Case Study: Preformed Line Products achieves reduced rejects and improved manufacturing efficiency with Palisade's @RISK

Putting Pieces Together More Perfectly: @RISK Helps Improve Manufacturing Efficiency for Preformed Line Products

Preformed Line Products (PLP), a global manufacturer of overhead power-line hardware, faced a tolerance-stacking challenge when combining parts made by different specialist vendors—specifically a pultruded rod and a clamping spring for spreader rods. PLP needed to know how much variation each supplier could tolerate without causing assembly failures, so they turned to Palisade’s @RISK to model the real-world variability instead of using arbitrary “split-the-difference” tolerances.

Using Palisade’s @RISK with Distribution Fitting, Monte Carlo simulation and the Goal Seek feature, PLP modeled supplier SPC data to calculate interference-fit probabilities and derive vendor-specific tolerances. The approach eliminated unnecessary rejects, saved time and money by giving each vendor achievable targets, reduced incoming inspection failures toward zero, and enabled PLP to extend @RISK across other processes—demonstrating a measurable improvement in manufacturing efficiency driven by Palisade’s solution.

Preformed Line Products

Phil Timbrell

Manager of Engineering Services