Uptime Gets A Lift  

Oleh:

Michel, Roberto

Jenis: Article from Bulletin/Magazine - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Modern Materials Handling vol. 60 no. 4 (Apr. 2005), page 39-52.
Topik: time; uptime; lift

Ketersediaan

Perpustakaan Pusat (Semanggi) Nomor Panggil: MM71.1 Non-tandon: 1 (dapat dipinjam: 0) Tandon: tidak ada

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Vertical lift modules trim equipment downtime, add production space for auto supplier Siemens VDO. Automotive industry plants must run lean. And that's true not just for work - in - process, but for maintenance operations too. If these tasks are inefficient or machinery can't be serviced quickly because parts can't be found, workflow is often disrupted. And that's exactly the situation that automotive industry supplier Siemens VDO needed to confront at its Newport News, Va., plant. The main assembly area for fuel injectors, says Shari Jourdan, operations support manager, has linear assembly steps and no backup machines if equipment goes down. This situation was a major factor in the decision to revamp the storage systems for managing maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) parts. "In a linear operation - such as our major assembly area - if one part of the process breaks down, everything shuts down," says Jourdan. "In this environment, it's critical to be able to find [MRO] parts quickly, get the machines back up, and get the process back on line." The Newport News plant manufactures the company's fuel injectors as well as other fuel system components. It became apparent that new systems were needed to ensure parts were easily accessible. In addition, inventory accuracy for the MRO parts need to be improved too. That led to the installation, says Jourdan, of seven vertical lift modules (VLM s). Each is located close to the point of use of the MRO parts. In addition, responsibilities for equipment and parts among maintenance engineers were redefined. Placing the VLM s at the point of use eliminated the central storage scheme used earlier, says Jourdan. As a result, the time required to retrieve MRO parts was reduced considerably. In addition, the small footprint of the VLMs opened up approximately 2,000 square feet of floor space for manufacturing. "One key goal of the deployment was to bring the parts closer to the places they get used, so that parts are easily accessible when needed," says Jourdan. "The new software system that manages the inventory also has better search functionality than the system we had before."

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