J.V. Components was a New England-based manufacturer of "unit soles," the mass-produced injection molded rubber composition soles used in the manufacture of shoes.

They employed a very labor intensive and time consuming process, requiring operators to remove soles from molding machines and place them on cooling racks where they slowly cooled and hardened by heat transfer with the ambient air circulation.

Only after adequate cooling, and in a separate manual process, could the unit soles be boxed and transported to the next stage of the manufacturing process, a surface-hardening chlorination tank.

We invented and developed an improved process in which the hot unit sole is transferred from the mold directly into a transport container immersed in a cooling bath.

The transport containers then moved through a "canal" of cooling water, allowing cooling to occur during transport to the chlorination process.

The resulting increase in automation of this labor-intensive shoe-sole manufacturing process netted in a $225K annual savings for the client.