equipment cleaning
Assembly Line
Parts cleaning: the manufacturing maintenance saving you’ve never heard of
“Our new process, developed with the new Automatic Aqueous cleaning machine solution supplied by Safetykleen, reduced the cleaning cycle from 30 minutes down to 7 minutes!,” said a spokesperson at Knorr-Bremse “Not only was the cleaning time reduced but the cleaning is now more efficient and has significantly less environmental impact.”
The use of a parts washer can dramatically decrease the personnel time required for the cleaning component of maintenance and allows maintenance workers to focus on the key tasks of disassembly, reassembly and testing. According to feedback from users, an automatic parts washing machine can complete two days’ worth of manual cleaning in around 3 hours and reduce maintenance personnel requirements by 23%.
How to optimize cleaning in place (CIP) duration?
Cleaning systems regularly disinfect the entire production lines. They consist of stainless steel tanks, storage tanks, pumps, valves and piping and integrate connections with the production equipment. In a medium-sized factory, the cleaning stations wash up to 250 pieces of equipment per day to avoid contamination from one batch to another (by bacteria or micro-organisms).
When the equipment is being cleaned, disinfected or sterilised, it is not in a position to produce. CIP thus has a direct impact on the uptime rate of production lines. Furthermore, CIPs require large volumes of water, the scarcity of which is becoming increasingly critical looking at the needs of a factory estimated at several tens of thousands of cubic meters per year. Optimising CIPs is therefore an essential lever for any manufacturer who aims to increase the availability of production lines while significantly reducing its water consumption, in other words to achieve eco-efficiency.