I regularly get calls and emails about what to do with baggy webs. Students in my classes eagerly await learning what web-handling technique or trick will allow them to run baggy webs without wrinkling or other troubles. They're in for a disappointment.

There is little you can do to effectively handle baggy material. People play endlessly with tensions, spreaders and other things, most often with limited, if any, success. This is not to say you shouldn't try. However, because you and thousands of others have tried the same things over and over with the same limited success, you probably should not expect very different results this time. It then becomes an inescapable conclusion that excessively baggy material is unsuitable for the application. In other words, it is defective.

You should not have to put up with baggy stock from your supplier. Do not make their problem yours. Do not even be dissuaded if the supplier is your own company and you are required to run it. Do not be dissuaded by the fact that sending it back may cause you to run short of a material that is in limited supply. Do not listen to their claims that the condition has been corrected. Doing any of these things merely "enables the offenders."

First, see if you can measure a profile corresponding to the especially baggy rolls. If, for example, a hardness deviation of 10 units across a roll was your threshold of pain, then you could require the supplier to measure and cull rolls with variation greater than this. If you can't get a roll-based measure to correlate well to pain, then you should reject based on visual bagginess of the unwinding stock.

The sooner the rejection is made, the better. Rejection at the supplier's site is better than before your unwind, which is better than after your unwind, which is better than at your windup after adding value—and all of these are far better than getting a customer complaint.

On the first offense, carefully document the roll condition, process conditions and results. Take pictures. Grab samples. Take the offending roll off and carefully pack it for return. Follow up with a phone call. On the second offense, follow up in writing as well as with a phone call. On the third offense, you send not only the offending roll back with clear documentation; you send the whole truck back. In this way you will get their much-needed attention.

That is not to say the supplier can fix it. They probably won't be able to. Even if they identify the source—a problem requiring immense troubleshooting skills—they may not be able to fix it. The offending component may be as good as they can afford or as good as the industry knows how to make.

However, if you do not send the truck back, you will have zero chance of imparting enough energy to budge this problem. In the meantime, look for alternative suppliers. This is usually the quickest means of success. I don't have much pity for those of you stuck with a single supplier, as this is contrary to careful business practice.

You don't have to take it any more. Get out of that "abusive relationship." If your purchasing agent, boss or plant manager does not support you, they're part of the problem.

920/725-7671, drroisum@aol.com, www.roisum.com