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Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2005) 25: 551–559 DOI 10.1007/s00170-003-1843-3 ORIGINAL ARTICLE S.H. Masood · B. Abbas · E. Shayan · A. Kara An investigation into design and manufacturing of mechanical conveyors systems for food processing Received: 29 March 2003 / Accepted: 21 June 2003 / Published online: 23 June 2004 ? Springer-Verlag London Limited 2004 Abstract This paper presents the results of a research investi- gation undertaken to develop methodologies and techniques that will reduce the cost and time of the design, manufacturing and assembly of mechanical conveyor systems used in the food and beverage industry. The improved methodology for design and production of conveyor components is based on the minimisa- tion of materials, parts and costs, using the rules of design for manufacture and design for assembly. Results obtained on a test conveyor system verify the bene?ts of using the improved tech- niques. The overall material cost was reduced by 19% and the overall assembly cost was reduced by 20% compared to conven- tional methods. Keywords Assembly · Cost reduction · Design · DFA · DFM · Mechanical conveyor 1 Introduction Conveyor systems used in the food and beverage industry are highly automated custom made structures consisting of a large number of parts and designed to carry products such as food cartons, drink bottles and cans in fast production and assembly lines. Most of the processing and packaging of food and drink in- volve continuous operations where cartons, bottles or cans are re- quired to move at a controlled speed for ?lling or assembly oper- ations. Their operations require highly ef?cient and reliable me- chanical conveyors, which range from overhead types to ?oor- mounted types of chain, roller or belt driven conveyor systems. In recent years, immense pressure from clients for low cost but ef?cient mechanical conveyor systems has pushed con- veyor manufacturers to review their current design and assembly methods and look at an alternative means to manufacture more economical and reliable conveyors for their clients. At present, S.H. Masood (u) · B. Abbas · E. Shayan · A. Kara Industrial Research Institute Swinburne, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Melbourne 3122, Australia E-mail: smasood@swin.edu.au  most material handling devices, both hardware and software, are highly specialised, in?exible and costly to con?gure, install and maintain [1]. Conveyors are ?xed in terms of their locations and the conveyor belts according to their synchronised speeds, mak- ing any changeover of the conveyor system very dif?cult and ex- pensive. In today’s radically changing industrial markets, there is a need to implement a new manufacturing strategy, a new system operational concept and a new system control software and hard- ware development concept, that can be applied to the design of a new generation of open, ?exible material handling systems [2]. Ho and Ranky [3] proposed a new modular and recon?gurable 2D and 3D conveyor system, which encompasses an open re- con?gurable software architecture based on the CIM-OSA (open system architecture) model. It is noted that the research in the area of improvement of conveyor systems used in beverage in- dustry is very limited. Most of the published research is directed towards improving the operations of conveyor systems and inte- gration of system to highly sophisticated software and hardware. This paper presents a research investigation aimed at im- proving the current techniques and practices used in the de- sign, manufacturing and assembly of ?oor mounted type chain driven mechanical conveyors in order to reduce the manufactur- ing lead time and cost for such conveyors. Applying the con- cept of concurrent engineering and the principles of design for manufacturing and design for assembly [4, 5], several critical conveyor parts were investigated for their functionality, material suitability, strength criterion, cost and ease of assembly in the overall conveyor system. The critical parts were modi?ed and redesigned with new shape and geometry, and some with new materials. The improved design methods and the functionality of new conveyor parts were veri?ed and tested on a new test con- veyor system designed, manufactured and assembled using the new improved parts. 