Global Healthcare Manufacturer, Vernacare turns to smart technology to drive efficiency

About Vernacare

Vernacare is a healthcare manufacturer specialising in infection prevention, clinical waste management and surgical products for European and North American healthcare customers.

Originally founded in 1961 and headquartered in Chorley, Lancashire, United Kingdom, today Vernacare employs around 500 people across six sites in the UK and Canada.

"FourJaw has given us knowledge and the power to address key capacity challenges".

Results

20% REDUCTION IN MACHINE DOWNTIME

Vernacare production line with FourJaw machine monitoring

Vernacare is using FourJaw's machine monitoring platform to monitor two of its production lines that produce Conti Cotton Soft Dry Wipes at their site in Worksop.

Project Objective

In 2023 Vernacare installed FourJaw at its site in Worksop on its dry wipe production lines to identify how efficiently machines were running and determine the root causes of downtime.

Driving Production Line Efficiency

The result of this has seen Vernacare transform efficiency on its production lines, removing the production backlog, reducing machine downtime, improving on-time delivery rates and almost eliminating rush jobs and overtime.

Machine data obtained with FourJaw provided insights into efficiency, enabling Vernacare to identify the main causes of unplanned downtime on its production lines. This information helped Vernacare’s operations and production managers work with their machine providers’ maintenance teams to address outstanding issues and make a business case to upgrade machine parts for improved uptime.

"We’ve removed all back orders and are now in a position to deliver orders on time for customers worldwide, a tangible benefit of our unprecedented increase in machine productivity, and we’ve also improved staff retention with a calmer, less stressful working environment where operators have the autonomy to get on with the job."

Vernacare has also gained a precise understanding of how long each production run would take to deliver target outputs, enabling it to plan more proactively and efficiently to meet customer demand.

This approach enabled Vernacare to eliminate its production backlog, reduce the frequency of production changeovers, cut machine downtime by 20 per cent, improve on-time delivery rates, and almost eliminate the need for rush jobs and overtime.

"Vernacare shows how a relatively small intervention can snowball to deliver much bigger operational and commercial business benefits to a wide range of stakeholders. We are thrilled to see our technology help such an innovative healthcare manufacturer improve its productivity and production processes, and the difference it has made to their customers and staff members alike.”