When Ocean Spray was about to introduce a new 1-gal jug with an unusual handle affixed to its side about 18 months ago, engineers at the Henderson, NV, plant discovered that it wouldn’t run well on the filling machine designated for the bottle.
“We discovered we had a problem with the radius of the discharge starwheel and the number of pockets on it,” reports Steve Daniels, who then served as technical resource at the plant. “We couldn’t make the existing starwheel deep enough to accommodate the bottle and handle without causing spillage.” Because of the handle’s side location, the starwheel had to be positioned low on the bottle, so it jostled the filled bottle.