2 Design for manufacturing and assembly (DFMA) In recent years, research in the area of design for manufacturing and assembly has become very useful for industries that are con- 552 sidering improving their facilities and manufacturing methodol- ogy. However, there has not been enough work done in the area of design for conveyor components, especially related to the is- sue of increasing numbers of drawing data and re-engineering of the process of conveyor design based on traditional methods. · · · · ·  Emphasise standardisation Use the simplest possible operations Use operations of known capability Minimise setups and interventions Undertake engineering changes in batches A vast amount of papers have been published that have investi- gated issues related to DFMA and applied to various methodolo- gies to achieve results that proved economical, ef?cient and cost effective for the companies under investigation. The main classi?cations of DFMA knowledge can be iden- ti?ed as (1) General guidelines, (2) Company-speci?c best prac- tice or (3) Process and or resource-speci?c constraints. General guidelines refer to generally applicable rules-of-thumb, relat- ing to a manufacturing domain of which the designer should be aware. The following list has been compiled for DFM guidelines [6]. These design guidelines should be thought of as “optimal suggestions”. They typically will result in a high-quality, low- cost, and manufacturable design. Occasionally compromises must be made, of course. In these cases, if a guideline goes against a marketing or performance requirement, the next best alternative should be selected [7]. Company-speci?c best practice refers to the in-house design rules a company develops, usually over a long period of time, and which the designer is expected to adhere to. These design rules are identi?ed by the company as contributing to improved quality and ef?ciency by recognising the overall relationships between · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·  Design for a minimum number of parts Develop a modular design Minimise part variations Design parts to be multifunctional Design parts for multiuse Design parts for ease of fabrication Avoid separate fasteners Maximise compliance: design for ease of assembly Minimise handling: design for handling presentation Evaluate assembly methods Eliminate adjustments Avoid ?exible components: they are dif?cult to handle Use parts of known capability Allow for maximum intolerance of parts Use known and proven vendors and suppliers Use parts at derated values with no marginal overstress Minimise subassemblies particular processes and design decisions. Companies use such guidelines as part of the training given to designers of products requiring signi?cant amounts of manual assembly or mainte- nance. Note that most of the methodologies are good at either being quick and easy to start or being more formal and quanti- tative. For example, guidelines by Boothroyd and Dewhurst [8] on DFA are considered as being quantitative and systematic. Whereas the DFM guidelines, which are merely rules of thumb derived from experienced professionals, are more qualitative and less formal [9]. 3 Conventional conveyor system design Design and manufacturing of conveyor systems is a very com- plex and time-consuming process. As every conveyor system is a custom-made product, each project varies from every other project in terms of size, product and layout. The system design Fig. 1. Layout of conveyor sys- tem for labelling plasic bottles 553 is based on client requirements and product speci?cations. More- over, the system layout has to ?t in the space provided by the company. The process of designing a layout for a conveyor sys- tem involve revisions and could take from days to months or in some instances years. One with the minimum cost and maximum client suitability is most likely to get approval. Figure 1 shows a schematic layout of a typical conveyor system installed in a production line used for labelling of plastic bottles. Different sections of the conveyor system are identi?ed by speci?c technical names, which are commonly used in similar industrial application. The “singlizer” sec- tion enables the product to form into one lane from multiple lanes. The “slowdown table” reduces the speed of product once it exits from ?ller, labeller, etc. The “mass ?ow” sec- tion is used to keep up with high-speed process, e.g., ?ller, labeller, etc. The “transfer table” transfers the direction of prod- uct ?ow. The purpose of these different conveyor sections is thus to control the product ?ow through different processing machines. A typical mechanical conveyor system used in food and bev- erage applications consists of over two hundred mechanical and electrical parts depending on the size of the system. Some of the common but essential components that could be standard- ised and accumulated into families of the conveyor system are side frames, spacer bars, end plates, cover plates, inside bend plates, outside bend plates, bend tracks and shafts (drive, tail and