The difference is in people with knowledge and a common goal.

Currently, aluminum beverage can and lid plants are in great demand due to several factors, one of which is the sustainability of their products as they are 100% recyclable. The demand for aluminum cans and closures is seen in all categories of beverages, soft drinks or juices or ready-to-drink coffee, thus placing great demands on producers in their production lines to increase efficiencies and decrease production errors.

Every aluminum beverage can and closure producer has access to the same type of machinery (OEMs), the same raw material suppliers, and the same tooling or measuring equipment manufacturers, but not all aluminum can or closure plants have the same conversion efficiencies or costs. What is the reason for this difference, which often occurs between sister plants of the same group of companies? The difference lies fundamentally in its people.

The difference between good and not so good aluminum can and lid plants is made by their personnel. This type of personnel mostly has a broad and deep knowledge of the manufacturing process, is committed to the process and the role they have to play in the company or production line, and there is a single common goal in all production areas, which is to produce high quality cans within specifications at the first attempt.

There are approximately 23 machines in a production line of aluminum beverage cans, the production lines run between 1800 and 2000+ cans per minute, a small oversight or change in the process can generate large amounts of non-conforming product, hence the extensive process knowledge of the personnel on the line and a robust can quality monitoring system will give us the guideline to control any deviations that arise in the production line.

It is extremely important to develop personnel with extensive knowledge of the production process, to develop specialists in each part of the process or machinery, to have a good induction system to the production process and a well-structured training program to develop their expertise at various levels, from basic concepts to advanced topics in metal transformation or problem solving.

Personnel who have extensive knowledge of the production process, who are well informed and have clear production goals, with a common objective for all production areas, and with a high team commitment, will make a big difference in achieving a high performance production plant. Every good start begins with a robust induction program to the production lines, on this induction program are built the blocks of knowledge of the process, machinery and the product to be manufactured, which are aluminum cans and caps for beverages.

As a first step, the manufacturing process of aluminum cans or beverage closures should be understood in detail in a visual way with the SIPOC diagram, where the supplier (S), the input to the process (I), the transformation process (P), the output or product of the process are accurately described. (O) and the customer or subsequent process (C), with this approach we would give way to a detailed understanding of the production process.

According to the above, it can be concluded that it is of utmost importance to develop the operative personnel who will be supporting the production lines to know in detail all the processes involved in the formation of the product, either caps or aluminum cans 2 pieces for beverages. People must understand in detail all aspects of safety, operation, quality, maintenance and failure analysis of each machine or process they operate and are responsible for. This good understanding will help us to produce high quality cans, increase efficiencies, transfer knowledge to other team members, reduce metal waste at the source and increase production that will impact the cost of product conversion, and help us meet the supply of aluminum cans and closures in this high demand.