Lean Production Capacity Report

Noble Fire Production Capacity

Report Prepared by

Julian Kalac, P.Eng

10/9/2012

of 11 Noble Fire Capacity Report 9 October 2012

To: Eric St-Amant, Kevin Paterson

C.C.: Kirk Daize

From: Julian Kalac, P.Eng License #90505462

Date: October 6, 2012

Re: Noble Fire Production Capacity

OBJECTIVE:

The objective of this report is to provide an initial assessment of the current Production

Capacity at Noble Fire, identify process bottlenecks, and develop a proposed plan to increase Production Capacity.

This report contains detailed process descriptions, machine limitations, pictures, current capacity and detailed recommendations for increased capacity.

REFRENCED STANDARDS:

Ontario Building Code National Fire Protection Association (NFPA)

National Standard for Sprinkler System Design (FC 403 )

The preliminary capacity assessment is based on observations from a 1 ½ day visit on

October 4th & 5th.

For clarification purposes, NO COSTS were provided nor used in this report on: Material & Labour Costs/unit, Production/Sales Gross Margins, Machine Parts & Downtime costs

Since no Production KPI was available, and current capacity is not known, the capacity

assessment is based on WELDED “OUTLETS/Hr” & % Machine Utilization.

Overview:

Noble Fire, known as Don Park Fire, is a division of Noble that produces Fire Sprinkler Systems for both residential and commercial industries as per the NFPA and Ontario

Building Code standards

Noble Fire has a VERY UNIQUE production process. Initially looking from the outside the

operation may appear to be simple and straight forward, but the actual production

complexity is hidden deep inside the machines & processes.

The plant has approximately 35,000 ft², which includes production, offices, warehouse

and pipe racks/storage (see Layout in Appendix).


There are 8 skilled fabricator/welders & 1 foreman. There are no dedicated Maintenance

staff on site. The fabricators do their own maintenance and repairs.

The foreman Kirk is very experienced, knowledgeable and mechanically skilled. He “wears

many different hats”, i.e. reviews customer drawings, provides quotes on labour costs,

coordinates workloads, deals with customer calls/complaints/inquiries, orders material.

One thing that would make his job a little easier is for him to have a computer with a

hard-drive, printer and photocopier on the production floor instead in the front office.

Production Processes

There are 4 processes involved in completing a finished pipe:

1. Pipe cutting

2. Plasma Profile Burning

3. Circular welding (outlet onto pipe)

4. Pipe Threading

THERE ARE 3 BURN/WELD MACHINES:

WB#1--Whirly-Bird style circular welder (—WITHOUT CUTTER)

WB#2 --Whirly-Bird style circular welders (–WITH A DEDICATED CUTTER)

Nogeo machine (1 1/4” to 3”)

Machine Design issues: All 3 Machines are outdated in design and require a great deal of maintenance and

operator involvement to make them run. They are very much operator dependent, and

not everyone can operate each machine. For example the Nogeo Machine can only be

operated by either Sergey or Lead Hand Anthony. Each Machine is unique in it’s limitations and capacity.

WB#1

WB#2

NOGEO M/C


The major Machine and Process issues are: 1. Whirlybird M/C #1 (6 years old) has a Production Capacity of 14-16 outlets/hr

and is only 60% Utilized in Run Time and 40% with various downtime issues

a) Does NOT HAVE a CUTTER AT THE END, therefore requires Non-Value

Add activity of loading pipes onto manual cart, pushing the cart to the

Threader/Cutter machine ( up to 130ft distance) and back and unload pipes.

Estimated= 1-2 Hrs. downtime/shift.

b) By adding 2 additional pipe cutters to the plant, would improve machine

utilization by min. 15%

c) Material handling (loading/unloading) of pipes is done manually with carts

and is very labour intensive and time consuming.

d) Welding wire feed issues, causing misfeeds/jams and machine downtime.