slave). The size and quantity of these parts vary according to the length of conveyor sections and number of tracks correspond- ing to the width and types of chains required. The problems and shortcomings in the current design, manufacturing and assembly of mechanical conveyors are varied, but include:  4 Areas of improvement In order to identify the areas of cost reduction in material and labour, a cost analysis of all main conveyor parts was conducted to estimate the percentage of cost of each part in relation to the total cost of all such parts. The purpose of this analysis was to identify the critical parts, which are mainly responsible for in- creasing the cost of the conveyor and thereby investigate means for reducing the cost of such parts. Table 1 shows the cost analysis of a 50-section conveyor sys- tem. The analysis reveals that 12 out of 15 parts constitute 79% of the total material cost of the conveyor system, where further improvements in design to reduce the cost is possible. Out of these, seven parts were identi?ed as critical parts (shown by an asterisk in Table 1) constituting maximum number of compo- nents in quantity and comprising over 71% of overall material cost. Among these, three components (leg set, side frame and support channel) were found to account for 50% of the total conveyor material cost. A detailed analysis of each of these 12 parts was carried out considering the principles of concurrent en- gineering, design for manufacture and design for assembly, and a new improved design was developed for each case [10]. De- tails of design improvement of some selected major component are presented below. 5 Redesign of leg set assembly In a conveyor system, the legs are mounted on the side frame to keep the entire conveyor system off the ?oor. The existing design of conveyor legs work, but they are costly to manufacture, they · · · · Over design of some parts High cost of some components Long hours involved in assembly/maintenance Use of non-standard parts have stability problems, and cause delays in deliveries. The delay is usually caused by some of the parts not arriving from over- seas suppliers on time. The most critical speci?cations required for the conveyor legs are: Table 1. Conveyor critical parts based on parts cost analysis Product description Leg set? Side frame? Support channel? Bend tracks Rt. roller shaft? Tail shaft Spacer bar? Support wear strip? Support side wear strip? End plate Cover plate Bend plates Torque arm bracket Slot cover Inside bend plate  Qty 68 80 400 8 139 39 135 400 132 39 39 8 18 97 8  Material used Plastic leg + SS tube 2.5 mm SS C channel SS Plastic 20 dia. SS shaft 35 dia. Stainless steel 50X50X6 SS 40 × 10 mm plastic Plastic 2.5 mm/SS 1.6 mm S/S 2.5 mm/SS 6 mm S/S plate Stainless steel 2.5 mm/SS  Cost (%) 20.22 16.07 15.00 14.36 6.70 6.27 5.43 5.36 3.01 1.88 1.57 1.29 1.21 0.97 0.66  Improvement possible (Yes/No) Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Total ?Critical  parts 100.00 554 · · · ·  Strength to carry conveyor load Stability Ease of assembly Ease of ?exibility (for adjusting height)  1 and part 3 in Fig. 2) was not rigid enough. The connections for these parts are only a single 6 mm bolt. At times, when the conveyor system was carrying full product loads, it was observed that the conveyor legs were unstable and caused mechanical vi- bration. One of the main reasons for this was due to a single bolt Figure 2 indicates all the parts for the existing design of the conveyor leg. The indicated numbers are the part numbers described in Table 2, which also shows a breakdown of cost an- alysis complete with the labour time required to assemble a com- plete set of legs. The existing leg setup consists of plastic leg brackets ordered from overseas, stainless steel leg tubes, which are cut into speci?ed sizes, leg tube plastic adjustments, which are clipped onto the leg tube at the bottom as shown in Fig. 2. Lugs, which are cut in square sizes, drilled and welded to the leg tube to bolt the angle cross bracing and backing plate to support leg brackets bolts. The # of parts in Table 2 signi?es the number of components in each part number and the quantity is the con- sumption of each part in the leg design. Companies have used this design for many years but one of the common complaints reported by the clients was of the instability of legs. From an initial investigation, it became clear that the connec- tion between the stainless steel tube and plastic legs bracket (part Fig. 2. Existing leg design assembly with part names shown in Table 1 Table 2. Cost analysis for old leg design assembly connection at each end of the lugs in part 3 and part 7. The sta- bility of the conveyor is considered