Case Studies

North Carolina-based Hip Label Company distributes labels that provide information about plants that are marketed through various nurseries and retailers such as Lowes Home Improvement and Walmart. The labels are mounted to plastic clips to provide consumer information about each plant.

The company faced issues with the existing labels due to unstable label connection, limited pot size attachment, weak design and no place for price stickers. They also experienced extra cost from punched disks as well as clean up from the disks. The perception was that this category was locked for patents and that costs were controlled by clip suppliers.

Working with Bright Plastics, the Hip Clip™ was created to provide an improved label mounting system that eliminated a hole punching process during label manufacturing. This was an expensive process that made a very poor connection. The labels were replaced by a two prong, locking spike that quickly penetrates the card. The clip stabilized the label and was designed to attach to a wide variety of pot rims and sizes and provide a large surface for stickers. Bright Plastics’ new design eliminated side action at the mold, leading to cost savings and increased perceived value with better appearance and brand identity. Bright Plastics worked with Hip Label Company to patent this new product.

Confluence partnered with Bright Design to develop a groundbreaking, patented kayak hatch seal system to prevent leakage. The new seal was designed to prevent leakage, enhance performance, improve durability and build consumer confidence.

Designed to prevent leaking, the Double Seal Kayak Hatch also reduces manufacturing costs. Confluence was able to save more than $70K initially in tooling expenses, and continues to save through reduced cycle time. Offering a new and significantly improved hard hatch cover design strengthens Confluence’s positioning as the leader in the industry.

This tooling innovation allows for both the deck and hatch seals to be formed in one injection molding process. By tunneling through the lower hatch body, the thermoplastic elastomer completely seals in one step.

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We were awarded two molds for a Cap & Jar from Bausch & Lomb Global Surgical Products. The two new molds had never been validated and were with a competitor for 24 months before Bausch & Lomb chose a new supplier. We performed a Design of Experiments and made several engineering changes so the parts would fall within specification. The parts are used for cornea transplant and have high visibility from a customer standpoint. The customer had money invested in inventory from two older molds to cover the lead time with the transfer of the two new molds. It was imperative to get the two new molds validated through the IQ, OQ, PQ processes as the product has been sold globally for more than 10 years.

The parts are now being molded in our Class 100,000 cleanroom that has obtained ISO 13485 certification. The Engineering Changes that we recommended successfully stopped the leaking issue that had plagued the previous supplier for the past two years.

We were able to eliminate the need to ship to Bausch & Lomb to have them perform a Leak Test on every lot. We reduced their investment in inventory because, with the former supplier, there had been a high scrap rate due to Caps & Jars leaking in their Incoming Inspection facility.

We molded three tops for drug tests that were shipped to Alabama for printing, then back to Burlington, NC, for assembly. The customer had to pay for shipping to and from Alabama; they had money invested in inventory to cover the printing process. They had extra rejects from the printing process that they used to pay us for the molded parts.

Previously, the parts were being decorated by using pad printing. We converted the process to a hot stamping process. We built a piece of automation that had a feeder bowl and two hot stamp machines. The two hot stamp machines allowed the customer to have two different colors in decorating their parts. The machine was fully automated and capable of producing more than 10,000 decorated parts in an hour.

We were able to eliminate the need to ship to and from Alabama. We reduced their investment in inventory because they no longer had to have inventory to cover the time for the trips to and from Alabama, and they did not have to pay for good parts that had been made into bad parts during the decoration process. The customer purchased the automation equipment and realized a payback in less than a year.