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TESTIMONIALS
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August 30,
1999 The following letter is an overview of our present situation and the stages that lead up to it. As you are aware, our plant was constructed fifteen years ago, at that time is was decided to go with an Air Ventilated Bus way System throughout the paint plant area. Over time this Bus way has been exposed to air born paint, clear coat and solvents from the paint process. This, combined with the dirt that also made its way into the air, formed a deadly combination that attatched itself to the bars and the casing. In fact, in some areas this accumulation was so extensive, you could not distinguish the area between the bars. This was my foremost concern for several reasons. As you know we operate on a "just in time" delivery, this means our process is limited to downtime. This ranges from a half hour to an hour and a half depending on the line. Anything greater than this and we risk shutting the line down at Chrysler, Ford, or GM. The time required to replace a damaged section during production would far exceed our time limitations. Therefore, the decision was put forward by myself to be proactive and solve the problem before the inevitable happened. Under my direction I was to source out a means of cleaning the Bus way that would not result in any further damage to the existing system. In addition to the cleaning, I anticipated gaining more informatioin that would be invaluable to me in my role as the electrical coordinator. Each phase of this project was to complement the next. We used thermal imaging to determine if any hot spots were occuring on the air bar system. As a result, none were found and we knew that the integrity of the sections were intact overall. Once the cleaning commenced, additional information was gained giving us some peace of mind, and some concerns were laid to rest. One of these concerns was tracking that might be occurring between the bars, we have always had a small potential showing on our station and could not attribute it to any one thing. The removal of the debris eradicated the possibility of a raceway becoming reality. the cleaning was invaluable in identifying tape flaws and wear that had been occurring over time. It also provided us the luxury to schedule sections that required immediate attention which we took full advantage of. By eliminating the debris we reduced the heat being generated and allowed the ventilated system to work as it had been designed to do. In addition to this heat loss, we are also monitoring the overall load to determine if our loading in these sections has reduced. I personally believe that the direction we've taken has increased the life expectancy of this Bus way and has provided me with the tools that I require to develop new systems within our plant. Regards, |