Low wire drawing productivity because layout
An Asian case with 25 new wire drawing machines.
A very high wire drawing productivity plant with 25 new wire drawing machines. The plant will produce low carbon steel wire, galvanized wire, nails, screws and annealed wire.
The fastest machine is for 30 m/sec (5905 foot/min) diameter 1.00 mm with mechanical descaling, sanding belts and in-line coating.
The company has a very efficient lay out from labor point of view, since the machines are installed by pairs, so the front of each machine faces the other machine (one left handed and the other right handed). One operator can operate both machines.
Low wire drawing productivity problem
There were not enough room for production since the space for wire rod for the machine was too narrow. Less than 10 meters between the wall and pay-off, and is not possible to stock wire rod there.
A very precise logistic is mandatory to avoid interference and machine stops and get high wire drawing productivity.
Besides this narrow space, it is needed 4 movements for getting the wire rod to the machine:
From stock yard to 4-ton truck, from stock yard to an annex storehouse, from annex to wire drawing storehouse, from wire drawing stock area to machine itself.
As the fork lift truck were on bad shape, it can be easily foreseen that high efficiency will be extremely difficult to get.
The machinery was in fact very productive, it is, the 10 that I set up the process, were working at the top wire drawing productivity promised by the supplier, however, the efficiency were near to 40%, mainly because the frequent lack of wire rod available for production.
This was not the main problem for such a very low efficiency, among others causes:
Time for changing die too long since the die shop is 400 m away on a 4th floor. I take no less than 30 minutes just for getting the new die back to machine.
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