Fabrizio's Blog

This is the end...

So, what is a Production, Methods and Development Manager?
Above all, it’s about dealing with people. If you thought it was just a math affair, you were wrong, even if a solid basis given by an engineering school is very important. Improvements in this field are mainly made during meetings and talking with the workers, better than by staying bent on your papers without quitting your office.
And dealing with people is not easy as it always seems. Think that you are 26, and you want to tell to a worker, that is 40+ years old, and maybe spent half of life on the production lines, what is the best way to perform a set-up. This probably is where the true leadership arise.
One of the thing that stroke me the most is that, regardless of the task being already difficult itself, it is performed by a foreigner. If in the situation described above you would have felt embarrassed, think about it again, but with you speaking in a different language. You would understand why I truly respect my coach.
Furthermore, make no mistake: factories are often hot and noisy places. If you don’t like it, look for another job in a comfortable office. But if you like responsibility over people, you are results-oriented and you truly want go into the details of a manufacturing process, this is the way to go.

And now, just some few final thoughts…
As anyone probably told you, when you are about to take on a new challenge, the important thing is that you set some objectives for yourself. My objectives, upon accepting the participation in the WeAllCan programme were:
- to know new interesting people
- to have some contacts in a new company
- to improve my working attitude by experiencing a typical working day
- not to do the worst blog
The objectives I set were not particularly ambitious, and I should say that the programme exceeded my expectations.
All the participants were nice, they all did interesting experiences and showed plenty of enthusiasm in these months; it was a real pleasure to meet them.
Sandrine, Angelique and all the other people managing this programme did a great job and their effort went not overlooked; their work itself was the best example of excellent working attitude.
The most important thing I learnt is that to work in production is not what I want to do. Understanding it at this early stage was a considerable success for me, and it would not have been possible without participating in this programme.
As the blog itself, well, I hope it was appreciated…

 

Goodbye, and thanks to all blog’s visitors!

Contribution & performances

The nicest thing about working in production is that you can easily notice your contributions. There are several indicators that measure production performances, the most important of which are “productivity per working hours”, TRS and MOD.
The first measure the number of plastic tubes produced per every hour worked.
TRS (Taux de Rendement Synthétique) measures the efficiency of production, that is the ratio between tubes produced and the theoretical output of the lines.
MOD (Mise en Ouvre Défectueuse) measures the spoilage as a number of tubes that must be put into production to produce 100 deliverable tubes.
There are many people in production that work in order to improve these performances. Nonetheless every contribution that my coach can give is very important… just think that raising the TRS by 1% means that you produce about 150.000 tubes more per month, and lowering MOD by 1 point means that you have 75.000 tubes less as scrap every month!
As Cebal Plastic Tubes is part of the bigger company Alcan, they also have to comply with the EHS (Environment, Health, Safety) rules proposed by the group. This means that my coach is also concentrated in preventing any possibility of accident occurring to any worker.
These constitute the main challenges faced by my coach and all the people working at Tortona: to assure the profitability of the business while complying with Alcan’s high safety standards. It is not easy to assure both these directives… but people here obtain good results despite the small size of the plant and the competitiveness of this business.
I do not know what keep my coach motivated in working so many hours doing his best. But I think that the involving working environment and the challenging tasks that he faces are already good reasons to be willing to work there day by day.

Internship at Alcan?

As many people, both visitors and other WeAllCan participants, are maybe considering about doing an internship at Alcan, I will tell my story.

How it started…
It was around February when I decided to take an internship abroad. I had just one exam left in a semester, so I had no big reason to remain in Italy. Also I had to do my thesis and I would have preferred to do something in a company better staying at university. An internship could provide me an interesting subject…
I was having a look on the Internet for open positions in big companies abroad, when I thought I could check at Alcan. Actually I had a good impression of the company, so why don’t make a try?
First time I entered the corporate site I did not notice anything exciting, but later on I found out a very interesting internship that perfectly matched what I wanted to do.
It was a Supply Chain internship in France, and it immediately interested me as it was in a very international context, where they coordinate 4 plants in Europe, and it supposedly dealt with logistics projects.
I applied immediately and soon after I had an interview with Patrick, my (by now) boss. Obviously the very same day I accepted at Alcan I had positive feedbacks from other two companies… but I still think I did the best choice!!
By early April I was ready to begin this experience, at Cebal Aerosols Bellegarde.

