New Equipment Installations

In some regions of the world labor is relatively inexpensive and it can be used advantageously by innovative producers. Labor costs, however, are typically not the largest cost in the manufacturing process. A more typical ranking of the costs of operation, from the highest cost percentage to the lowest is (1) resin and feed- 

There are three basic principles to understand and apply in value analysis and cost reduction when selecting the proper equipment. The first is that equipment costs are typically amortized over 10 years, and it is usually a small fraction of the finished product cost. The costs are typically less than 5% of the total cost per unit mass for a product. Secondly, decreasing the amount of resin in the finished product without sacrificing product quality is a major cost reduction. And finally, increasing production efficiency by increasing line speeds and decreasing downtime will decrease the cost of production. 

Processors must work with equipment suppliers to determine the capabilities and limitations for the equipment to be supplied for all sections of the line. The four basic equipment categories and design strategies that follow the three principles listed above are the resin supply system to the line, extruder and screw design, die and downstream equipment, and optional equipment. 

The resin supply system should be designed to take advantage of the raw materials in the lowest cost and most effective form. Additives tend to be more expensive than the base resin. Gravimetric rather than volumetric supply of the material is more conducive to minimizing the use of the more expensive feedstock components. The ability of the equipment to utilize reliably 100% of in-plant regrind, additive concentrates, and recycled materials is one of the most important factors to be considered. 

Many options are commercially available for dies and downstream equipment. In order to optimize a particular process for an application, all available market options should be studied so as to integrate the best technologies into the process. Consider all of the materials to be processed and expected rates for now and in the 

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Labor cost. Once the total material cost is determined, labor cost is factored from this total major item material cost. Labor cost factors are based on new equipment installation. 

Some might say that this solution would be too costly, but they have not experienced actual heating problems that operators have after delays or considered the cost of all the scrap made while waiting for the accordian effect to settle out. It is unfortunate that new equipment installers and mill managers who make new equipment decisions do not stay around long enough to suffer the day-to-day heat/control problems of the operators. 

Make sure that the quality report is complete Check with maintenance on new equipment installation... 

In the case of new equipment installations, a careful application analysis, including load and duty cycle requirements, mi t reveal that a TVz-horsepower pump, for example, could be utilized in place of a 10-horsepower pump, thereby reducing motor horsepower requirements by one third. By reducing the mass of the moving parts, the energy required to accelerate the parts is also proportionately reduced. Or, in the instance of an air compressor application, the selection of size and type of compressor relative to load and duty lycle will affect igrstem efficiency... 

New equipment is installed. Other changes occur with maintenance. The equipment loses its efficiency. Install gauges on your pumps and teach the operators and maintenance personnel to interpret the information. 

Addition, removal, or replacement of HVAC equipment Where the original equipment has been replaced, do the newer units have the same capacity as the originals Has new equipment been properly installed and tested Where equipment has been removed, is it no longer needed ... 

In addition, establish lines of communication for sharing information pertaining to equipment in need of repair or replacement, plans to remodel, renovate, or redecorate, new uses of building space or increases in occupant population, installation of new equipment. 

You will have to investigate and apply trial and error field tests to resolve some of these problems. When new equipment are installed, it is wise to spend time during a shake-down and start-up period to explore the operational limitations of the process and train operators on how to handle these types of problems. 

In the service industries, you may need to install new information controls for management to determine whether the services are giving customer satisfaction. This may require new equipment to record, collect, and transmit the data. 

Exhaust emissions will vary with the type and age of engine and the fuel used. Current environmental regulations must be consulted. It may be necessary to submit a permit to install the new equipment. Each country, state, or county has variations of the maximum emissions. 

On many occasions, new equipment is installed or process workers have to work in other similar plant units in order to substitute for one of their colleagues. Despite the overall similarity of the new equipment, there might be some differences in their operation which may sometimes become very critical. We caimot always rely on the operator to discover these potentially critical differences in equipment design, especially under time pressure and excessive workload. If multiskill training in a range of plant equipment is not feasible, then training should be provided for the specific new equipment. The incident below was due to lack of training for a caimed pump. 

Has there been an on-site inspection by qualified persoimel to ensure diat die new equipment is installed in accordance with specifications and drawings ... 

Troubleshooting deals with identifying and solving problems. Problems can be immediate or long term and can be associated with off-spec products, poor efficiency, process improvements, capacity increases, or potential shutdown items. Problems can be related to management, operation, hardware and equipment, or process issues. Solutions can include improved operating procedures and training, preventative maintenance, or installation of new equipment or controls. 

In general, there is no frequent need to design new batch plants. For all the above listed factors deterministic models for plant design will be of limited significance. Plant retrofitting (replacement of equipment, installation of new equipment, and elimination of old equipment) is more often encountered in the field of batch plants. The uncertainty then is much lower than for the design of new plants. 

Crawley and Grant (1997) have developed a risk assessment tool for new offshore installations. They have examined typical leak frequencies of equipment items and the ignition probability of these leaks in four pressure bands. With this information it was possible to define leak size and frequency for any piece of equipment and the ignited leak frequency. In off-shore installations gas separation vessels were found to have ten times higher ignited event frequency than oil pumps. 

In June 1998, DuPont was shut down and during the planned two week outage the company accomplished its objectives of installing the new equipment and connecting it to the distributed control system, which had been previously installed and partially checked prior to the outage. 

Thermocouples and wire leads require constant maintenance due to wire breaks and malfunctioning thermocouples. In most cases, the root cause of the problem is easy to determine. When a thermocouple loses continuity the instrument panel typically reports either an open circuit or a very negative temperature. A more difficult but also common problem occurs when the control thermocouple is not located close to the heating element on the control system. In this case, it is possible for the thermocouple to be influenced by another heated control zone while allowing its control zone to operate at temperatures that can be either very hot or very cold. Such cold conditions can cause the polymer to solidify in the transfer line while a hot condition can cause the resin to degrade. During the installation and startup of new equipment, it is important that the thermocouples are matched with the proper controller and control zone. 

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