The company had three deburring machines which processed medical implants that failed their quality inspection. The parts were then sent to a hand deburring rework station before being reinspected. While gathering data, it was shown that up to 20% of the parts failed inspection due to burrs. The process was immediately investigated to ensure all work instructions were being followed. After confirming the process was running correctly and the output had such a high failure rate, new equipment needed to be researched.

Due to the product being medical implants the new equipment had to be able to keep the batches together for traceability, and ensure no foreign material was impregnated into the parts. After testing out different equipment we decide to change from vibration deburring to centrifugal barrel deburring. The new equipment had four different barrels allowing up to four different batches to be run at once while maintaining traceability. With the increase of batch density we realized that the overall throughput would be increased, along with the decreased cycle time the new equipment had approximately 80% more throughput. This allowed the company to purchase two new machines while simultaneously increasing current production throughput, and allowing for easy expansion of a third machine if future demand required.