How does Aluminium profile length affect productivity?
Aluminium profile is the second largest component used in roller blind production after the fabric. For many years it has been accepted that this is only available in 4m lengths and more recently in 5m lengths.
In this article we run a detailed study comparing how these profile lengths can affect your production efficiency. We also included a longer 6m profile into the comparison.
The Study
We randomly selected 300 sizes from the whole of our 2023 production and split them into 3 days at 100 blinds per day. Each day included a mix of 32mm, 40mm and 43mm profiles, we used an advanced algorithm to calculate how many lengths of profile we would have to handle each day and how much wastage we would get overall.
The Results
6m profile provided an 81% saving in wastage compared to 4m and 68% saving compared to 5m profile.
The larger the profile the more efficient the results. For our own production we have used the results of this study and now only work with 6m profile lengths. Looking at the study (compared to 4m) this reduces wastage over the 3 days from 7.55 lm down to 1.46 lm. That is a saving of just under 81%.
6m profile provided a 32% reduction in lengths handled compared to 4m and 15% reduction compared to 5m
The other key improvement is the number of lengths handled. When using the 4m profile our team would have had to handle 114 lengths compared to only 77 lengths in the 6m profile. This is a handling saving of just over 32%.
