A strategic customer wanted a lower cost solution for product improvement because the higher cost of the current product mix prohibited the customer from gaining additional market share. A new lower cost product mix processed well in the customer’s equipment, but the formulation failed to maintain key performance properties, which again prevented the customer from penetrating the market.

Reformulated the product mix using both the lower cost mix and the higher cost mix to create a mid-cost solution, which enabled the customer to match the performance properties required to meet their customer’s specifications. The new mid-cost solution gained the market share needed to launch a new product and diversified the customer’s product portfolio.

From a supply standpoint, the new solution produced a 55% higher return on average compared to current commodity-grade products and solidified a new business platform for the supplier. The new product mix continued to garner mutually beneficial returns as the customer was able to diversify the product mix further with new formulations, and the supplier enjoyed new raw material sales from both related and unrelated applications.

The market demanded a fibrous product that would melt at a lower point than commercial-grade synthetic fibers. The lower melting point was necessary in order for the product to adhere to higher melting point fibers without deforming or melting those substrate fibers.

Meeting the market demand was complicated by the fact that low melting point fibers are difficult to “spin” or fabricate because of the inherent tackiness and elasticity of the low melting point polymer, which tends to make the fibers wrap around adjacent fibers during the manufacturing process.

Developed a low melting point fiber with a 50º C differential compared to other commercial-grade plastic fibers. This low melting point fiber was further engineered to minimize elasticity and reduce inherent tackiness.

The low melting point fiber was designed with cutting edge polymer technology and was the first application to capitalize on these innovative polymers. During the first year, sales exceeded one million pounds and garnered a 55% higher return over conventional polymers.

Today, the polymer has been on the market for more than a decade and has proliferated into many other specialty applications that desire the same low melting point behavior and reduced tackiness.

A customer was not pleased with the product they were receiving from their current supplier. The customer desired a new product with improved aesthetics that would exceed the performance of their current product. However, the product that the customer envisioned did not exist in the industry. Furthermore, the technology in use at the time was not capable of meeting the customer’s aesthetic and performance requirements.

Invented and patented the technology to create the desired product and designed multiple prototypes for the customer’s final approval. The new product design met all of the customer’s performance requirements and was slated for sale in a premium price position.

Stretch wrap film produced using the cast film process loses cling when stretched to 200% elongation with a commercial pallet wrapper. The density of the polyethylene cling layer in an A/B/C co-extruded cast film must be below 0.9 g/cc to provide the desired enhanced cling capability. However, this lower density polyethylene was not commercially available in the stretch film market.

Produced multiple lower density polyethylene high-cling polymers using Dow patented technology and tested them to evaluate their cling properties in comparison to commercial stretch-cling films. The film structures in the high-cling layer exhibited equivalent or higher cling values when stretched to 200% elongation versus the unstretched condition. Furthermore, at a density less than 0.88 g/cc, the cling properties of the newly invented films are superior to commercially representative films.

Patented these innovative high-cling polymers, and they are currently available in the global polyethylene market and typically demand a premium price over conventional stretch-cling polyethylene resins.

A customer’s manufacturing process developed significant quality issues, which threatened to close the downstream brand owner’s manufacturing plant. In addition, the customer was concerned that incomplete deliveries would cause the brand owner to end the current business relationship altogether.

The direct cause of the production interruption could not be correlated to variations in the supplier’s raw materials or to problems with variables in the customer’s manufacturing process. The customer’s plant was running at capacity and could not afford the potential off-grade and production downtime necessary to perform any significant troubleshooting in-house.

Initiated a Six Sigma project as the primary supplier in partnership with a secondary supplier and the customer to identify the source of the interruption in manufacturing. The Six Sigma study revealed that the problem was primarily formed in the customer’s manufacturing process, but contaminated and/or insufficiently mixed products proved to be important secondary sources of the interruption as well.

The improvements that resulted from the Six Sigma study reduced the customer’s scrap rate by 1%-2% over the length of the production campaigns and avoided a $20M potential loss of account business. In addition, the equipment improvements enabled the customer to mix raw material at a higher level, which significantly lowered manufacturing interruptions and subsequent production downtime. Scrap rates were lowered as well. Both the primary and secondary suppliers agreed to send only low contaminate raw material to the customer as a further precaution.