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From pour to package deal to recycling, C3 forges forward, making modern machines for packaging, lamination and automation.
Having simply celebrated its thirtieth 12 months in enterprise in March, C3 Corp. goals to construct on its legacy of success by specializing in one key purpose: course of enchancment.
The producer of packaging, lamination and automation gear consistently examines operations to establish new methods to enhance manufacturing.
As mattress designs evolve and manufacturing programs change, C3’s engineers additionally scan the horizon for the most recent developments to anticipate the place the sleep enterprise is heading subsequent in order that the corporate’s machines hold tempo with rising wants.
“This mentality impacts our whole enterprise,” says Joe Van De Hey, CEO, founder and proprietor of the Appleton, Wisconsin-based firm. “We’re by no means happy with the established order. As a substitute, we’re at all times in search of new options to satisfy our clients’ greatest challenges.”
This 12 months, a lot of the corporate’s energies are directed towards recycling and sustainability. Recognizing there are precious supplies that go to waste on plant flooring and in trash bins and landfills, C3 is introducing a number of new machines in 2024 designed to assist mattress producers gather scrap supplies thrown away after manufacturing.
Lately, at a buyer’s request, C3 developed its first shredding and baling machines. This gear permits a mattress producer to shred and bale leftover foam and cloth supplies generated throughout manufacturing for straightforward recycling.
“The flexibility to recycle is turning into increasingly more necessary to producers,” Van De Hey says. Not solely is chopping the quantity of waste generated throughout mattress manufacturing the correct factor to do for the surroundings, he provides, nevertheless it’s additionally the sensible economical alternative, since these discarded supplies have a monetary worth. If processed properly, they are often reused in new, modern methods.
Going ahead, C3 is engaged on different gear that may allow the supplies inside used mattresses to be extra simply recognized and separated.
Sustainable Options: C3 Helps Mattress Producers Cut back Waste
This pondering isn’t new to C3. In 2021, the corporate launched one of many first paper-wrap options for a compression packaging machine that provides boxed mattress producers a substitute for plastic. The strategy nonetheless requires some plastic, nevertheless it reduces the quantity of stretch wrap to encase a typical boxed mattress by as a lot as 33%.
The patent-pending paper-wrap know-how prices a bit extra, Van De Hey says. However for sure clients, significantly these concentrating on eco-conscious customers, the additional price is greater than justified.
“A client who unboxes a mattress wrapped in paper is more likely to have a extra optimistic response to that model,” Van De Hey says. Along with elevating the model’s sustainability efforts, the paper wrapper can also result in enhanced client satisfaction, since it may be simply recycled or reused. And in contrast to plastic wrap, the paper will degrade, even when it leads to
a landfill.
“These customers can sleep simple figuring out that the mattress they purchased was packaged in an environmentally pleasant materials,” Van De Hey says.
He provides that by incorporating C3’s patent-pending Paper Roll Cage know-how into their manufacturing, mattress makers can run paper or stretch movie on the identical machine for higher flexibility.
Innovation in Boxed Mattress Manufacturing: Eco-Pleasant Packaging with C3
In recent times, C3 has skilled robust progress within the packaging phase of its enterprise. The development towards promoting and transport beds on to customers in bins took off about 10 years in the past, fueling demand for machines able to compressing, sealing, folding, rolling and bagging mattresses into smaller and smaller bundles.
At present, C3 gives a variety of compression packaging machines for foam, latex and coil merchandise, from foam blocks and toppers to mattresses and pillows. Its product line permits clients to search out the correct compression mixture for every mattress’s development, Van De Hey says. That’s crucial for a packaged mattress to ship the efficiency that’s meant as soon as it’s eliminated and arrange in a client’s residence.
“Everyone desires to get the bundle smaller and smaller,” Van De Hey says. “However simply because you’ve the potential to smash a mattress with 200 tons of strain doesn’t imply it is best to do it. You’ll get the mattress right into a field, however you’d by no means wish to sleep on it. The trick is figuring out the correct quantity of strain a person mattress can deal with with out compromising its high quality.”