The Ultimate Alcan Experience…
I had a first training week in the factory, where I learnt about the manufacturing process and all the product related issues.
Surprisingly enough, aerosols production is not particularly different from the plastic tubes production! But differently from the Alcan Day, here there was nobody hand by hand with me (nor it was the case at Tortona plant actually…) but I had to go to every machine operator by myself, asking the right questions… And it is not so trivial for me to understand technical French in a noisy environment!
When I began in the offices it became even more interesting, and with four projects assigned on the very first day I never had the time to get bored! Sure my blog suffered it a bit, as I had not much time to write on it as before…
My main activities are:
- PRICING Provide quotations to my boss to be checked and sent to customers; this is very interesting as I learn how to calculate shipping costs, how to evaluate production costs and to better understand Alcan strategy regarding the added value.
- REPORTING Provide weekly and monthly production reports to Cebal executive comitee; I just have to put together the reports from the different facilities and let an advanced software calculate the indexes out of the spreadsheet prepared. It does not require more than 15 min/week (excluding computation time) but is very useful as it obliges me to look at the results from a farther perspective.
- LOGISTICS It concerns projects regarding stock optimisation, shipping planning etc.; it is interesting as I have to work myself and be charged of the implementation as well.
- COMMUNICATION This array includes a vast number of small or bigger projects, concerning the presentation of technical issues to commercials. This allows me to discover manufacturing details, trade terms and other subjects, as well as many people working in different functions!

In all those activities I can count on Patrick and Delphine support… They are both very young and work in my same office. It is very nice to work with them… even if it embarrasses me how well they speak foreign languages and how good they are in their work! At Alcan I constantly meet people that make me wonder if I will ever be that good in my work...

Overall, here in Bellegarde I have quite a good time; the city is not particularly sexy and the skiing season is unfortunately finished but I can still do some gym and go out for a beer with other interns and workers when I have the time.
Moreover the surroundings are beautiful and anyone visiting me would love to visit the nearby city of Annecy and Geneve…

Innovation

When you think about ALCAN and INNOVATION, you would probably think about all those new applications in the aerospace or automotive sector…
Less evident are innovations in packaging, particularly in the collapsible plastic tubes business.
At Tortona plant the innovations mainly concern complex artworks and new services.
But jobs related to production are also on the look-out for new innovations. The “Pit-Stop Yard” is a useful way to concentrate over a specific problem, trying to find a solution. In many cases someone comes up with some ideas that turn out into brilliant innovations! Here it is one of my favourites…

Plastic pistols
In order to produce a plastic tube you need to extrude some basic raw materials: polyethylene (of different densities) and colorants. These are loaded in the hopper where they will be mixed.
Experience tells how many kilos of colorant should be added to produce a certain quantity of tubes; also SAP, out of the bill of materials, suggest the appropriate quantity of colorant to be loaded. But still, at the end of the production lot, some will be left in the hopper unused… And in any case is far better than running out of colorant in the middle of production!!
So what happens to the colorant left at the end of a production lot?
You have to carefully unload it… otherwise the new colorant would mix with the previous and bye-bye color schemes!
The previous method was the use of a traditional vacuum cleaner to suck the left colorant. It had major drawbacks:
- heavy, unwieldy and not particularly easy to be brought on top of the hopper
- not reliable, and frequently broken
- the material not being reusable and went therefore scrap

But now, Ladies and Gentlemen, here it is the Venturi Pistol!
This simple air compressed vacuum is light and handy, and it has the important advantage that the material, once sucked, it gets back from the bag it came from.

This simple innovation therefore allowed quicker material changes and it reduced the colorant being scrapped during every set-up!

