There are more ways to make a manufacturing operation
smart than simply investing in the latest state-of-the-art
equipment — which, as well as requiring a good bit of
investigation and planning ahead, may turn out not to be
the optimal solution by the time it is implemented.
Knoxville, Tenn.-based QualPro Inc.’s Multivariable Test-
ing (MVT®) process is one smart tool manufacturers can
use to quickly and cost-effectively optimize plant opera-
tions without investing in new, advanced equipment. The
concept is relatively simple; it isn’t high-tech in the way
that smart manufacturing solutions typically are, but it
can be used to optimize even the most advanced manu-
facturing operation. The main components are ideas,
which represent about 75 percent of the input; and data,
which account for about 25 percent. And the input of
employees who are directly involved with the processes
being optimized adds another benefit because they have
a stake in the project’s success and will work hard to see
that it succeeds.
MVT traces its roots back to the 1960s, when QualPro
founder Charles Holland, Ph.D., was working as a statis-
tician specializing in process control and improvement at
Union Carbide Corp.’s Nuclear Weapons Manufacturing
Division in Oak Ridge, Tenn. There, Holland began to
develop the process to help solve a problem at the plant.
Holland founded QualPro in 1982 and began to offer
training seminars and consulting services — originally
to manufacturers wanting to improve processes at their
plants, but eventually also to other types of businesses
including transportation, logistics, service, retail and
others. Over the years, QualPro has worked with more
than 1,000 enterprises, including textile manufacturers
such as Milliken & Company, Beaulieu of America,
DuPont, Unifi Inc. and Sage Automotive Interiors Inc.,
among others.
The Value Of Human Capital
MVT® combines brainstorming and data tools to find quick, cost-effective solutions to improve plant
efficiencies and profitability.
Janet Bealer Rodie, Managing Editor
An associate transports fabric between processes at Sage
Automotive Interiors’ Cotton Blossom laminating plant,
which used MVT to help it correct a quality problem.
The MVT process uses statistics to test ideas for improv-
ing an operation. It is a very disciplined, multi-step pro-
cess for testing multiple variables simultaneously, there-
by reducing the number of tests needed to find the best
solution. From the beginning, the process has included
brainstorming among the employees who are closely
involved with the operation in question, and who are en-
couraged to bring all their observations and ideas to the
MVT Methodology
table. The ideas are culled, and those deemed practical,
fast and cost-efficient are put into the test. As it turns out,
in any given project, about 25 percent of the ideas acted
on are found to be beneficial, about half have no effect,
and the rest have a negative effect.
“MVT takes a lot of haphazard thoughts and quantitative
data and rapidly tests them and enables you to improve
processes with the resources you already have, without
having to invest in big capital and new technology,” said
Vice President and Principal Art Hammer, who has been
with QualPro since its beginnings. “And, if you were go-
ing to buy new smart technology, you could run a MVT to
figure out how to better use the technology and make it
even smarter.”
People Power
The participation of people working directly with the
targeted operation is key to MVT’s success in any given
situation. “That is absolutely core to our entire process
and always will be,” Hammer said. “Get a person from
the third shift, someone from maintenance who knows
the idiosyncrasies of different machines and how they
may not be operating to standard expectation. You need
to be in there elbows and elbows with all those from the
different shifts.”
Data tools include a wide range of factors — for ex-
ample, denier, online instrumentation, machine speed
temperature, flow rate, tension or pressure as a polymer
is extruded, the size of the holes in the spinneret, or an
additive being sprayed on a textile. There are also vari-
ables among the people doing a given job, Hammer said.
“Say the job is to correct breaks. All have been trained,
but no two people do it the same way.
“By looking at both historical and dynamic bases, you
can see long-term trends as well as what is happening
at this moment,” Hammer said. “However, the data never
replace what’s coming from the local workforce. The
integration of brainstorming and data tools brings better
MVT results.”
Unifi: 14-step MVT Yields Improved Product Quality
Textured yarn manufacturer Unifi Inc., Greensboro, N.C.,
has used MVT to improve many different operations
over several years. At its REPREVE® Recycling Center,
which opened in May 2011, the company had installed
optimized, state-of-the-art processing equipment, but it
wanted to push the machine’s capabilities further. Qual-
Pro designed a 14-step process that helped Unifi expand
those capabilities.
“That process allowed us to look at the machine in more
detail — to look at every different knob and parameter,
break it down into different sections and go to the up-
per and lower side of every function,” said Todd Baker,
plant manager at the recycling center. “We found that the
optimized processes the supplier gave us were not truly
optimized. For example, we moved the needle quite a bit
on the color we were able to achieve.” In addition, im-
provements were achieved in viscosity and other charac-
teristics of the polymer itself.
Unifi Inc.'s REPREVE® Recycling Center implemented QualPro's MVT® process to help it push the capabilities of its machinery as well as acheive consistent high quality in the Repreve fibers it sends to its customers.
Unifi also was concerned about variations in the quality
of the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles and other
PET waste it processes into Repreve fiber and yarn.
It was able to refine the filtration system to eliminate
contamination in the raw material derived from the PET
waste, thus enabling improved, more consistent quality
of the product it supplies to downstream customers such
as Patagonia, Nike, The North Face and many others.
Baker said the results enabled Unifi to develop a trouble-
shooting guide for use in the plant.
The company now is using MVT to test its lab formats and other practices.
“If you take the MVT tools and break out everything in a
methodical way, you can really identify ways to improve
your business, costs and efficiencies,” Baker added. “It
goes far beyond just the machines.”
DuPont: Reduced Costs, Increased Productivity
DuPont, Wilmington, Del., also has utilized MVT to im-
prove efficiencies in numerous operations. In the 1990s,
when it was producing polyester yarn and staple fiber in
Wilmington, N.C., it implemented the process to help it
reduce costs and remain competitive with imports from
lower-labor-cost countries.
“At that time, capital was hard to come by, and returns
on polyester weren’t large enough to justify a lot of new
capital,” said Ron Burger, former plant manager at the
Wilmington facility. “MVT offered us the best opportunity
to remain competitive and get costs down, which we did
through a number of projects. We dropped maintenance
costs because of our success in reducing the number of
equipment failures, dropped unit costs by 25 to 30 per-
cent and got productivity increases of 25 to 35 percent.”
The plant’s workforce got heavily involved in the proj-
ect. “We tapped into their ideas, and that’s what made it
so successful,” Burger said. “MVT is a very disciplined
system of trying out ideas and evaluating them using
actual data. Not all of them work, and you begin to home
in on the good ideas right away, and that’s where all that
productivity and quality improvement came from.”
Burger found MVT to be an excellent training tool for the
employees. “It trains them to know what’s important on
their processes, and it will sort out myths and legends
and throw out things we all believe to be true that aren’t,”
he said. “Some real leadership develops within your
employees once this process starts because it begins to
tear down any barriers within your organization that keep
good employees from contributing fully.”
May/June 2013
For more information call QualPro • 800-500-1722 • www.qualproinc.com