C3 works with clients to calculate ideally suited packaging choices for his or her merchandise, “then helps them choose the very best machine for the job,” he says.
Choices — such because the trifold add-on for C3’s CF1396 compression machine, which folds compressed mattresses in thirds fairly than in halves — ship advantages in different areas of the enterprise that lower prices and enhance efficiencies.
For instance, the trifold reduces the size of a typical boxed mattress package deal by 16 inches, leading to a 16-by-30-inch packaging dimension. “That smaller dimension permits for a higher pallet density, which suggests higher storage capabilities with racking and elevated load utilization on vans,” Van De Hey says.
With correct cubing, C3’s companions have been in a position to match greater than 500 mattresses in a single truckload, he provides, decreasing their carbon footprint by 30%.
C3: Your Accomplice in Constructing a Higher Boxed Mattress Enterprise
Along with compression gear, C3 gives a variety of water-borne and hot-melt lamination machines. As soon as recognized largely for roll-coat functions of water-based adhesives, C3 now permits its current equipment, such because the LCN1250 machine, to use sizzling soften utilizing a bridge add-on. The bridge additionally can be utilized as a standalone laminator when mixed with a hopper and a conveyor.
at any weight and pace operators need.
Options embrace C3’s patent-pending comb-tip know-how, which permits for tighter management of every glue utility. “This hot-melt know-how is difficult the market to suppose otherwise about how we are able to use much less glue for a bond that’s equally as robust,” Van De Hey says.
The extra correct the tolerances on a roll-coat or hot-melt utility, the much less materials is required. “Placing on an excessive amount of glue might add as much as a greenback or so wasted on each layer of the mattress you place down, or $4 to $5 for a whole mattress,” he provides. “Multiply that by the a whole bunch of mattresses which are operating down the road every day, and that additional expense provides up quick.”
Along with saving cash, utilizing much less glue additionally helps sustainability by decreasing supplies. Extra environment friendly adhesive utility throughout mattress meeting may also make disassembly and recycling simpler when a mattress is discarded as a result of extreme glue can pose important challenges to recyclers.
Every of C3’s lamination programs is designed for various ranges of automation, enabling mattress producers to pick out the correct match for his or her workforce. The recent-melt bridge unit, for instance, requires solely two folks to position the layers on the belt and glue them collectively. This entry-level system eliminates points with hand spraying — all at a pleasant
value level.
To assist bedding producers get a greater deal with on materials utilization and simplify their provide chain, C3 just lately launched a Partnership Program. It gives assured efficiency, aggressive costs and speedy supply occasions for numerous movies, paper and adhesives. Shoppers can combine and match provides right into a single truckload, with supply intervals timed to match the wants of particular person manufacturing traces.
This system additionally offers clients a share credit score on purchases. These credit could also be redeemed towards the acquisition of spare components, one-on-one coaching for machine operators, set up prices, machine upgrades, and distant and onsite assist.
C3 Partnership Program: Knowledge-Pushed Insights for Optimized Boxed Mattress Manufacturing
As one other good thing about the Partnership Program, C3’s service crew is extra intently built-in into clients’ manufacturing to assist establish issues earlier than they come up. The connection additionally includes systematic assortment and evaluation of information associated to materials utilization.
“Many purchasers, significantly smaller producers, have a difficulty with managing the management factors of their manufacturing,” Van De Hey says. “The machine may very well be on a barely improper setting, inflicting you to make use of 20% extra movie than is required. With our Partnership Program, we are able to control these consumables and, in the event that they’re all of a sudden trending up, assist clients get a greater deal with on why that’s taking place.”
The Partnership Program additionally might help shoppers give attention to high quality. “A producer would possibly change to a less expensive movie to bag their beds that saves them cash up entrance however ends in beds being broken throughout transport as a result of the package deal seals gained’t maintain,” he says. “That injury might price much more than the financial savings from the cheaper movie. Our purpose is to assist our clients perceive the complete image and to show them how the machines and consumables had been designed to work collectively.”
Put in in 2019, C3’s enterprise useful resource planning system offers a brand new stage of capability on the subject of information administration. “We constantly discover modern makes use of of our ERP system throughout all our operations,” Van De Hey says, “resulting in the invention of novel methods to help our clients.”
