Non-Stop Production of Prestressed Concrete (PC) Wire at the Siam Industrial Wire Co. Ltd.

by Nipon Nunsurakij

Publisher - The Siam Industrial Wire Co., Ltd., Thailand

Category - General Novel

Rising human population and rapid rate of urbanization have led to significant increase in construction activity all over the world. Demand for residential houses and a commercial building is ever growing. With cities becoming increasingly crowded and with advances in mass transport systems, suburbs are getting developed in far flung areas. Time cycle for putting up a structure is getting increasingly short. Prestressed concrete is proving to be a cost effective way in reducing construction time without compromising on quality. However, prestressed concrete technology cannot be exploited without availability of high quality steel wire. The Siam Industrial Wire Co.,Ltd. (SIW) is the largest manufacturer of PC Products in ASEAN, producing 200,000 MT of wires per year. To face the surge in demand for PC wire, SIW was forced to maximize throughput in a short time. This paper describes how SIW systematically analyzed the non-productive time in the production process of PC wire, which comprises of 2 stages- wire drawing and stress relieving. At the PC Wire Line significant time was getting lost in accepting drawn wire and setting up the line for stress relieving of this wire. This set up time was minimized by devising a way to directly feed the drawn wire to PC Wire Line. This innovation, implemented with in-house engineering expertise not only improved wire throughput by 14% but also reduced power consumption by 4%. This Non-Stop’ production process for PC Wire is probably one of its kinds in the world.

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