BOC Increases Medical Oxygen Production Capacity by 50 Percent

27-Aug-2002

MURRAY HILL, N.J, Aug. 26, 2002 - BOC has developed a new cylinder-filling process that will enable it to step up production of small medical oxygen cylinders to meet increased demand.

BOC estimates that the new procedure will result in a 50 percent increase in the number of cylinders filled per man-hour at their medical oxygen cylinder-filling facilities.

The new process was developed by a team of BOC production design experts, and underwent several modifications in a pilot plant environment before being tested in a commercial production facility. Field testing began with the installation of two small medical oxygen filling racks, which each hold 48 cylinders, at seven of BOC's highest-volume cylinder filling operations in the U.S.

After some further modifications, the team was able to increase the number of cylinders produced per man-hour worked by 50 percent. When the system is fully installed in all of BOC's 21 small medical oxygen filling sites, the company expects to increase production capacity by approximately 60,000 cylinders per month.

"Small medical oxygen cylinders represent the largest volume of products moving through medical gas filling plants. Operations improvements in this area are important and extremely valuable," says Karen Krzywicki, medical marketing manager, BOC. "The installation of this new "Best in Class" process at all our small oxygen cylinder filling plants demonstrates our commitment to this market and will enable us to meet increasing customer demand for medical oxygen."

Ed Snype, manager of cylinder production processes, BOC, and team leader for the group that developed the new cylinder-filling process, said, "We had two objectives in mind when we started. We wanted to do something to reduce the amount of repetitive motion involved in filling small medical oxygen cylinders, and we also hoped that we could find a way to increase productivity. This new process accomplishes both objectives."

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