Co-Op Experience.

For my CO-OP assignment, I worked at CP Flexible Packaging in York, Pennsylvania. This flexible packaging company has a heavy stake in the snack food industry. CP Flexible Packaging offers such products/features as converting pouches with various unique closures, shrink wrap labels, stretch film labels, snack food wrappers, and chip bags. CP also has two other smaller plants, one plant is in Bristol, PA where a lot of their stretch and shrink film products are produced. Their third plant was just recently acquired and is located up in Buffalo, NY, this plant also specializes in the same area that the plant in Bristol works on. At the plant I worked at, I was located within the Technical Department where I had my own desk located on the factory floor. The Technical Department had a major roll in the day-to-day operations of the plant. These rolls included running new jobs, searching for new markets/clients, communicating with suppliers and buyer, and making sure the plant still meets SQF and industry standards. The plant I worked at is equipped with 2 Extrusion Laminators, 2 Solvent Adhesive Laminators (SAL), 8 Slitters, 6 Presses, and a Quality Control Lab. My mentor, Lee Millard, is the Corporate Technical Director who oversaw all trials and special jobs/products and product development as well as assisting with the salespeople with acquiring new clients and business.

I had several various short-term projects and a handful of long-term projects. During my time here at CP, I had about 3 long term projects and 3 short-term projects. The first long-term project I started out with was a project dealing with Extruder Tension Control settings. The purpose of this project was to find the right process conditions that would decrease the amount of curl present in certain film types after they have been extrusion laminated. After several weeks of constant monitoring of the two extruders and recording their settings to see which changes are helping with the curl and which ones are making the curl worse. Eventually, we were able to gather enough data where we tested new settings on the extruders which resulted in a success. Since this, we now have our QC department check the curl on every finished roll to ensure they are within specifications.

The second long-term project I had was dealing with the Slitters located in our finishing department. With this project I was collecting rehab tickets from our finishing department and logging in an excel file to see if there are any noticeable trends relating to the film type, machine, or operator. Now a rehab ticket is a little paper slip that all slitter operators have access to, the slitter operator use these tickets when they have an issue or something with the rolls they ran, so they write down the reason the roll is incorrect and then send it off to our rehab department to be rewound so they can be salvaged for the customer. My goal for this project was to figure out what the most common cause and how we can change certain variables in order to reduce the number of rolls being sent to rehab so there is now delay in our shipments to customers. The status of this project is ongoing currently and will most likely be handed off to the next intern.

The third long-term project I worked on was the standardization of the breakdown-analysis reports. The goal of this project was to create a standardized report that can be used by other various people in the Technical department and future incoming interns. The need for this standardized report arose when various salespeople would come into the office and hand my mentor/boss a package asking for us a breakdown to know what its composition and if we are able to replicate this exact item with our facilities. The standardization of the report slowly began to come together over the course of several weeks as my mentor and the salespeople asked for breakdown analysis. In the end, this project was a success as my boss has said that this new standardized report is very professional and consistent.

The various short-term projects I worked on were mainly specialized jobs or trials that were already in development. The first trial I assisted with was a new adhesive qualification trial where I worked closely with the company’s adhesive supplier (coim) technician. We worked together on three different trials, during a two-month period, during these trials I assisted with the setup and calibration of the equipment. Once that was all setup, I stayed out at the machine with the technician ensuring that the machine was running fine with the new adhesive and that all operations were still running at normal. After completing these three trials together, we were able to successfully qualify the switch to this new adhesive in the upcoming year.

Another trial I worked on was a holographic film for Cartamundi’s “Magic the Gathering” trading cards. For this trial I was responsible with watching the holographic film be laminated to the graphics layer and ensuring that the correct side of the film was treated. After lamination I then had to gather samples to test the lamination bond strength of the holographic film layer to the ink layer and then record my findings to the client. The trial was a success as the final holographic product came out with a satisfying look and lamination bonds that were in the required specifications

The last big trial I worked on was for ocean spray dealing with a recyclable pouch. The goal of this trial was to develop a fully recyclable film structure for Ocean Spray’s 6 oz. dry cranberries stand-up pouch. I oversaw this trial from when it printed all the way to ensuring it was shipped to our pouch contractor. The main concern with this trial was that the outerweb of the film structure tended to stretch easily so we had to ensure we were not stretching out this film at all so that we are still having the correct eye spots and repeat that are still within in the correct technical specifications.

During my time at CP, the people there were extremely helpful and wanted me to learn as much as I could during my limited time there. My mentor and the rest of the technical department were always open and willing to answer any questions I may have had about various topics. If I ever wanted to work out on a certain project or trial my mentor was always very kind and willing to include me if he was able to and keep me updated on the rest of the ongoing projects. One thing I liked least during my time at CP was sometimes there were slow days where not much was going on and I had to go out and find work on my own, but my mentor and the rest of the department were always willing to include me with what they were working if I ever asked to help them out. Everyone within the technical department were always extremely helpful and always encouraged to me to learn more and more. Overall, my suggestion for the next intern is to not be afraid to ask any questions that they may have, learn as much as you can from all the varying departments there, and get to know the team, they’re all extremely helpful and want you to learn.