Survey helps save £10 000
May 1st 2006 One of the UK's largest snack food manufacturing plants, producing some 175 million products a year, is reducing its energy costs substantially by optimising the air consumption of its pneumatic automation.
Each of the plant's six production lines is based extensively on pneumatic automation, making it a heavy user of compressed air. The company recently engaged Festo's new Energy Saving Service to provide a detailed analysis of its automation-specific energy consumption. This identified a number of areas that warranted improvement or remedial action, and the company is now in the process of implementing these changes - which it is estimated will lead directly to a £10 000 per year reduction in energy costs.
The facility operates a Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) program to identify areas for continuous improvement. The TPM team sought the advice of pneumatic automation distributor Cymru Automation, who recommended Festo's Energy Saving Service and helped organise a pre-survey visit to identify the most appropriate processing line to examine in detail.
The survey benchmarked the actual energy consumption and real cost of air leaks on a single representative production line equipped with 10 individual machines. The cost of air leakage on the line amounted to £1534 per year, with similar figures anticipated for the facility's other five lines. The total saving that could be achieved simply by fixing the leaks was estimated to be in the region of £10,000 per year.
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