(1hr/shift)

e) Both WHIRLY-BIRD machine(s) DO NOT have programming capability

therefore require the operator to manually to measure each pipe length,

outlet location/spacing, which are done with a tape measurer while the

machine is down (2 hr/day). Note: The tolerances on sprinkler head outlets

are designed within 1/32” in total variation per system (500+ pipe lines)

WB#1

WB#1 NO CUTTER

WB#2


2. Whirlybird M/C #2 has a Machine Capacity of 16 Outlet/hr

a. Has the same issues as WB# 1 listed above, except for the wire feed issue

b. On top of that WB# 2 has machine alignment issues between the Burning & Welding cycles and therefore has to work backwards and use welding as the main reference

and work backwards to set the burning position.

c. This is currently being compensated with the skill and experience of the main

operator, Dimitri, who is a very skilled MIG/TIG/GAS welder originally from Romania, where the experience level is much higher than here

3. Nogeo Automated Machine has a Machine Capacity of 16 outlets/hr.

a) I personally timed the machine cycle time without interruption to be 3.49 min b) The Machine Cycle time is directly related to the lack of process capability and

reliability. This machine needs major maintenance & repair to keep running

c) This machine is run only by 1 operator, (Sergey) who is the most experienced welder. He has modified, repaired & kept this machine running with no spare parts.

d) Sergey has to manually center the welding adapter every single cycle prior to

the weld cycle. This is due to the lack of machine capability to adjust for different outlets sizes and causes over 30% of the machine downtime.

e) This could easily be rectified by using a STANDARDIZED AISI 1020 UN-ILET

(see picture below)

f) Frequent Machine breakdowns are a major cause of the machine downtime.

g) There are no spare parts and the manufacturer does not carry any of the parts

from this outdated model. This causes over 50% of major downtime and lost of productivity (see pictures below and in appendix).

WB# 1 FRONT VIEW Pipe Handling cart Plasma Burner


THREADER PROBLEMS:

1. Oster threader (>30 years) only threads up to 2” pipes 2. Dies keep breaking causing downtime (40% downtime) YTD replaced over 10 sets

3. The material used to make the dies are only case hardened and not made out of

HSS—High Speed Steel (M-2) which is the proper tool steel for this application 4. Set-Up time on 1” – 2” Threader takes min 15min/set-up. (3-4 set-ups/day=

1hr M/C downtime)

Manually centering the weld

adapter prior to welding

AISI 1020 STD OUTLET

One of the repairs Sergey was showing me he used rope to hold the weld unit together!

Problems due to lack of standardized outlets SOLUTION


CURRENT PRODUCTION CAPABILITY AND SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS

Current Fire Capacity on the 3 burn/weld machines

M/C Pcs/Hr Daily Capacity Weekly Capacity

Monthly capacity

Annual Capacity

WB #1 15 112.5 562.5 2250 27000

WB #2 16 120 600 2400 28800

NOGEO M/C 17 128 638 2550 30600

TOTAL CAPACITY 48 360 1800 7200 86400

AFTER IMPROVMENETS

1-ADDING 2 CUTTERS + 2 THREADER + IMPROVING WB #1 WIRE FEED (estimated cost < $15,000)

2-Replace all outlets with 1 STANDARD AISI 1020 UNI-LET 3/4" OUTLET

M/C Pcs/Hr Daily Capacity Weekly Capacity

Monthly capacity

Annual Capacity

WB #1 20 150 750 3000 36000

WB #2 21 157.5 788 3150 37800

NOGEO M/C 23 172.5 863 3450 41400

TOTAL CAPACITY 64 480 2400 9600 115200

Productivity Improvement= 25.0%

SUGGESTED IMMEDIATE IMPROVEMENTS:

1. Add 2 PIPE CUTTERS (2”), for WB#1 and Main area. Estimated Cost=$ 2,000

2. Add 1 ROTHENBERGER 4” THREADER with automatic die heads (Max. $10,000)

3. IMPLEMENT AISI 1020 STANDARD UNI-LET outlet which will standardize all

welded outlets and significantly reduce machine downtime, especially on the complex NOGEO.

