Tighten up procedures with routine housekeeping program

Using equipment like trough conveyors to automate the removal of chips and coolant from the work area is an effective housekeeping practice.

“Cleanliness is a virtue” is an old saying your mother might have used to convince you to clean your room at one point in time. But in the manufacturing sector, when a disorganized and cluttered workspace has a negative impact on so many essential functions and day-to-day processes, it’s a phrase that plant managers should take to heart.

Outside of the obvious safety benefits, employing a routine housekeeping program can help tighten controls and procedures, such as keeping tabs on parts and materials, removing and disposing of scrap metal and spent fluid, and handling and recycling wastewater.

But the list of potential benefits doesn’t end there.

A strong commitment to a housekeeping program can extend to improving everything from employee morale to sales and operating efficiency.

While there are also clear financial benefits in terms of risk avoidance and deferred maintenance, good housekeeping practices, when put into action, have the potential to transcend the physical and mental aspects of your business as well.

A place for everything

In almost every discipline—whether it be cooking, writing, metal cutting, or injection moulding—how well you prepare is often a key determinant of success. When it comes to the plant floor, where space is often at a real premium, having an organized system for storing, locating, and transferring raw materials quickly and effortlessly provides your employees with the organization and structure they need to focus on the primary task at hand.

Having all necessary tools prearranged from an ergonomic standpoint minimizes hazards, worker fatigue, and unnecessary time spent searching for tools and materials. This is more than a sound organizational practice; it is also stated explicitly in OSHA’s Materials Handling, Storage, Use, and Disposal standard (1926.250), which specifies that storage areas should not accumulate materials that present hazards for tripping, fire, explosion, or pests.

In metalworking, in which large volumes of material byproducts can accumulate quickly and block workflow areas, manual removal is simply not cost-effective. In these situations, conveyors, which automate the removal of chips and coolant that have accumulated away from the point of production, and briquetters, which compress loose turnings and swarf into near-solid dry pucks for recycling, are among the several sensible options industrial managers use in handling the rapid buildup of spent material.

Some other effective options for clearing scrap and spent fluid waste are:

• Wringers and centrifuges, which are designed for drying chips and reclaiming fluid.
• Vertical-axis crushers and shredders, which reduce dangerous metal turnings and bulky wads into shovel-grade chips.
• Tramp metal separators, which can remove bar-ends, broken tooling, and other solids from your chip flow, protecting scrap metal equipment from damage and reducing downtime and costly repairs.

First impressions affect sales

Appearances also matter, and when big business deals come calling that require walk-throughs or closer inspections of your facility, having a plant that looks cluttered or worse can put you in real jeopardy of losing those deals.

Separating scrap metal and spent fluid as part of a routine housekeeping program helps improve everything from employee morale to sales and operating efficiency.

It’s like asking yourself whether you would continue eating at a restaurant where you know the chefs don’t wash their hands. If they aren’t attentive enough to do something that fundamental for their customers’ benefit, what other details are they missing? Where else might the plant operator be cutting corners? Could this disorganization compromise throughput and negatively affect my business?

This pitfall can easily be avoided through the establishment of a regularly scheduled housekeeping program that incorporates automated equipment to maintain a clean and orderly workplace first and foremost.

Don’t give your customers a reason to second-guess whether the service or product they are getting from you is substandard or defective. If you stake your brand’s reputation on quality, then it behooves you to take all steps necessary to ensure a clean, efficient, and well-organized plant.

Respect your workplace and the people in it

According to Forbes contributor and management expert Victor Lipman, “Respect is one of those subtle lubricants that keeps the engine of management running smoothly. But when, like oil, it gets low, parts start grinding.”

Just as good personal hygiene ties into self-respect and self-esteem, good housekeeping translates to overall respect for the workplace. If you put off cleaning your workspace, forget to maintain equipment, and neglect to remove debris and other obstructions from work zones, it can have an adverse effect on employee morale and engagement—two key ingredients for good performance and success. Eventually you should also expect to experience a steady decline in productivity.

No one wants to work in grimy, smelly, or unsafe conditions.

While there are those who might put up with these inconveniences, which can easily be dismissed as the nature of the beast in the metalworking industry, everyone has their limits. One case in point is in the handling of free-floating and mechanically dispersed tramp oils, bacteria, slime, and inverted emulsions.

By incorporating specially designed fluid filtration systems, you can not only extend coolant and washwater life, you can reduce your employees’ exposure to harmful fluids and alleviate unpleasant and foul-smelling odours from your plant.

Extend equipment life

Properly maintaining machinery to avoid unnecessary downtime, repairs, and replacement is all part of the cycle of life in the world of industrial manufacturing. Everyone wants to prolong the life of their equipment for the highest output and shortest ROI possible.

This can more likely be achieved through the implementation of a housekeeping program that incorporates a set schedule for employees to inspect equipment, evaluating whether all of their processes are in good working order.

An ozone generator contributes to a clean shop by directly injecting ozone into the coolant to kill bacteria, viruses, yeast, fungus, and moulds while eliminating coolant sump odours.

Adding this layer of checks and balances—which can include testing fluid and lubricant levels, inspecting signs of wear and tear, and confirming components are clean and clear of foreign objects and obstructions—provides an added measure of protection beyond scheduled maintenance.

Technology also exists that can help extend the life of your machinery. In the case of grinding applications, the addition of paper bed or candle filters, which are designed to filter fine particulate matter from oil and fluids, can help to prolong coolant and tool life.

Operate at peak efficiency

Saving more space, time, and money are worthy goals that can be achieved with a more proactive and innovative approach to the cleaning and removal of workplace clutter.

Implementing housekeeping system innovations, such as the application of automated conveyors, scrap processing, fluid filtration, and wastewater treatment systems, can aid metal manufacturers in four major ways:

1. Boost productivity by limiting the time machinists have to spend cleaning equipment and removing material.
2. Increase throughput by speeding up essential functions of the manufacturing process.
3. Reduce metal turnings to flowable chips and separate them from spent fluid for recycling or reuse.
4. Decrease maintenance time and increase the life of working fluids by recycling used coolant, washwater, and other fluids.

When your workforce doesn’t have to stop to clean up scrap or replace fluid after every production run, you can reduce costly bottlenecks and increase worker productivity and throughput.

Furthermore, numerous case studies demonstrate the benefits of scrap, wastewater treatment, and fluid recycling systems, which in addition to cutting out manual labour, can lead to more substantial sources of revenue when materials are separated and compacted with precision and fluid is recycled or reused for an optimum ROI.

When established as part of an overarching housekeeping and volume-reduction plan, automated systems such as conveyors, scrap metal shredders, separators, and crushers have the capacity to greatly reduce the need for workers to stop what they are doing and clean up.

In these cases, overhauling or re-evaluating internal housekeeping processes is a logical place to start—especially when you consider the list of options available for automation as they relate to the indisputable and long-lasting positive impact a clean and orderly workplace can provide.

Mike Hook is sales and marketing director for PRAB, 5801 E. N Ave., Kalamazoo, Mich. 49048, 800-968-7722, www.prab.com.

Reducing dangerous metal turnings and bulky wads into shovel-grade chips is just one of several sensible options for dealing with the rapid build-up of spent material.