Oracle of Wilmington Doubles Revenue and Purchases New Equipment

Oracle reported increased sales, jobs saved and cost savings worth $22 million.

With help from North Carolina State University and the Industrial Extension Service (IES), Oracle Packaging is thriving.

That $22 million dollar impact was celebrated in NC State’s 1B4NC campaign. Oracle was recognized on August 15, 2007, as a major contributor to the IES promise to create $1 billion dollars in economic impact for North Carolina by 2010. Since January 2006, IES’ economic impact for the state of NC is $230 million.

“With the cost savings we experienced through lean, the purchase of a new $8 million press was justifiable,” said James Hummer, director of manufacturing services for Oracle in Wilmington.

The new press, a BHS flexographic printing machine will be press number five for the facility. It will allow a much quicker “make ready” transition and will allow the smaller quantities to run more efficiently. Make-ready is transitioning the machine from one set of specs to another. Lean manufacturing helped decrease the make-ready transition by 50 percent on some machines.

Oracle Packaging plans an increase in revenue from $30 million to $60 million by 2008. The reason: competitive costs, consistent quality, customer responsiveness and short delivery times.

Freddie Foye, lean co-captain recently celebrated his 32nd year with Oracle. He spoke of the sorting and organizing process that they initiated through their adoption of 5S, a lean tool. “We would have four or five jobs backed up and shift areas were congested,” he said. Having gone through the 5S process, tools are now centralized and instructions for make-ready transitions are placed at the appropriate machine.

5S Visual Systems:

Oracle Packaging offers a diverse range of flexible packaging services including folding, printing and die cutting. Examples of the products they help produce include lidding solutions for dairy products, gum wrappers, beverage cartons and a full line of tobacco packaging solutions. Oracle has plants in Wilmington, Winston-Salem, Georgia, Illinois and Ohio.

Many of their processes include rotogravure, an intaglio printing process in which letters and pictures are transferred from an etched copper cylinder to a web of paper, plastic, or similar material in a rotary press.

Oracle participated in multiple 5-day kaizen or continuous improvement events throughout the company. “Employees would work on a project 2 or 3 days, by the 4th or 5th day, they began to see how the changes they were making might directly benefit their own area, so they began to buy-in. That’s when the real benefit happened,” said Steve Tobiassen, 5S manager in charge of data.