customers to have an excellent experience with our product and we work together to continually improve quality and processes throughout the supply chain. One effective tool we have been honing over the years is our Root Cause and Corrective Action (RCCA) process. This robust tool aids in finding the root causes of any issues and establishing effective actions to prevent re-occurrence. These learnings are shared throughout our technical network, supporting our continuous improvement and enhancing the value of the technical team to our customers.

What changes are you seeing as a result of these improvements?

More consistent high-quality glass. This occurs through a reduction in machine jam ups, lower rates of defect manufacture, reduced quality complaints, and ultimately higher customer satisfaction. Last year we achieved our highest performance on record across all quality metrics, including customer issued supplier ratings. Visy Glass achieved our highest rating on record from Asahi/CUB, Lion and Constellation Brands, and we were delighted to be awarded Lion’s packaging supplier of the year. Additionally, Visy as a whole received Diageo’s packaging supplier of the year.

Will further improving quality always be a focus in the glass manufacturing industry?

It will, because we are always pushing the boundaries on the glass containers we are producing. We’re constantly developing more innovative and sustainable options for our customers, and these new products come with their own set of variables we need to manage.

A great example is light weighting. This is where we make glass containers with less glass primarily to improve their sustainability performance – less raw material is required which not only reduces the resources required to produce them, but also the energy required to manufacture and transport them. The challenge is to produce these containers with less glass yet still achieve the high performance our customers and consumers expect.

As long as we’re still innovating and finding better ways to produce glass, we will always be focusing on further improving our quality.

We have a very strong culture, with leaders who provide consistent commitment to quality and customer performance. This, combined with the company’s investments in technology and continuously improving quality systems, is making us hard to beat for quality glass in the Australia and New Zealand markets.