Apple engineers are examining bacon packaging to help raise the bar for US manufacturers

Foch knew that automated sensors could help, for example, identify environmental causes of hole-punching problems, but with so many potential options to try, he didn’t know where to start. “The worst thing you can do, in small businesses especially, is go into a pilot disinfectant trial, hoping to find a viable product,” he says. “When someone else has done it before, they know what route works, and they can save time and cost.”

That’s exactly what three directors and managers from Apple’s engineering and operations teams demonstrated when Fouche and Quinn Shanahan, who oversees medical device and specialty products production at Polygon, visited the Manufacturing Academy in October and November, respectively. Over the course of what Fouch estimates is five hours, Apple employees assessed Polygon’s challenges and applied Little’s Law industrial engineering equation — which can identify capacity bottlenecks — to devise solutions.

The result was a detailed strategy that identified sensors and software that could track production and alert on anomalies at a reasonable cost. Shanahan says Polygon can now count the number of passes a pipe makes through the mill, and will soon be able to understand whether an overheated motor or other factors could explain the failed hole punch.

If all goes as planned, Polygon will have implemented a working system to address its most significant bottlenecks for as little as $50,000 compared to the $500,000 an automation consulting firm might charge, according to Foch. The Apple team is visiting Polygon to talk about other upgrades. “They’ve been down these paths before,” Foch says. “Without their help, it would take much longer.”

Apple’s Herrera says giving small manufacturers insight into the benefits of automation and other technologies could eventually lead them to work with consultants and invest in more expensive systems.

Two other academy participants told WIRED they haven’t received extensive help from Apple, and Herrera says it’s a matter of companies preparing a “problem statement” that Apple can help with, but they’re working on bringing what they’ve learned to their factories. Jack Koslowski, a project engineer at Blue Lake, a startup specializing in plastic-free packaging, says he was pleased to hear about how deeply Apple products were tested.