The Power of a Team
The power of a team, working in tandem with each other, is how great accomplishments in sport and in manufacturing are achieved. In sport, the head coach of Duke Men’s Basketball Team, Mike Kryzyzewski, has led one of the most successful college basketball programs of all time. In fact, under his leadership, the Duke Team has won the 4th most NCAA Basketball Championships of all time! During that time, he has coached many remarkably talented individuals who went on to become recognized worldwide for their individual success.
However, his coaching mantra of the importance of the power of team over the capability of self is summarized by one of his most infamous quotes. In an Inc.com article highlighting a quote from his book Leading with the Heart, Kryzyzewski stated, “I look at the members of our team like the five fingers of a hand. Individually, the fingers aren’t as powerful as all of them coming together into a fist.â€
While the 5-finger analogy functions perfectly for a basketball team with five men on the court at one time, the truth behind the wisdom of the statement is something reflected in the team approach to producing any type of manufactured equipment. For the Beta Star team, to the ability to functionally produce a quality sterilizer is found in the interconnectedness of our manufacturing process.
“I look at the members of our team like the five fingers of a hand. Individually, the fingers aren’t as powerful as all of them coming together into a fist.”
Coach Mike Kryzyzewski
For a recent project providing seven different sterilizers to a customer producing pharmaceutical grade solutions for the research industry, the Beta Star division, support by parent company R-V Industries, successfully leveraged the breadth of our resources to satisfy our customer’s unique sterilization demands. This interconnectedness was essential to maximize the production process as, on one’s one, a project that would have taken over half a year to manufacture, assemble, and ship, was scheduled to be completed in 2 months of manufacturing time. Take a look inside our “Raw Plate to FAT†Sterilizer Production Process on a recent project with seven different sterilizers:
Engineering and Design
Though many of our customers select sterilizer models from industry standard lines, the Beta Star production process begins with the engineering department. For this particular project, documented engineering control and justification for machine design is a vital step in the process of creating seven sterilizers that will adhere to the guidelines that pharmaceutical customers are held to. For more on those guidelines, visit our post about the pharmaceutical machine guidelines.
At this stage, a Bill of Materials is established for every component used in the manufacturing of the sterilizer machine and a completed Piping and Instrumentation Drawing (P&ID) is created for customer sign-off to ensure the marriage of machine design and customer expectations.
INVENTORY MANAGEMENT TEAM
As a manufacturer and service provider, Beta Star keeps significant inventory levels to manage high demand production times, and overnight shipping service and parts needs. The production process, for a run of numerous sterilizers such as the project mentioned above, starts with our non-proprietary components, which ensure cost efficient part replacements throughout the life of the sterilizer. For this project, members of the inventory control team pulls and delivers all parts from the Bill of Materials generated form engineering, to the proper production team members to keep the manufacturing and assembly process as efficiently as possible.
PRODUCTION PLANNING AND MATERIAL MANAGEMENT
Production Planning and Material Management teams take over the next stage in the Plate to FAT production process. At this stage, the fabrication schedule is carefully planned out for the following weeks and months to ensure on-time delivery. To prevent the collateral damage of delays in any stage of the production process, a team meeting establishes department level deadlines where individual accountability is accepted.
PLATE BURNING AND BENDING
At this stage, the raw plate to FAT process officially begins. The first step is to take the raw plate, consisting of 316 and 304 stainless steel, and use our highly specified table burner to cut pieces for the formation of the sterilization chamber, jacket, and doors.
After the pieces are cut, the plate bending team utilizes our in-house bending machinery to form the pieces previously cut to match the specification drawings. At this stage the pieces begin to take shape and resemble the sterilization chamber, jacket, and doors seen at the finished product. To bend stainless steel, at a common dimension of ½ an inch, the bending machines must use a minimum of 87.89 tons of pressure to create the angles to build the sterilizer essentials (chamber, jacket, and doors).
PRE-FABRICATION AND WELDING
The next step in the process is the pre-fabrication of the sterilizer essentials. To protect the material integrity from cross contamination with non-stainless-steel material, all pre-fabrication and welding tasks are completed in our 26,000 square foot stainless and alloy only facility. Protecting stainless steel material from cross contamination is important to protecting the lifespan of the sterilizer, as any contaminants from carbon steel grades can cause rusting and degradation of the chamber and door surfaces.
At the pre-fabrication step, skilled employees fit the previously cut and bent pieces together and tack weld those pieces to each other to hold the pieces in properly alignment and positioning. After pieces of the sterilizer are tack welded, final welding is completed utilizing our vast array of over 300 certified weld procedures for all types of material including 304 stainless steel, 316 stainless steel, and 2205 duplex stainless steel. To ensure the quality of these welds, our sterilization chambers will be hydro-tested to spot any structural deficiencies in the finished product.
MECHANICAL AND ELECTRICAL ASSEMBLY
The final and critical step of the sterilizer production process before shipment is the mechanical and electrical assembly. The mechanical assembly team completely fits out a raw chamber with the piping and valve systems to create a fully functioning sterilizer. However, to get the sterilizer to function, it requires the electrical assembly and controls engineering teams to engineer and connect the PLC and HMI to power the sterilizer. Through dozens of hours, these two assembly teams create a functional sterilizer that is ready for Factory Acceptance Testing before it moves to the final stage of the process.
SHIPPING AND LOGISTICS
Bolstered by the support of an in-house fleet of logistics, trucking, and packaging professionals, we are able to ensure that our sterilizers are properly packaged and delivered to the proper facility at the right time. To facilitate unexpected delays in new construction and renovation projects, we offer climate controlled warehouse storage as an option to keep customer workplaces free of the barriers of large sterilizers.
THE POWER OF TEAM
Through the vastness of all of our different engineering and production departments, a variety of different skills sets, mastered through years of years of experience, are brought together to create a batch of seven sterilizers for our customer. The professional level of experience is proven out by the fact that the average current employee at R-V Industries, parent company of Beta Star, is over 10 years. And together, this team bears proof that the quote of legendary Coach Mike Kryzyzewski is true.