MechChem Africa November-December 2024

⎪ Local manufacturing and food processing ⎪

The largest E-house manufactured by WEG at its Heidelberg facility is 35 m long and 19 m wide.

manufactured and supplied by the WEG transformer factory in Heidelberg,” he tells MCA .

that they are also easier to operate. On the punching side, Broodryk comments that, for punching the copper conduct ing bars, WEG has bought a punching machine with seven dies that can ac commodate all five different hole sizes used and all trim to length requirements. “Our process involves the full design and manufacture of complete enclosures, including the main, the dropper bars and the incomer,” he says. “Right now, we are also waiting for our new powder coating spray booth, which will allow us to apply different colours in parallel. We have reduced the length of this booth, which reduces the footprint, the heating time and gas us age, all while making the coating process more efficient,” he says. Also to improve the facility’s ESG performance, Kohler adds that the die sel forklifts used have been replaced by two fully electric equivalents. “ESG is all about being more energy and material efficient by replacing old technologies. By replacing the diesel forklift for two electric ones, we further reduce our carbon emissions. We are targeting everything we can to transform this facility into a benchmark operation, not just locally but to also match what we are achieving globally,” Kohler assures. Turning attention to the electrical side, Broodryk says that a new harness workstation is now speeding up cabling processes. “We are now able to use one machine to cut to size, strip and crimp

the electrical wiring, which saves a lot of time,” he says. And across the facil ity, Lean Manufacturing principles are being adopted. The principles of lean manufacturing are streamlining as sembly activity on the shop floor and reducing waiting times due to missing components,” Kohler adds. “Slowly but surely we are adopting state-of-the art technologies of our parent company, which has implemented thousands of procedures to make the manufacture of WEG products more ef ficient with better quality, while signifi cantly reducing their carbon footprint,” he says. The transformation is also being coupled with skills development: “As part of the investment in new machines and technologies, we also invest in getting operators trained on each and every machine. We aim to have some crossover, so for the laser and bending machines, for example, we have several trained employees who can all operate both of these as well as other machines. “The whole shop floor has been trained to use the Lean Manufacturing Tools, and they are all now embracing it. The atmosphere is a happy one, and from the KPIs we use to highlight on-time, quality or late delivery issues, we can see the positive effects of these changes. “Most importantly, in terms of deliv ery and quality, we have happy clients – and happy clients are very good for business,” Kohler concludes. www.weg.net

Panel manufacturing investments

Turning attention back to the Robertsham facility, Kohler says that the biggest current investment is in the sheet metal division. “Within the last year, we have installed two laser cutting machines – 3.0 kW and 4.0 kW – which give us far better flexibility, accuracy and production efficiency. These have now replaced the hydraulic punching machines we used to use to create the cavities for mounting panel components. “Using the incorporated nesting software, these laser cutting machines help us to reduce material waste, which is another ESG advantage, and from a manufacturing efficiency perspective there is no longer any downtime for changing the punching dyes on the hy draulic machines,” he explains. Also helping to maximise the manu facturing efficiency on the sheet metal side are three new 150 t bending brakes: “The quality of the parts made on these new machines is now much better, while the production efficiency based in the number of parts processed per hour has also improved significantly,” Kohler adds. “So panel manufacturing is now be ing done using less energy, producing less scrap, and, because the tolerances are much better, final assembly is also much more efficient,” he says, adding

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