Apple Engineers Are Inspecting Bacon Packaging to Help Level Up US Manufacturers
Fouch knew that automated sensors could help by, for example, identifying the environmental culprits of the hole-punching problems, but with so many options to try, he didn't know where to start. “The worst thing you can do, especially in a smaller company, is fumble through pilot purgatory, hoping to find a viable product,” he says. “If someone else has done it before, they know the viable path, and they can save you the time and the cost.”
That's exactly what three executives and managers from Apple's engineering and operations teams offered when Fouch and Quinn Shanahan, who oversees Polygon's medical device and specialty product manufacturing, visited the manufacturing academy in October and November, respectively. Over what Fouch estimated was five hours, the Apple staff evaluated Polygon's challenges and applied the industrial engineering equation of Little's Law—which can identify capacity bottlenecks—to come up with solutions.
The result was a detailed strategy mapping out sensors and software that could affordably track production and warn of anomalies. Polygon can now count the number of passes the tube makes through the grinder, and it will soon be possible to understand whether an overheated engine or other factors could explain the botched hole punching, Shanahan says.
If all goes as planned, Polygon will have implemented a working system to address its most significant bottlenecks for no more than $50,000 compared to the $500,000 an automation consultant might have charged, according to Fouch. The Apple team is working on trying to talk Polygon through other upgrades. “They've walked these paths before,” Fouch says. “Without their help, it will take us much longer.”
Apple's Herrera says that giving small manufacturers a sense of the benefits of automation and other technologies may eventually lead them to work with consultants and invest in more expensive systems.
Two other academy participants tell WIRED that they haven't received extensive assistance from Apple — Herrera says it comes down to which companies have prepared a “problem statement” that Apple can help with — but they're working to bring what they've learned to their factories. Jack Kosloski, a project engineer at Blue Lake, a plastic-free packaging startup, says it was eye-opening for him to hear about the depth of Apple's product testing.