Also, have a look at the latest product innovation: the new elliptical Tandem tubes, with bi-colored caps!

International

With plants in over 40 different countries, Alcan is definitely an international company.
This is reflected in the fact that most jobs require to deal with people in different countries.

My coach exactly show what I think of “international”: that is enjoying being in touch with other nationalities and dealing with different languages to such an extent that you purposely choose to work in a different country then your own.
If I think over it, he could do the same job in France, and he could have probably been even more effective there. But he took the challenge of working in Italy (ok… by now his Italian is so good that you would hardly notice that he is foreigner).
An international company is not just a group of plants located in different countries. It is the sharing of knowledge and practices scattered in different locations. And to better gather and share the knowledge between different countries you need “international people”, who like to interact with foreigners, who are willing to move abroad and share Alcan values in different countries.
The result is that there is no Alcan Italy, Alcan France etc. but just a single multicultural company.

Clients & suppliers

Olivier is a great professional but obviously he is not a one-man show. He works in contact with many others who do different jobs at Alcan. And not just because it’s funny to spend time with other people, but also because it is actually needed to do a good job… ok, I hope it doesn’t sound too strange to anyone.
But who concretely are my coach’s most important “clients” and “suppliers”?
The Supply Chain function is Olivier’s main supplier. And it has nothing to do the fact that both contain the word “supply”. Supply Chain Managers prepare a mid-term plan (low detailed), allocating production in the different factories, according to delivery country, factory capacity and product specifications. Olivier and his team, then, receive the planning that tells them which kind of products should be produced during the week. In this way they then proceed by detailing the planning received, scheduling the lots that will go into production.
Olivier’s main clients are commercials. They know the customer’s needs, and if they want to satisfy Alcan’s clients, they need, other than inviting them to dinner, to also supply them with good products.
So, as long as Olivier manufactures high quality tubes, commercial responsibles (his clients) are happy. In any case they frequently interact in order to better meet customer’s expectations.

Plastic tubes everywhere!

Collapsible plastic tubes is a 272 million dollars market at Alcan; plastic tubes are manufactured in 12 plants located in US, France, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Italy (Tortona Plant), Poland.

Products packaged in plastic tubes include toothpastes, balsams, shampoos, sun creams, cosmetics, greases, gels, foam baths, body lotions, solvents, car cleaners etc.

Other kind of collapsible tubes are aluminium and laminate tubes, also manufactured by Alcan, who has a global leadership position.

Tortona plant

Introduction
The Tortona plant is located in the north-west of Italy, and is part of Alcan – Global Beauty Packaging.
In this plant more than 100 millions collapsible plastic tubes are produced per year; it employs around 130 people and has sales (mainly in the Italian market) for 13 million euros.

As you probably figured out yourself, this is not the biggest Alcan plant, and to be honest not even one of the most profitable. The fact of being located in Italy, surrounded by though competitors, bring down the margins a bit, but it also means that they have to optimize costs and operations on a daily basis in order to be competitive.
It’s not always easy to cut costs, while, at the same time, not relocating production and complying with Alcan’s high safety standards; but this is the challenge at Tortona plant.
The production of plastic tubes is fairly simple; significantly harder is to make everything run smoothly, and this is the job of people working here.

The manufacturing process
The production is split in five automated production lines. Every line is composed of different machineries.
Let’s see how a plastic tube is manufactured in a production line.

The primary material that makes a tube is polyethylene. The raw material looks like grain, and is stocked in bags. To start a production lot, the required material (high/low density polyethylene) is taken from two metal boxes and it’s mixed with the appropriate quantity of colorant.

The material, by extrusion, is melted and shaped as a continuous pipe. It is then cut in tubes of a certain lengths, which are individually moved by a chain.

Between every station, a certain buffer is kept. In this way you can stop a machine without the need of shutting down the whole line. This also allows doing set-ups and maintenance operations on the first machines of the line, while the latest are still working on the final stages of the production.

