Western Nonwovens works hard to ensure FR compliance
Touts ability to meet customer needs
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, April 24, 2007
Orlando, Fla. — ORLANDO, Fla. --Western Nonwovens, a supplier of fire-resistant products to the bedding industry, is proud of its manufacturing facilities.
 With a burner in the vertical position, a burn test gets under way in the burn lab at Western Nonwovens’ plant in Orlando. |
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With a burner in the vertical position, a burn test gets under way in the burn lab at Western Nonwovens’ plant in Orlando. |
But before company officials led a tour of their nonwovens plant here — one of six the company has in the United States that turn out FR products — they spent several minutes talking about the rigorous systems they have put in place to ensure that bedding producers receive FR-compliant products.
Terry Gibbons, general manager for the company's highloft business on the East Coast, said Western can make the same EsyntialSafe FR products at all six plants. It can quickly shift production schedules to meet customers' needs, giving the company a service advantage, he said.
Western's other FR factories, in addition to the 50,000-square-foot facility here, are in California, Utah, Missouri and Illinois.
Steve Ellis, director of quality, reviewed the nine-point "Bill of Rights" that Western has established to assure its customers that its FR products will meet the highest quality standards.
Western promises uniform products and specifications nationwide, he said. It will not ship unapproved finished goods, and it offers "traceability" for the raw materials it brings in to the finished products.
Furthermore, he said, Western will monitor the effectiveness of its quality systems, and will establish test procedures to demonstrate acceptable product performance of raw materials and finished goods, as jointly defined by Western and its customers.
Ellis said the move into the FR arena has forced Western to build more accountability into its systems.
"Our people have to do things differently," he said. "They have to do things they never dreamed of a few years ago. This requires a lot of training."
When it ships its FR materials to bedding producers, Western accompanies the shipments with a "certificate of analysis" that explains exactly what the producers are receiving. In addition, it color codes its rolls of FR products, making it easier for the producers to keep track of different products.
Western performs tests at set intervals on all FR shipments, using small-scale burn tests that it first developed in 2003. Those tests use two sets of burners, one horizontal and one vertical, the same approach used for testing for the upcoming federal mattress flammability standard. The burn tests enable Western to screen potential FR products and to test the products in their regular production runs. Heat monitors hooked to a computer system quickly chart the heat release rate of each material tested.
Western has conducted more than 250,000 burn tests since it began the process, a number that no other FR supplier can match, according to Tom Taylor, manager of Western's bedding business. "We have been passionate about this," he said.
"We will be here for you," he told a group of bedding producers visiting the Orlando facility recently. "We are committed to this industry. We will do everything we can to help you."
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