Do the pressures of life sometimes threaten to overwhelm you? Too many deadlines and demands, too little time?
In today’s fast paced world sometimes things can get on top of us. The pressures of our day to day life can be overpowering, threatening to drown us. For many people, stress is so commonplace that it has become a way of life.
I felt like that – swamped – as I stood on the factory floor, with deadlines to meet, orders to fill, crates piling up around me and an oven that couldn’t keep up with production.
I knew that I needed to take steps to deal with my stress. I needed to ask for help. I couldn’t do this on my own.
Independent Extrusions Limited (INEX) knew where to turn recently when they asked JIPL to assess options for improving their ageing oven capacity at their Hamilton plant. The existing ovens were not able to keep up with the increase in production – with crates of extrusions stacked up on the factory floor waiting to be aged.
Innovation, creativity and attention to detail are the values that JIPL adheres to when taking on any new project and JIPL utilised these when assessing options for improving the ageing oven capacity at INEX’ Hamilton plant.
INEX started their aluminium extrusion business in 1997 with refurbished plant purchased offshore including an old second-hand ageing oven. In 2002, with the growing demand from within New Zealand and Australia, they expanded their operation with the purchase of a new 8″ Danieli Breda extrusion press. INEX is an acknowledged leader in aluminium extrusions and supply extruded aluminium to the manufacturing and fabrication industries throughout New Zealand and Australia.
INEX asked JIPL to design and build an ageing oven for the new plant back in 2002 for the new press production. The oven required innovative technology in that it had to cater for 50% higher volumes than standard ovens. The heat transfer technology JIPL developed was unique and was a result of considerable research as well as experience earned from previous ageing ovens modified, or designed and built by JIPL over the years.
As production has increased in recent years, the existing ovens didn’t have the capacity to keep up.
The solution JIPL developed to improve the plant capacity was to extend the original, old oven to cater for an additional 50% capacity (to match the new JIPL oven capacity) – to process 24 crates per cycle at minimum cost and within the time frame available.
To achieve this with the existing oven equipment meant re-designing the airflow system for effective heat transfer. The oven was extended over the Christmas shutdown with insulated extensions at each end; existing ducting modified; new ducting installed; controls modified to suit, and both doors refurbished.
Not only has the upgraded and extended oven solved the capacity issue, but it now also produces consistent ageing results throughout the oven, with a small increase in the aged hardness of the extrusions (a welcome bonus).
Plant Manager Steve Bradley commented, “ The improved productivity performances across the operation created a bottleneck, with metal waiting to be aged. This meant we were delaying product getting to our customers.
To overcome this, we contacted JIPL to see what could be done with our existing plant. The INEX engineering team and JIPL worked together and came up with an innovative cost effective solution to increase our age oven capacity resulting in a very pleasing and successful outcome.
Many thanks to the team at JIPL.”