by Ing. Gustavo Sosa, CEO of Sosa Ingenieria, USA
In our Latin American market, we suffer a lot because of the lack of standards. Even the piping isn’t uniform. It depends on whether the supplier is Argentinian, Brazilian or Chinese. This means the sizes of all the fittings are different, even some of the conveyors.
In our Latin American market, we suffer a lot because of the lack of standards. Even the piping isn’t uniform. It depends on whether the supplier is Argentinian, Brazilian or Chinese. This means the sizes of all the fittings are different, even some of the conveyors.
As professionals, one of our main responsibilities is the
creation and promotion of technical standards that will lead us to economies in
the maintenance during the whole lifecycle of all the facilities and even on
new projects.
Let’s say we are expanding our facility, installing a new belt conveyor, and suddenly we realise it is five metres too short to operate properly. We call our supplier and he says he is overbooked and the delivery time is 60 days.
What do we do? Stop the works for two months? Even if you
send the workers to Unemployment Insurance, you have to dismantle the camp and
set it up again in two months. Besides, there is a lost income for the two
months that the facility won’t be yet operating at the new capacity.
Call our local steel workshop and tell them to copy all the
structural pieces while we get the rollers somewhere else? It is very likely
the workshop will take more time than they promise and the rollers have to be
imported from China, Europe, or the US, and that will take at least 45 days for
the sea freight.
Everything sounds absurd and there seems to be no solution.
But there could be one, if manufacturers adopted common standards. In that
case, the piece that one manufacturer doesn’t have could be supplied by another
one.
As manufacturers, at first view it might seem one is losing
business, because you are lifting exit barriers for your clients. But you are
also actually lifting the entrance barriers for new clients. It will even allow
us to outsource production if we have too many orders and don’t have enough
capacity.
You don’t even need to create these standards from zero. You
may adopt others, created by international organisations.
Read more HERE.
The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine Milling and Grain
which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.
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