Maybe C3’s web site sums it up finest: “We’re a bunch of creative minds who think about higher methods to design and engineer. … First, we think about it, then we engineer and construct it. Lastly, we ensure that our clients are getting probably the most out of it.”
From Thought to Implementation: C3’s Innovation Middle for Mattress Manufacturing
Along with supplying equipment, C3 is more and more being known as upon to supply solutions and recommendation. “Up to now, bedding producers sometimes had quite a lot of inside course of engineers who would make suggestions to administration on methods to incorporate new equipment into manufacturing,” Van De Hey says.
“Attributable to employment challenges, together with an growing old workforce, many corporations don’t at the moment have entry to this inside course of data, and so they come to us for suggestions on how finest to construct their beds.”
Buyer wants range from single machines to completely built-in traces. “All of our machines are constructed so producers can simply improve and add equipment as their manufacturing scales,” Van De Hey says. “A producer can begin small and add extra machines as their enterprise grows.”
To assist clients, C3 works to draw expert expertise at each stage, from salespeople and engineers to installers and repair techs. “All of them should be superb at what they do to allow them to ship the very best resolution to the client’s drawback,” he says.
Along with cautious hiring, coaching additionally receives quite a lot of consideration at C3.
“We try to construct experience inside every of our three worth streams in order that if a buyer has an issue, we are able to get them the solutions they should get again up and operating with minimal disruption,” Van De Hey says. “Our customer support begins with good product design — that means, we attempt to hold our machines so simple as doable — backed up by having the correct folks in place who perceive all of the processes concerned of their enterprise space and methods to rapidly troubleshoot any issues.”
As a part of this tradition of continuous studying, C3 sends electrical and mechanical specialists to clients’ vegetation throughout set up. This expertise offers the technicians precious insights into how gear is used outdoors of a take a look at surroundings and generally sparks concepts for enhancements in plant structure or machine design.
The strategy additionally results in extra job satisfaction for C3’s employees since their involvement extends past the plant flooring to incorporate direct expertise with clients within the subject.
“We’ve a really motivated group,” Van De Hey says. “We’re
a younger firm, with a median age round 38, and our tradition is constructed on teamwork, open communication and a spirit of innovation.”
With its headquarters within the dairy farmlands of rural Wisconsin, C3 attracts new expertise by attending profession festivals and different occasions at area people faculties and universities. “We wish to establish younger, shiny individuals who we are able to practice,” he says, “then present them with alternatives to develop and develop their experience.”
What I really like in regards to the sleep enterprise is that there are many small family-type corporations that had been launched by entrepreneurs with a dream.
Discovering expert workers is a problem for your entire manufacturing sector. “The workforces at most bedding vegetation have flipped over a number of occasions previously 5 years,” Van De Hey says. “And every time somebody leaves, their data and expertise exit the door, too. It takes quite a lot of money and time to interchange these employees.”
To assist producers fill this hole, C3 is growing new methods to cut back the manpower wanted to construct and transport beds, together with extra use of robotics. One venture includes creating a brand new robotic “porter” able to loading completed beds onto vans.
“We wish to reduce the human dealing with of mattresses throughout every stage of manufacturing because it’s a primary job that ends in quite a lot of ergonomic points,” Van De Hey says. “Our clients are demanding cost-cutting ideas to develop into extra environment friendly and efficient of their manufacturing processes. Their mantra is ‘much less is extra’ — much less supplies, much less labor and fewer price.”
C3 has a big area in its second facility on Marshall Street in Appleton devoted to analysis and growth. The realm features a full manufacturing line, the place clients can take a look at their very own concepts along with C3’s engineers.
“Bedding producers are in search of alternatives to distinguish themselves out there, and our take a look at line offers them a spot to attempt new concepts,” Van De Hey says. “They’re difficult each facet of constructing a mattress looking for creating a novel worth proposition for his or her customers.”
For extra C3, learn our unique interview, BedTimes Interview: Joe Van De Hey, CEO and Founder, C3 Company.
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