Panel Perspectives: States Industries | 51
Above left: The line at the before press stage Above right: The new Biele press line
case panels need to be repaired before stacking. All these processes are completed continuously without any stops. By means of a customised design of the
system, Biele accommodated the required process in the available floor space, adapting to customer’s needs.
THE RESULTS
Essentially, what the press line allowed States to do, is to produce panels with much better labour efficiency. In this sense, the press line allowed States to reallocate about 14 people from areas where they were producing panels in their conventional old way, into other areas where they can grow more value. As a consequence, in the last year States has grown its production capacity by at least 30% with far fewer people involved in making the process. Additionally, the press line allowed them
to cut their reject rate by about half. “This put us in a very favourable position
in terms of recovering that value out of the panel,” said Mr Downs. Moreover, because the press is a 4-opening press, it allows States to do
smaller quantities much more effectively and much easier than its conventional 30-opening presses that tend to get dirty and have other issues around when they are running on other types of products or producing small quantities. “Thanks to this new press line performance, we managed to gain more market share, and achieved a more efficient production with much lower fall down rates,” added Mr Downs.
“Incidentally, one of the great outcomes of this, is that because we have a lower fall down, and because we can do special order or exact order quantities, it reduces the overages that we produce in the inventory, which, of course, helps with our financial positioning as well”.
THE EXPERIENCE This hardwood plywood panel production line has been the first project collaborations developed by Biele for States Industries LLC. “We have delivered an innovative
hardwood veneer press line as a result of a close teamwork between our technical teams and a clear vision from States Industries that
led to a successful partnership,” said Biele USA general manager Juan Flores. “We’ve been able to produce significantly more three-ply and two-step production at a much lower falldown rate than through our conventional vertical multi-opening presses,” added Mr Downs. “Biele’s automation simply brought us better efficiency and recovery of grade, which we’ve been able to reinvest into our people and additional automation. “One of the things that was a challenge for Biele as well as for States during the project, was that the pandemic occurred, and it became very difficult for communications and travel back and forth between Europe and Oregon. In this sense, one of the things that Biele did very well for us was that it never abandoned us during the project.” “Biele modified, it adapted its schedules,
it adapted its staffing, to try and help us accomplish commissioning the line on time. With the pandemic, of course, things were delayed, but we were able to commission the line really close to the projected timeline that we had envisaged during the initial project stages.”
Above left: Panels at the after press stage Above right: The trimming process on the new line
www.wbpionline.com | April/May 2023 | WBPI
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