Conveyor belts should not and cannot stand still, never! What to do if that threatens to happen and even sooner than expected? A crisis in the making? Crisis management or ... cooperation in wear technology.
At one of the Netherlands' largest rubble crushers in near Europoort, it had been clear for months that a major overhaul of the 22-metre-long lifting plant would have to take place this year. Decommissioning was insurmountable in the process.
All the necessary parts, in particular the conveyor chain, carrying rollers and wreaths were already supplied by Geha Laverman earlier in anticipation of the ideal downtime moment - which does not actually exist - a well-known law in the overloaded recycling industry.
In March, it became clear that any longer delay of the planned overhaul would be extremely risky. Time for emergency surgery, which meant all hands on deck at Geha Laverman.
Supply and discharge perfectly balanced
To minimise downtime at the crusher plant, which processes a mega volume of demolition waste into reusable materials every day, a plan was drawn up that required extreme time pressure, both on the production side and the logistics side.
A special area was set up in the workshops in Zaandam to process the required 220 slats in a very short time. A sizeable team of welders worked in shifts, often around the clock, to fit the daily incoming batches of slats with HARDOX wear plates with wear-resistant hard facing. In the process, each slat was inspected for wear, repaired and realigned if necessary.
Each incoming batch from Botlek was met with a fully revised return volume. This kept the logistics literally in figurative balance.
Needless to say, at the same time, a team of mechanics at the site worked equally intensively to keep up the pace of rebuilding and, in addition, replace parts already delivered.
Collaboration ensures record pace of overhaul
'Just in Time Delivery' as it should be experienced and that with 'Zero Defect'. Any hiccup in production or logistics, especially in this case, meant regression. While the chain was working overtime to complete the overhaul of the flat belt conveyor in record time, another part of Geha Laverman's workshops was working on thirty heavy-duty HARDOX 500 plates to - in parallel with the overhaul - provide the landfill points at the end of the conveyor with new cladding. The entire lifting system is now working like new.
The success of the entire operation, which took 8 weeks in all, is due to the fantastic cooperation with our client.