critical matter and requires recti?cation immediately to satisfy customer expectations. Considering the problems of the existing conveyor leg de- sign and the client’s preferences, a new design for the conveyor leg was developed. Generally the stability and the strength of the legs were considered as the primary criteria for improve- ment in the new design proposal but other considerations were the simplicity of design, minimisation of overseas parts and ease of assembly at the point of commissioning. Figure 3 shows, the new design of the conveyor’s leg assembly, and Table 3 gives a description and the cost of each part. Figure 3 shows that the new design consists of only ?ve main parts for the conveyor’s leg compared to eight main parts in the old design. In the old design, the plastic leg bracket, the leg tube plastic adjustment and the leg tube were the most expensive items accounting for 72% of the cost of leg assembly. In the new Part no. 1 5, 6 4 7 2 3 8  Part description Plastic leg bracket Leg tube plastic adjustment Lug Angle cross bracing Backing plate Leg tube Bolts  # of parts 2 4 2 1 2 2 6  Qty 2 2 2 1 2 2 6  Cost $ 30.00 $ 28.00 $ 4.00 $ 5.00 $ 4.00 $ 25.00 $ 3.00  Source Overseas Overseas In-house In-house In-house In-house In-house Total assembly cost (welding) $ 15.00 In-house Total 19 17 $ 114.00 555 Fig. 3. New design for leg assembly with part names in Table 3 Table 3. Cost analysis for new design leg assembly Part no. 1 3 4 5 2  Part description Stainless steel angle (50 × 50 × 3 mm) Leg plastic adjustment Cross brassing Bolts Backing plate  # of parts 2 2 1 8 2  Qty 2 2 1 4 2  Cost $ 24.00 $ 10.00 $ 7.00 $ 4.00 $ 4.00  Source In-house Overseas In-house In-house In-house Total assembly cost $ 10.00 In-house Total design, those parts have been replaced by a stainless steel angle and a new plastic leg adjustment reducing the cost of leg assem- bly by almost 50%. Thus the total numbers of parts in the leg have been reduced from 19 to 15 and the total cost per leg setup 15 · · · · 11 Size of side frame (depth) Strength of the material Ease for assembly Ease for manufacturing $ 59.00 has been reduced by $ 55 in the new design. The new conveyor leg design, when tested, was found to be more secure and stable than the old design. The elimination of part number 1 and 5 from old conveyor design has made the new design more stable and rigid. In addition, the width of the cross bracing has also been increased with two bolts mount instead of one in old design. This has provided the entire conveyor leg setup an additional strength. 6 Redesign of the side frames The side frame is the primary support of a conveyor system that provides physical strength to conveyors and almost all the parts are mounted on it. The side frame is also expected to have a rigid strength to provide support to all the loads carried on the conveyor. It also accommodates all the associated conveyor components for the assembly. The critical considerations of side frame design are: Figure 4 shows the side frame dimension and parameters. The side frame used in existing design appears to be of rea- sonable depth in size (dimension H in Fig. 4). From the initial investigation, it was found that the distance between spacer bar holes and return shaft (dimensions G and F in Fig. 4) could be reduced, as there was some unnecessary gap between those two components. The important point to check before rede?ning the design parameters was to make sure that after bringing those two closer, the return chains would not catch the spacer bar while the conveyor is running. The model of the new side frame design was drawn on CAD to ensure all the speci?cations are sound and the parts are placed in the position to check the clearances and the ?ts. Using the principle of design for manufacturing the new side frame design was made symmetrical so that it applies to all types of side frames. This change is expected to reduce the size of side frame signi?cantly for all sizes of chains. Table 4 shows a comparison of dimensions in the old design and the new design of side frames for the same chain type. It 556 Fig. 4. Side frame dimensions Table 4. New and old side frame dimension parameters Old design Chain type 3.25 LF/SS  STR/LBP/MAG A 31 B 92 C 71 D 196 E 65 F 105 G 211 H 241 I 136 J 58 K 85 L 196 TAB 22 83 62 187 56 96 202 232 127 New design Chain type 3.25 LF/SS  STR/LBP/MAG/TAB A 31 B 100 C 73 D 173 E 67 F 107 G 167 H 199 I 92 J 58 K 85 L 152 is noted that the overall size (depth) of the conveyor has been reduced from 241 mm to 199 mm (dimension H), which gives a saving of 42 mm of stainless steel on every side frame manu- factured. Thus, from a stainless steel sheet 1500 × 3000 mm, the old design parameter