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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
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February 2023 #15283 Page #48
Setting the Goal of One Thousand Pieces per Hour Edmond Lim, P.Eng. LimTek Solutions Inc.
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“Thousand Pieces an Hour” is a golden truss production metric and a lofty goal for many component plants. If one thousand is the magic number, even at 75% efficiency, in a 7-hour shift (7 hours x 1,000 pieces/ hour, at 75%) that would be 5,250 pieces with potential to achieve 7,000 pieces. So, let’s use 750 pieces per hour as a production rate goal.
For a truss plant, pieces per hour is easily measured and/or extracted for every labor process and every machine utilized in truss production. For example, how many pieces of lumber can be picked in an hour? How many pieces are cut on a saw in an hour? How many pieces of lumber can be stacked behind a saw in an hour? How many trusses can be built on a jig in an hour? Material handling, process organization, machinery, and the labor required can all be measured. I’m asked all the time how much production should be expected, or in other words what does it take to “Feed the Beast.” Fortunately, through videos/pictures and better yet by attending a plant tour, one can see how Enventek’s Process Organization Technology can achieve “A Thousand Pieces an Hour.”
How We Feed the Beast Although I could go into great detail on all aspects of our process improvement, it’s always best to highlight these three. Individually or in combination, they will get you well on your way to the thousand pieces per hour goal. Lumber intake: With a Lumber PickLine, if a board is dropped every 5 seconds into the chaindriven lumber trough, that would be a picking rate of 12 boards a minute (720 pieces an hour) for a total of 5,040 pieces in 7 hours. Organizing your lumber with a Lumber PickLine eliminates excessive forklift lumber picking and reduces operating costs significantly. And, picking lumber using our ingenious symmetrical batch mode makes the process essentially cut-by-truss when the autofill carts are positioned in sequence in front of the truss build tables. Continued next page
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