Money invested in a precast production plant must work and bring profit every day. We speak about serious investments that need to be secured. You want to ensure the existing plant is maintained and run efficiently. At the same time, you are interested in growing your business by increasing capacity and expanding production.
What are the best ways to do that?
The outlook for precast factories is favourable. Demand for sustainable, environmentally friendly methods of construction like prefabricated concrete is increasing. Rapid population growth in most developing cities affects massive demand for good quality housing, services, and infrastructure.
In responding to this demand, many factories are planning to expand their business lines to be more successful than today.
Three ways to expand business
Expanding product range
Increasing production capacity
Winning market share with high quality, delivery accuracy and competitive pricing
Expanding the product range
Adding new precast concrete products in the product range is one way to grow business. For example, you are currently producing hollow core slabs, beams and columns and see enormous growth opportunities by adding wall panel products to your offering, or vice versa. Or maybe you have sandwich wall panel production on stationary lines and now want to complement it with battery molds to be more flexible and efficient.
At this point, you start to ponder how to integrate the new production into the existing operations? What is the best location for it regarding other activities? What changes should you make? What new skills do you need to learn to operate the new line? How much should you invest?
The support and consulting of the experienced supplier in this situation are invaluable. Elematic will be glad to develop your ideas into a successful concept and create an optimal complement to your existing production.
Form 303949988 to be rendered here.
Increasing production capacity
Increasing production capacity is the other way to grow. Precast producers need continuously to take measures to ensure efficiency and quality of the running operations, which, in turns, also has a significant effect on the production capacity.
Automatization
Optimization of production processes
Adding new production lines
Modernization of machine fleet
LEARN HOW A BATTERY MOLD HELPED PRODUCTION EXPANSION
Justification for automation depends much on the nature and volume of your precast business. In hollow core production, basically low capacity, such as two to three casting beds, can be run without automation. But if you plan to expand or the number of casting beds exceeds five, automation is the way to go. For example, about a 100,000 m2 annual production capacity requires automatization because running the plant on Excel sheets is no longer reasonable. On the other hand, it may be well worth automating a much lower production capacity if the salary costs are high. In such a case, digitalized processes and automatic machines pay themselves back in a very reasonable time.
If your production volume is large, but you produce relatively standard elements and changes in concrete, type, size, and finishing are minor, automatization of particular processes may be the right choice, especially if you keep the whole chain from design to manufacturing and construction in your hands.
Elematic Plant Control precast plant management system includes numerous modules, a part of which can also be used independently. For production execution, the FloorMES and WallMES modules offer a perfect system.
When the precast plant serves lots of different customers, which order various series and volumes with high turnover, the plant management becomes complicated without automation. Scheduling and cost calculations must be done separately for each customer. Some products may be very expensive, some other cheap. The elements of different price need to be delivered to different places. This kind of plant activity calls for automation of the whole production process
Your productivity increases when work and material flows are optimized and precast design, use and manufacturing skills are up to date. In that, Elematic offers services for
A straightforward way to increase capacity is to invest in new production lines. It is a good moment to stop and think about what kind of investment you would like to make. If your current lines are relatively new, do you want to purchase the same equipment? In this case, you can efficiently utilize the existing processes and do not need to train your people to operate and maintain new equipment. Or are you ready to invest in the equipment of the next generation and automate the new lines?
The first way to increase the production volume and thus increase capacity and improve productivity is to examine your current machine fleet. How old the machine base is, the machines’ working condition, how well and often they have been maintained, and the current output of production where these machines are used. Study your current state and define goals for improvement. Elematic can offer a machine audit service to help you.
Think about the whole process, not just machine replacement
It is good to remember that the key to success is to look at the entire process, not just single machines. Replacing the old machines with the new ones is not the solution. For example, if you run a hollow core slab production and decide to update extruders to the latest model, Extruder E9, which is considerably faster than its predecessors, you also need to pay attention to the concrete transportation system and its capability to keep up with the Extruder
Update strategic parts of the machines
A cost-efficient way to update your production is remanufacturing existing machines; thus, its effect on productivity and capacity would be minor. Elematic innovates and develops the machines’ design and features and repeatedly introduces new updates to many models of floor and wall production equipment. For example, you can upgrade old extruders with levelling beams, which brings savings in maintenance cost.
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