Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/04/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Regarding the Kodak factory/equipment shuffles of late..... FWIW....This is bits and pieces from related coated film industry anecdotal chatter. There is a tendency in the coated product industry of developing equipment to process much narrower webs of coated product and have them tightly controlled for quality and consistency. The old days had monster facilities that fit our image of factories of legions of employees, mechanical controls, high reject rates and difficult to control solvent gassing and air quality controls, etc. What took crews of hundreds to manhandle, clean, feed and control now runs with extreme precision with 8-10 person crews, extreme automation in function and material handling with the added efficiency of little waste. The smaller equipment is easier to set-up for specific product to feed ever tightening ideas of minimum stocked inventories (just-in-time mind set) and quicker reaction to short term needs of specific product production. In the old days, once you had those monsters finally tuned and running right on a product, you made extremely large runs because shut down and start up were such monumental tasks. I know of one old monster coater that was so daunting to load/align that it had a film web loaded for over 20 years using continuous leaders and splicing! I think Kodak's recent changes are a combination of changing production techniques, inventory philosophies and the ultimate reality that film consumption is on a downward trend. All of this requires a leaner, more flexible manner of production and doesn't indicate abandonment to me. - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html