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Product category: PLM and collaboration software
News Release from: Delmia | Subject: Quest
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial Team on 10 July 2003

Software streamlines alloys smelting
process

Delmia Quest software has been used to streamline processes at market leading aluminium alloys company, FE Mottram (Non Ferrous).

Delmia Quest software has been used to streamline processes at market leading aluminium alloys company, FE Mottram (Non Ferrous) This consultancy project was undertaken by Amtri, a specialist manufacturing consultancy, as part of Business Link Cheshire and Warrington's Developing World Class Companies Programme

As such, 40% of the cost of the project was funded by the DTI.

Quest is one of the most advanced discrete event simulation packages available.

Incorporating virtual reality (VR) and 3D graphics, Quest is an interactive tool which allows the user to quickly produce textured, high quality models for both commercial and manufacturing applications.

Quest is a tool capable of rigorous analysis of multiple business scenarios.

Incorporating intelligent algorithms, Quest quickly calculates the optimum solution from a wide range of model parameter combinations and constraints.

With its principal marketplace being the automotive sector, FE Mottram scours the world to secure the raw materials needed for its production.

All grades of aluminium are sourced, such as drosses, extrusions, chippings, remelt ingots, rolled, castings, shredded, fragmentised, prime ingot and sows.

In addition, the company also buys titanium scraps, silicon metal, magnesium ingots, strontium and other addition elements.

All these different materials arrive on lorries which are then weighed on a weighbridge before undergoing processing and sorting.

Spreadsheet records are kept prior to storage in a series of concrete bays arranged like a fan behind the smelting works.

Like so many companies, FE Mottram has grown and this has affected the layout of its operations.

The company's MD, Mike Dines, explains: "We bought our site in four separate pieces since the early 1980s.

There is one road to the side as well as a central road.

We approached Business Link because we knew we were having difficulty with traffic and parking.

However, the flow of materials on the simulation showed how crucial the interconnection between external and internal transport was.

This total picture also made us realise that the status quo might well result in an accident one day.

This reason alone is a good enough one to separate out the lorry arrivals from the processing of their loads, but the new set up will remove the bottlenecks created by the lorries, gaining us approximately an extra hour a day.

A new weighbridge is required to effect the separation of this traffic, but the structural changes should cost less than GBP 100,000 and this will be partly offset by lower insurance as a result of maximising our health and safety arrangements".

FE Mottram has already commissioned Phase II of this project where Quest will be used to generate "what if" scenarios to reduce internal vehicle movement on site, with the principal aims being a reduction in fuel by 50% and a further decrease in the risk of accidents.

Dines added: "The effect of this simulation has been unexpected.

It has forced us to stand back and communicate.

In the future, we may well also want to streamline the use of individual casting machines too".

The simulation was complicated by the immensely flexible way in which closely specified aluminium alloys are manufactured.

Unlike almost all other manufacturing processes, the end result can be validly arrived at by several different routes.

This means that there is no "recipe" for producing a particular alloy, with different combinations capable of creating the same end result.

The knock on effect of this is that the smelting process is driven by the most efficient use of the furnaces and what happens to be in stock at a given time.

The stock levels cannot be closely determined in the way they would be in most other manufacturing processes, as the content of scrap is unpredictable and FE Mottram is not certain what has been delivered until the entire consignment has been weighed and sorted.

Bob Lloyd, Project Manager at Amtri, commented: "Some melts take longer than others and the composition of a melt can be altered even while it is already underway.

Therefore, there are no cycle times that you can build into the model.

The lorry arrivals, for example, are booked in, but lorry arrivals are not especially predictable, so further flexibility has to be built into the model".

"By adopting the same colour coding system as FE Mottram and working with certain constraints, such as some materials have to be kept under cover, a defined path began to emerge, showing where different alloys can be stored and where different modes of transport can venture.

The operation is a 24 hour one and there is no tight connection between the deliveries and the smelting, as alternatives are often at hand, so it was difficult to find a start point".

Amtri's Quest model generates the alloy "recipe" from the company's dynamic charge sheets.

Although the furnace time varies, there are some certainties, such as the speed of the forklift trucks.

Bob Lloyd continued: "FE Mottram was surprised to receive data on truck utilisation, but their movement was the key to the sorting process.

By confining the lorries to just one area, better use is made of the under cover storage area and the trucks are not held up.

The final Quest model effectively partitions the factory into a receiving area, a sorting area, a smelting area and a shipping area.

I was even able to address the fraught staff parking".

The assumptions the model made were tested when one furnace broke down.

FE Mottram expected that there would be a large drop in productivity, but as predicted by the Amtri model, the increased throughput and better furnace scheduling that came with addressing the logistics resulted in a loss of productivity of just 5-6%.

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