It was the kind of Monday QA professionals dread. The production and quality reports confirmed it: a stainless steel part degraded, possibly contaminating multiple production lots with metal shavings ranging in size from 0.6mm to 4mm. In-line metal detectors were of little use because they simply could not detect every piece.
Now what? They had no idea who to call for help. Before FlexXray, foreign material events meant production backlogs, product outages, millions of dollars in destroyed product, and millions more in lost revenue. With 1.5 million units of product with a retail value of more than $2.5 million, this customer faced significant lost revenue as well as the sunk cost of destroying the entire production run.
But all that changed after this customer learned about FlexXray at a prominent industry conference. Immediately upon reaching out to us, the value proposition was clear — send the product to FlexXray for high-power, low-LOD FM detection and recovery, keep production lines moving, and salvage millions in otherwise lost revenue and sunk costs from destroying the product.
Having first validated our capability to “see” the suspected foreign material (both stainless and ferrous) at a LOD down to 0.6mm in an extruded product full of inclusions, we set about planning an inspection and recovery protocol. Because the foreign material was potentially so small, and because the product matrix provided several challenges, FlexXray technicians devised a unique plan of action that involved out-of-the-case, bar-by-bar inspection of 1.5 million individual units at multiple facilities, including recovery of the actual FM. Our assistance was effective, timely, and profit-saving.
When foreign material shows up in product, it never wants to leave and always overstays its welcome. Worse yet, it rules the roost and dictates everything, bringing production lines to a screeching halt, threatening budgets and production metrics, challenging every aspect of your food safety systems, and potentially drawing negative attention to the brand you’ve worked so hard to nurture.
This is the FlexXray way. With five locations nationwide, we keep your product, your profits, and your brand safe. Within days of tapping FlexXray for critical help in their emergency, our customer’s product was inspected, the FM detected, and profits protected. About 97% of the on-hold product was returned to the retail channel, and process improvements were developed to better manage future FM events.