4. Repair WB#1 WIRE FEED ISSUE. I have provided a wire feed troubleshooting

guide/checklist to Fernando, WB#1 operator. 5. Implement a PREVENTATIVE MAINTENANCE PLAN for the NOGEO machine

with a recommended SPARE PARTS list from the manufacturer in order to reduce

downtime

TOTAL NEW EQUIPMENT COST = $15,000

Note: These are only estimated improvements which need to be validated


FURTHER OPTIONS

DEPENDING ON THE CONFIDENCE LEVEL OF FUTURE SALES

1. HIRE 2ND SHIFT

Because of the equipment issues & limitations, I do not believe adding a 2nd shift

would be a feasible option due to the frequent machine breakdowns, design limitations, lack of process/machine capability & unique operator dependency.

Hiring & training new people on equipment which are NOT capable, have many limitations, breakdowns and unreliable will only cause more issues and lost of

productivity.

These machines are not capable of mass production, and would need to retrofitted

to make them suitable for mass production.

2. PURCHASE NEW MACHINE(S):

This option would only be feasible if there were sufficient sales for the next 5-6

years in order to amortize the capital costs. The question then becomes the confidence level in the projected future sales.

I strongly suggest to look into improving the current Whirly-Bird machine issues

listed above before purchasing another new machine with the same issues.

3. REPLACE NOGEO WELD UNIT WITH CYPRESS WHIRLYBIRD CW-5 If the Production Capacity after the IMMEDIATE IMPROVEMENTS listed above is still

not sufficient, then this would be the most feasible and most effective option.

Reason: in order to maximize the utilization of the NOGEO machine

The CW-5 model comes with programming capability to allow for individual and

combined operations.

By investing in this replacement weld unit, the production capacity can increase by over 800% and allow capability for mass production.

The cost of 1 of these units needs to be verified, but I have found a used on for

$29,000 plus $3000 for carriage and set-up adapter. See the specifications and pictures in the APPENDIX.

TOTAL COST USED UNIT = $33,000


CYPRESS CW-5 CIRCULAR WELDERS

CAPACITY ANALYSIS COMPARISON (CW-5 vs NOGEO)

CURRENT NOGEO

M/C

Individual Operation Combined Operations Combined Operations

Cycle Time (Seconds) Cycle Time (Seconds) Cycle Time (Seconds)

Burn Cut 10 5 30

Weld Time 20 10 150

Loading/Unloading 20 10 10

Chuck Travel Time 10 5 39

Total M/C Cycle Time (Seconds) 60 30 229

Pipes/Min 1 2 0.26

Pipes/Hr 60 120 15.7

Total Available Time/Shift 8.5 8.5 8.5

Breaks & Lunches 1 1 1

RUN TIME 7.5 7.5 7.5

Max Pipes/Shift (8.5 Hrs) 510 1020 117.9

Maintenance Time/Downtime 1.0 1.0 2.0

RUN TIME 7.5 7.5 6.5

EXPECTED PIPES/SHIFT 450 900 102.2

Note:

The approximate time for a cut is 6-10 seconds, depending upon diameter and thickness.

The approximate time for a weld is 15-20 seconds

CYPRESS CIRCULAR WELDER CW-5

New Machine Utilization requires relieving for break and lunches


CONCLUSION

Based on the overall situation and current production capacity I recommend the immediate suggestions be implemented right away.

An estimated 24% increased productivity is well worth the $15,000 cost.

I also strongly suggest a Preventative Maintenance Plan for the NOGEO machine with SPARE PARTS ON HAND to reduce machine downtime.

I also suggest the manufacturer, NOGEO, come in and do an overall assessment of the machine capability and to evaluate the proposed option of replacing the welding

unit with a more sophisticated as listed above or similar.

I have reviewed this report with Kirk, the plant foreman and he is in agreement

with the recommendations and suggested improvements.

If needed I can be of assistance to discuss the proposal with NOGEO

I also suggest Production to begin tracking & reporting machine downtime and

causes in order to accurately determine the machine efficiency.

I would like to thank Kirk and his group for their assistance during the visit.

Sincerely,

Julian Kalac, P.Eng.

Lean Production Capacity Report

Business

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