Programme responds to power industry demands

The need for a massive increase in power generation to meet the demands of South Africa's growing economy is also driving an advanced customer service programme by David Brown Engineering to deliver improvements in gear technology for power stations. David Brown is playing an important part in the upgrading of existing power stations to boost efficiency and ensure plant availability, and bringing back into service smaller power stations mothballed during the 1990s. The timetable of improvement and recommissioning is a demanding one necessary to keep pace with the country's power needs, and David Brown, part of Textron Fluid and Power, has developed a special rapid response customer service package to deliver a rolling programme of plant inspection, refurbishment and improvement.

The David Brown rapid response package has been designed through a six sigma 'green belt' project to integrate with the challenging timetable and uses priority work scheduling and Kanban agile manufacturing and supply protocol to ensure component parts are available and heavy duty gearboxes used on coal crushers are refurbished and delivered back to the client on time.

The project has initially involved power stations at Duvha and Kriel; each has four boilers and each boiler is served by up to seven massive Babcock E-mill crusher units which pulverise the coal to ensure rapid combustion.

The crushers are served by 25 tonne horizontal bevel helical gear units with vertical outputs, many of which were originally designed and manufactured by David Brown South Africa.

Some of these units have operated for up to 160,000 hours life, and to ensure continued reliability and performance David Brown personnel are stripping down the original units and, depending on the size of the mill, replacing the thrust bearings and reinforcing the ductile iron casings with an extra thrust plate to handle the massive loading of the bearings.

Another power station at Grootvlei that was mothballed more than 12 years ago is now being brought back into service and David Brown is inspecting and where necessary refurbishing the gearboxes.

The Grootvlei power station is due to be recommissioned next year.

David Brown is also working on upgrading ball mill coal crushers at smaller power stations in Lethabo and Kendal, re-engineering girth gears up to 7m in diameter, and refurbishing single and double reduction helical gearboxes.

The programme is set to continue over the next few years and it was the commitment to customer service and meeting the tough timetable that won David Brown the position as primary partner for gear technology in the power station upgrade programme.

David Brown's Bill Gorman, who works closely with the South African operations teams, explains: 'As a world leader in gear technology we obviously have the experience and resources to undertake this work, but it was our ability to create a dedicated programme which ensures we meet the timetable that supports our relationship with South Africa'.

'The rapid response package is a perfect demonstration of the way the business of plant and asset management support is changing and the way David Brown has also changed, using the management and production strength of the Textron organisation to ensure we perfectly match our service to the needs of customers'.