hold up the presses until the problem is fixed, he explains. “If you don’t do that, you get a gooey mess that’s very difficult to clean up, and it causes significant down time.” If the mold curing process is performed incorrectly, each press can require up to one hour to clean, Coffey relates.

One of the most valuable uses of the system came shortly after the Shelton plant start up, says Coffey, when LFI discovered that it had undersized the refrigeration system for the new plant. The Siemens system allowed the company to do two things, he notes. “First, it allowed us to come up with a load balancing algorithm that would maximize our production, given the amount of refrigeration resources that we had,” says Coffey. “And it also helped us quantify exactly how much more refrigeration we needed, so that when we did design the new system, we were able to design it to the right size.”

In the end, says Coffey, the automation system has enabled LFI to not only boost its quality, but also its output, which is 20 percent higher today than it was at the old plant prior to the fire. And the company has done that with fewer employees—currently about 165, compared to 240 before—and with a smaller plant size. LFI’s 208,000 square foot facility in Shelton is almost 20 percent smaller than the former Ansonia plant.

Since the Shelton plant came on line, LFI has been able to regain most of the market share lost during the time that it was meeting customer requirements through outsourced import production, Coffey says. And demand for the company’s product lately has been so strong that LFI is planning to add more production capacity, with four more presses this year and an additional four presses in 2005, he adds.

Having the automation system in place will simplify the expansion, Coffey says. “Since the code in each one of our individual manufacturing cells is the same, we’ll be able to take a lot of that same functionality and design, and port it right over to the new cell.”

LFI’s current use of the automation system is still focused on keeping up with expanding production demands, Coffey says. But he foresees additional benefits down the road. “We’re really just beginning to scratch the surface of what we think this system can do for us,” he points out, “in terms of potential for cycle time reduction, cost reduction, and of course, quality improvement.”

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