Industry 4.0 Growing Compounder Alterra Unlocks the Power of Data to Improve Quality 38 Are Electri ed Molds Right for You? 42 Processors Responding to Demands for More PCR 46 Tips on Purging Compounding Twins A property of Gardner Business Media VOL 67 APRIL 2021 N o - 4 Fast-growing Alterra strives for “best-in-class” manufacturing operations driven by a custom- made Industry 4.0 platform. The plastics processing market rst heard rumblings of terms like Industry . , the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Big Data and the Connected Factory about ve to six years ago. For many in plastics, the coming-out party for these concepts was the K show in Düsseldorf, Germany, where suppliers—mostly of injection molding machines— touted the bene ts of “big data” and the value of interconnected equipment. Since then, the technology has advanced into virtually all other processes and equipment types. Nowadays, whether it’s extrusion lines or discrete equipment such as dryers, blenders and conveying systems, suppliers are quick to point out the devices’ Industry . functionality. Most industry watchers will tell you that while the North American plastics processing market has carefully scrutinized this technology, not many have made the plunge, espe- cially compared with their counterparts in Europe and Asia. Over the years Plastics Technology has endeavored to nd out why. The responses we’ve heard from processors range from, “How does all this data help make me money?” to “If Industry . means I have to buy all-new equipment, I’ll sit on the sidelines for a bit.” Alterra operators are equipped with tablets to help them track process parameters and be noti ed immediately if anything is off-spec. Connected Compounder 34 APRIL Plastics Technology PTonline.com By Jim Callari Editorial Director On-Site Alterra Holdings • Seymour, Ind. us for the R&D phase, then take the tolling to another compounder. Now, we have the capacity to take these projects all the way through manufacturing. And these are generally high-volume, multi-year projects. We don’t ll in because the resin company has run out of capacity. Rather, they come to us because they trust us. And some of these tolling projects are very specialized. For example, we compound the material that is used as the skin for one of the world’s largest manufacturers of golf balls. Alterra complements the tolling business with a suite of its own product offerings. It has developed multiple formulations for straws that are marine degradable. It has launched an EVA-based crosslink- able, foamable compound used to make soles for U.S. footwear manu- facturers. It is partnering with an undisclosed Asian resin producer to commercialize lm-grade bioplastic compounds to replace PE for shopping bags. Along with CheilJedang Corp. of Korea, which bought Metabolix’s PHA business in , CES has worked on new grades of the biopolymer that it will compound for U.S.-based customers. “We think the future is in biodegradable and sustainable products, and we are expanding our efforts in that area,” Kiani states. “We source post-consumer reclaim on a worldwide basis, primarily PP. We blend this reclaim with our TPEs and TPVs to offer sustainable solutions to companies in the consumer-products area. An example of this is razors. Generally, in that business the handle is made of PP, with the soft-touch overmolded of TPE. Our intention is to provide material for both the handle, which could be PCR PP, and the soft-touch, which could have up to PCR. Thrive is the tradename of another of Alterra’s sustainable products The Thrive series of cellulose- lled PP compounds are reportedly being Alterra CEO Arash Kiani says the compounder moved to the SmartChronos 4.0 platform to ensure its products were made in a world-class manufacturing environment. But at least one compounder, Alterra Holdings ( alterraholdings. com ), headquartered in Clifton, N.J., has gured things out. About two years ago, it embarked on a plan to build its own Industry . platform at its , ft production plant in Seymour, Ind. It ramped up those plans about a year ago—when the global pandemic threatened any business that needed people to operate—and is at the point now where it is commercializing its IIoT solution to others in manufacturing—plastics and otherwise. Alterra bills itself as the “fastest- growing” compounder in North America. It is headed by CEO Arash Kiani, who started his career in compounding in when, as a graduate student, he went to work for Werner & P eiderer (now Coperion Corp.), a builder of twin- screw compounding extruders. Kiani ultimately rose to the machine builder’s global head of R&D before leaving in to found Compounding Engineering Solutions (CES), which specialized in compounding engineering thermoplastics, notably nylon, ABS, PC and acrylic. By , CES monthly sales were roughly , and Kiani launched a sister company, Harmony Elastomers, growing that business to the point where it is now the second largest producer of crosslinked butyl rubber, under the tradename NexGen, used mainly for sound-damping and construction applications. In , private investment rm Beaconhouse Capital Management LLC bought into Kiani’s businesses, and also acquired PLA supplier Trelles, which years prior had purchased Cereplast. In , Beaconhouse acquired Polymerixx, a compounder of CaCo- lled PP, and in bought the intellectual property of Thrive (cellu- lose- lled compounds) from International Paper. It consolidated those business units under the Alterra umbrella and moved all manu- facturing to the Indiana facility, where Trelles had been operating. In the Indiana plant, Alterra has six production lines ranging in size from to mm. Five were purchased from Coperion; the sixth from