The company built automation equipment that was required to be washed down for sanitation reasons, but required cables to enter and exit the electrical control enclosure. The existing cord grips had a directional seal to allow for an IP68 rating, and were of various sizes to match the cables. After condensing the cables in an earlier project reducing the cord grips seemed a logical follow-up project to again reduce the clutter of the assembly floor.

Instead of simply truncating the currently used cord grips, we asked service if they noticed any issues with the existing cord grips and were informed some seemed to be leaking water into the enclosure. The current fix was for them to simply replace the entire cord grip assembly, which was not documented. The team then decided to review the current assemblies and found that almost a quarter of all in house equipment had the seal placed backwards. At this time we researched other cord grips and found a company that used a simple O-Ring as the seal. This would prevent the assemblers from installing the seal incorrectly.

This change in cord grips ensured a better seal, of IP69K, a more error proof assembly, and the change in manufacture decreased the price. Of course the initial goal of reducing the various cord grip sizes was also successful with an improved stocking area and a kanban system in place.