Industrial gas company Afrox’s continued investment in its electrode factory, in Brits, in the North West, has significan- tly improved operational efficiencies at the factory, says Afrox hard goods business manager Gerhard van Wyk.

Speaking to Engineering News during a tour of the facility last month, he said that many upgrades has been done on the basis of feedback it received from its factory employees with regard to ways in which the factory’s operational efficiencies could be improved.

“We highly value the input of our staff, who share Afrox management’s aim to continuously improve our product offering and the environment in which we operate,” Van Wyk added.

Meanwhile, Afrox technical services manager Paul Magano, responsible for the factory’s research and development (R&D) and quality assurance (QA) division, pointed out that the division is staffed by four artisan welders, one metallurgist and two trainee chemical engineers with backgrounds in metallurgy.

“In the last six months, the company has invested about R500 000 in the R&D/QA division by procuring new equipment, such as modern microscopes as well as cutting, tensile and polishing machines,” he stated.

Additionally, Magano high- lighted that, during the same period, Afrox also invested over R700 000 in upgrading its machine shop by procuring new computer numerically controlled (CNC) and milling machines.

He explained that the procurement of the CNC and milling machines – which were only commissioned last month – would speed up and improve the facility’s metallurgical testing processes.

Magano stressed that the R&D/QA division of the factory’s operation was “critically important” to ensuring Afrox continually improved its offering in both a “cost-effective and qualitative” sense.

Moreover, he added that the division also played an important role in ensuring that Afrox customers’ feedback, “both positive and negative”, was taken into consideration in producing existing and future product ranges.

Additionally, Afrox factory manager Jan Ntuli highlighted that the factory’s R&D/QA division had assisted Afrox in producing the Transarc 6013 general-purpose electrode range, noting that it is “a high-quality electrode range produced at a competitive price, enabling us to compete with Asian imports”.

Moreover, Ntuli added that Afrox had in the last two years invested about R15-million in upgrading the factory’s equipment.

This included upgrading the factory’s A-line to improve its efficiency levels from 450 t/m to 800 t/m.

Additionally, Afrox had upgraded several other pieces of the factory’s equipment, including the low-bake and high-bake ovens and the extrusion machines.

Ntuli said that, prior to the upgrade, the factory had experienced downtimes of a week or more.

“However, since the upgrades were implemented, downtimes have decreased significantly and are limited to a couple of hours at most, which has helped improve operation efficiency levels,” he pointed out.

Further, Ntuli noted that the factory had also implemen- ted the computerised enterprise resource planning software SAP system to manage its maintenance notification procedures, thereby ensuring that regular maintenance was undertaken ahead of time and that unexpected machine breakdowns were quickly repaired.

Ntuli also emphasised that the factory’s workers played a critical role in ensuring that new operational processes that were implemented following the introduction of the new machines were smoothly integrated.