Entek. Alterra also runs a -mm kneader as well as three Coperion lines devoted to R&D. The company has a nominal capacity of million lb/yr and runs on a / schedule. “Our expertise is in elastomers, R&D, new-product develop- ment and bioplastics,” remarks Kiani. “We can say with con - dence that we are the fastest-growing compounder in North America by virtue of the fact that we’ve been doubling our sales every year for the past ve. We even grew during the pandemic.” An unspeci ed percentage of Alterra’s business is in tolling, a business that Kiani has played a major role in cultivating as a result of his years in the industry. “Tolling for major resin producers goes a long way to paying for the operational e cien- cies of the plant,” Kiani explains. “We developed these relation- ships when we started CES. Back then, the ‘majors’ would come to “Tolling for major resin producers goes a long way to paying for the operational ef ciencies of the plant.” @plastechmag Plastics Technology On-Site Alterra Holdings trialed now by Tier suppliers to the automotive industry as an option to glass- lled PP for car components such as center consoles and air boxes. Compared with typically used resins for these appli- cations, Kiani says Thrive boasts a cycle-time reduction in molding while providing the opportunity for lightweighting. IT’S ALL CONNECTED Alterra, in the words of Kiani, is “hyper-focused on data.” But not on collecting data for the sake of some trend, but to use it as a means to reach “our goal to be the best-in-class manufacturer of every product we make. I want to make sure everything I produce is in spec. If there is something wrong, I want immediate and automatic noti cation so someone can react immediately.” To that end, Alterra embarked on a multi-million-dollar project two years ago to fully connect the Indiana factory: “every single machine, every single operator, every single quality- control person, and all their supervisors.” Alterra put this project in overdrive about a year ago, when the coronavirus pandemic threated to shutter factories and force shop-oor workers to stay home. Alterra is using what’s been named the SmartChronos platform, aptly named since the Greek word chronos translates to chronicle in English. The system relies on a network of sensors on each machine that track parameters in real time such as feeder rate, barrel temperatures, torque, and much more, alerting the QC and production teams the instant a parameter falls out of spec, so they in turn can text the operator to take a look at what’s going on. Kiani elaborates, “There is a sweet spot for each product, in terms of barrel-temperature settings, torque range, feed-rate range, etc. And they are all product dependent. Most IIoT plat- forms consider these parameters as ‘ xed in place,’ so we created a product-dependent platform that allows live feedback between QC and the operator on the line. As soon as something is out of range, the operators will be noti ed by a Slack SMS text to react to it immediately. Settings are color-coded in easy-to-understand green, yellow and red. “The idea is to keep things in the green zone,” says Kiani. All of Alterra’s operators are armed with tablets. “When we start a job, we de ne a machine we want to use, add sensors to it, identify the product, the grade, and look at the historical result. Based on that, we establish our process settings: feed-rate ranges, barrel-temperature ranges, QC tolerances. This comes our ‘bible.’ On their tablets the operators have checklists that have to be run through before starting the run. These check- lists are also live. The supervisor looks at the checklist and signs off. We have a checklist of every aspect of a run. At so many other companies, the production manager comes in rst thing in the morning and might want to know if the third shift cleaned out the feeders before the run. Often, the answer he might get from the rst-shift operator is, ‘I don’t know.’ Not anymore.” The platform does not require operators to enter run data by hand anymore, but Kiani requires them to do so every hour or so “to be engaged.” Otherwise, he notes, “They do no data collection.” And at the press of a button, Kiani says this data can be down- loaded into an Excel or Google spreadsheet. The system also permits Alterra to go back in time to do “deep dives” on every box of material the compounder produces. “Maybe we need to do a deep dive on Product X that’s in Box Number . We have at our ngertips all the processing details on how each box was made. We can access average readings for every param- eter. And importantly, we have open data transparency. Customers have live access to our process data, direct access to QC. If their end-use customer has a problem with Box Number they can log in, see the line running their product, see if there were feeding or temperature variations. That way, the customer knows what they are getting is the best product they can get.” Over the past several months Alterra has added new modules to SmartChronos. Now, cameras are connected to each production line. Videos of production runs are stored in the cloud for days. If something were to happen—say the machine went down—the program captures a -minute clip before and after shutdown so managers can see what happened and ensure that safety stan- dards were maintained. “Most IIoT platforms are built around dumb sensors,” Kiani states. “What we have here has been described by Tony, a long-time asso- ciate of mine, as a ‘product-by-process’ that gives us a signi cant competitive edge in the market.” Sensors here track the temperatures of each barrel zone, as well as the rate of various feeders, in real time. 36 APRIL Plastics Technology PTonline.com Alterra Holdings On-Site