Household cleaner division looked to reduce production downtime

During a routine meeting, an existing Canadian customer noted they always encountered – what they felt was – premature failure on diaphragm valves in their filler applications, costing the company in time, money and product loss from downtime.    

 

The details

The company’s filler had 24, 1” non-GEA Tuchenhagen diaphragm valves requiring maintenance every month at a cost of $295* for parts per valve plus 4 to 4.5 hours of labor (at $50 per hour) to change and calibrate each diaphragm. The total cost to the plant each month was an estimated $7,080 in parts and 108 hours or $5,400 in labor for a total of over $149,000 spent per year and one day of lost production per maintenance session. Of greater concern, as expressed by the company, than the physical cost each month was the loss of production time.    

 

The proposal

We suggested changing all existing diaphragm valves to GEA Tuchenhagen VESTA® valves which rely on bellows and not diaphragms. Maintenance times for VESTA® valves are approximately one half hour per valve. Bellow assemblies cost an average of $167 per kit. With this proposal, it was estimated they would save – between parts and labor – $8,016 per month and, even more importantly, their maintenance time would go from 108 hours to 12 hours per month, thus increasing production time.  

 

To help the company make their decision, we provided one VESTA® valve for testing.    

 

The results

After two months on trial, the GEA Tuchenhagen VESTA® valve had no failures, already doubling the life of the valve and reducing maintenance time. As a result, the company ordered 30 valves and 12 bellow assemblies. Having been installed for over 8 months, the valves have required no maintenance and thus no loss of production. The cost to replace all 24 diaphragm valves with VESTA® valves was $17,160 not including labor. Payback on these new valves was realized within two months without considering loss of production.    

 

Conclusion

The customer was so pleased with the results that two months after the first filler was changed over, they ordered a new filler with VESTA® valves and continue to see great results.    

 

*All dollar amounts are in Canadian dollars.