In the next stage, the heads (the top of a plastic tube) are extruded and attached to the tube. Now, from distance, they really look like candles! Keep in mind that the pointy top is just scrap material that will be cut.

Then comes the printing, which is probably one of the most fascinating stages. The machinery is composed of several cylinders, each transferring a single color to a stamp (cliché), which in turn prints the plastic tube. Immediately after, the tube is varnished in order to give it a bright look.

Later, the scrap material on the top is cut and the cap is assembled. Caps are either moulded in one of the injection machines or supplied from other facilities.

As a last step, plastic tubes are packed in cardboard boxes and stocked until shipped.

All the five production lines work the same, with the exception of one that is conceived for the production of very small tubes.

There are other machines for specialty treatments, such as hot stamping, that are used outside the normal work process explained.

About me

Who I am
I’m a 23 years old Italian guy.
I live just outside Milan, and I particularly enjoy my suburb as it has much more green than what Milan can offer. The centre, tough, has a great night life and everyone coming to Milan should definitely experience that!

What I like
I tried many sports in my life, but there isn’t any I am particularly gifted for…
Still, I really like martial arts, and I’ve been practising judo, taekwondo and savate for some years.
I also practise snowboard in winter times, even if I should admit that better than any trick I prefer a tea and a massage after a day of snowboarding.

But my greatest passion is travelling and meeting foreign people, to the point that I do not feel to have much in common with people who never quitted my own city. I am very fascinated by people who did very different and unusual experiences, and generally having those people around stimulates me to achieve the best results.

My studies
I am a fifth year student at Politecnico di Milano, and I really hope to obtain a master degree in Industrial and Management Engineering by October. After all, 18 years of studies are more than enough for me!
My course study covers many subjects and I’m not specializing in anything particular, but I’m widening my interests especially in the logistics area. I also contributed in a welcome organization for exchange students, so if last year you came to study to Politecnico you could have met me in one of those nice international evenings…!
I had an exchange year in Université Catholique de Louvain where, beyond studying, I experienced the funniest student’s life…
Lastly, as a student-tourist, I was in Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris for a one-week course in Risk Management.

How I ended up here
It is surprising to spot companies that want to help you out in the discovery of a job. Sure, human resources are important for all the companies, but I thought it was just a line written in the corporate values… So, when I saw a company that was actually interested in spending time and money just to meet me, I had very few doubts…
It is like you spend time looking for girls, and all of a sudden a cute girl pops up and says “I think you are an interesting guy, I would like to meet you”. Wouldn’t you give it a try?

About my coach

Who he is
My coach is a 26 years old French guy. He is born in Paris, and lived most of his years in France, but he also spent six years in Germany during his youth. He is married from a couple of years.

What he likes
My coach is a great skier: he has been practising it since he’s 2 years old! Probably, this passion alone could convince him to come to work in northern Italy! Too bad for him he didn’t face a good season this year…
He likes travelling a lot, and he backpacked in most places you can think of, especially in Europe and North America. He has also been in Madagascar as part of a humanitarian project.
Other interests he likes to pursue in his spare time are tennis and trekking.

His studies
Olivier studied in Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussés in Paris, where he had his engineering degree in 2002. For those who are not familiar with the French university system, I will specify that the engineering education they receive is very broad, with a solid foundation in mathematics; and the name “Ponts et Chaussés” has nothing to do with bridges and roads, but is just an heritage of the Napoleonic era.
One of his favourite subject was production, and during his third  and last year he obtained a "Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies en Organisation de la Production et de l’Entreprise" 
During university he was also treasurer and organizer of meeting forums between a companies and university, with a budget around $ 500 K! Hey, I wish my university had so much money...   

How he ended up there
Olivier began his career in Pechiney (now Alcan) as an intern, working on the coordination of the planning of the different plants in the Cebal Tubes Europe division. He then moved to the Tortona plant, where for a short period was assistant in SAP rollout; then he has been plant Supply Chain Manager for two years. Now is responsible for Production, Methods, Development at Tortona site.