DORF Clark Industries, part of the GWA Group, manufactures and designs tapware and bathroom accessories.
The company’s base in Penrith, NSW, oversees forging, machining, soldering/bending, polishing/finishing, and assembly and packaging operations. The site also operates as a distribution outlet. Dorf Clark employs 500 people throughout Australia with 150 of those employees based at the Penrith site.
In 2003 the company identified the loading and unloading of parts onto and off pronged racking systems for its electroplating line as a key OH&S issue.
The work was performed under an overhead hoist which carried racks weighing up to 13kg load-free. The racks were loaded to the hoist flight bars by hand and parts were then fitted to the pronged racks by hand.
Manual handling caused damage to the racks’ coatings. This in turn lead to contamination of the chemical dipping baths in the electroplating line.
The process was labour intensive, tiring, noisy and inefficient. It also lead to a raft of safety issues which culminated in high absenteeism, injuries and disruption to the electroplating line’s business performance objectives.
Management at Dorf Clark formed a project team comprising staff from its engineering department and engineers from Grout & Darlington. The project team’s task was to re-think and re-engineer the process of loading and transporting racking for the electroplating line. The aim was to eliminate or reduce safety issues, manual handling tasks and the need for employees to work under the loaded hoist’s flight bars.
The team re-designed the work area layout, installing a dedicated hoist, designed and manufactured by Grout & Darlington, which interfaced with the electroplating line’s exiting hoist, but functioned independently of the plating cycle. This allowed complete off-line part loading and unloading.
Safety light curtains and a state-of-the-art touch screen OSAI controller were installed to protect the human-machine interface.
The OSAI controller and electronic system were also used for flight bar positioning, tracking and retrieval, eliminating previous human error.
CNC part storage and motion control technology was employed for commonly used racks, eliminating safety issues and damaged caused by manual handling.
The improvements reduced injuries by reducing manual handling and removing the need for work under the hoist.
While the project was originally driven by a need to improve safety and the work environment, other benefits have been achieved, such as an increase in parts throughput from 8,000 to 16,000 parts in a 10 hour day due to elimination of the overhead safety net system.
Racks are also damaged less often. This has improved part quality. Plating line equipment availability has increased from 45% to 100%.
Consumable use, including polishing wheels for rework and chemicals for plating baths, has also been reduced.
Overall product flow from upstream to downstream has been improved, with process steps down from 22 to 12. This has allowed introduction of an effective Kanban system. Parts on-time delivery statistics are also better.
The electroplating process can now operate continuously due to buffer zones. The system also allows better utilisation of working space and plating line equipment effectiveness has increased from 45% to 80%.
“In the time the off-line loading and unloading has been in operation, it has uncovered a vast array of opportunities from safety to cost savings. We have seen improvements already in terms of cost savings and the quality of the job for plating staff through a combination of improved upstream process design, improved product design and improved layout,” Dorf Clark process improvement engineer Ed Kitchener said.
Grout & Darlington 02 9756 6188.