Our customer was incurring very high costs and extended lead-times refurbishing food processing rollers. The assemblies had to be fully stripped and sent abroad to be reground. Removing the end bearings rendered them unserviceable, so each repair cycle required the purchase and installation of new bearings. Multiple third parties were involved in the repair process. Concerns over the impact of Brexit also figured highly in our customer’s considerations.
Our brief was to significantly reduce the turnaround time and costs associated with the refurbishment of these process critical assets. Our customer was keen to see ownership of the task invested in one UK supplier. The potential for multiple bottlenecks needed to be reduced, in addition to the very high cost (£20,000) of replacing serviceable bearing assemblies to facilitate the machining of the roller face.
RJW’s Mechanical Services Manager proposed an innovative solution that involved the removal and machining of the rollers without removing the bearings and housings. Not only did this eradicate the labour cost of stripping down and reassembly, it also removed the need to purchase new bearings on each repair cycle. Given the proximity of RJW’s workshop, significant cost reduction was also realised in transport costs, and the lead time was significantly reduced from 3 weeks to 5 days.
