A Lean, Industrial Containment Solution

Situation

Painting a 30-foot-wide electric turbine is a formidable maintenance task, especially for Lean-minded manufacturers trying to eliminate waste and increase efficiencies. For one global energy equipment manufacturer, sanding or spray painting even a single electric turbine required shutting down seven different operations in the hangar until each task was completed.

While not exactly in line with Lean best practices, these shutdowns were essential for safeguarding workers from:

• Toxic dust and oil mist produced by metal grinding, sanding, and other pre-paint preparation tasks.
• Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and isocyanates released during spray painting.
• Carcinogenic hexavalent chromium particulates produced by sanding and coating aluminum components.

Creating a designated, hard-walled paint booth would significantly disrupt Lean, cellular workflows in the space-constrained hangar. Plus, traditional hard-wall booths don’t allow for crane access, so the manufacturer had to transport the large pieces by dolly into a separate bay. This type of movement significantly slows work in progress (WIP) and requires excessive man-hours and material handling.

The energy equipment manufacturer required a Lean, industrial containment solution for their cellular processes and workflows.

Solution

Duroair™ engineered a Lean, dual-purpose clean air solution to accommodate sanding and coating in a single modular enclosure. The new industrial containment system was housed in a DuroRoom™ booth, which is retractable and portable for safely isolating MRO tasks. The DuroRoom booth was combined with DuroCap™, a vented, six-stage filtration system with two exhaust units.

With the new containment solution, employees could switch from sanding to painting by simply changing the filters and cleaning the enclosure before each task. It also enabled the employees to:

• Safely sand each turbine while the six-stage filtration captured 99.4% of particulates and vented the dust to the outside.
• Begin painting immediately after sanding, without worrying about dust contamination or VOC hazards.
• Safely vent VOCs to the outside while abiding by EPA standards.

As noted above, before the Duroair clean air solution, the manufacturer had to put each turbine in a transport dolly for sanding and painting in the hangar bay. Simply transporting each enormous workpiece took two days of labor and planning. The industrial containment solution eliminated maintenance inefficiencies and significantly reduced overhead expenses.

Results

With the Lean, industrial containment system in place, the other operations in the manufacturing hangar can now continue uninterrupted, including welding and testing stations.

The new clean-air solution reduces efficiency wastes by:

• Preventing workflow bottlenecks caused by dust contamination that can lead to surface prep and coating rework.
• Protecting electronics and other valuable equipment from the corrosive fine layers of soot, dust, and oil film.
• Eliminating costly air makeup, excessive HVAC filter changes, and disruptions to one-piece flows.
• Speeding dry times for coating and painting by flooding dry clean air inside each work area while keeping damaging contaminants outside.

By combining retractable enclosures with vented air filtration, Duroair’s technology brings clean air to each electric turbine to reduce downtime and eliminate transport costs. The company now has five of the dual-purpose air filtration booths in place, safeguarding its employees from hazardous sanding dust, toxic VOCs, and potential injury from moving the enormous turbines.

Let Duroair Design an Industrial Containment Solution for Your Lean Processes

Each Duroair clean-air solution can be tailored for specific cellular workflows. Our clean air experts can provide an in-depth evaluation of your hangar or facility to create an industrial containment solution that meets your budget and aligns with your Lean manufacturing expectations.

The DuroRoom enclosures, available in softwall and hardwall configurations, are both modular and can pair with any Duroair industrial filtration system. Contact us today for a free consultation to learn how a DuroRoom containment system can support your Lean manufacturing processes.