In this article
Savings are flavour of the month
A tasty solution to pump failures
Industry Sector:
Food & Beverage
Application:
Flavour dosing
Actual Saving:
£27,960
Payback period:
Less than 12 months
Product/Service:
- Pumps
Customer Benefits:
- Reduced parts use
- Reduced downtime
- Reduced maintenace
When should a Parts Stores stop just supplying parts, and start supplying answers? Probably when a customer is requesting one new hose a week for their peristaltic dosing pump.
That was when ERIKS’ OnSite Stores managers for a major snacks manufacturer knew there was an issue with their customer’s asset. So with the customer’s agreement, a visit was arranged from an ERIKS Application Engineer.
Challenge
The customer uses two peristaltic dosing pumps to add flavouring to snacks as they rotate in a drum. The amount of flavouring, and the speed at which it is added, is crucial to the recipe and to ensuring that the snacks have a consistent taste.
However, the hoses within the dosing pumps were failing on a weekly basis. On a 24/7 production line, this was racking up not only parts and labour costs, but also downtime and lost production.
In fact, parts for each pump were costing £120p.w. plus £180p.w. in labour and downtime. That’s £600p.w. or £31,200p.a.in total. And that’s an awful lot of snacks.
In addition, when a hose failed it allowed the liquid flavouring to leak away. This not only wasted an expensive ingredient but also created a potential slip hazard if the drip tray overflowed.
The customer had approached the original pumps manufacturer for support without success – and meanwhile the pumps continued to fail.
Solution
ERIKS believe in working closely with customers to achieve solutions which meet all their criteria: from cost, efficiency and reliability to safety, productivity and sustainability. In this case, the ERIKS Application Engineer not only discussed the application with the customer, but also involved an ERIKS pump supply partner – the ProMinent Group – in consultations.
Discussions were followed by a visit from the customer’s engineers to a nearby ProMinent workshop to assess a new pump solution. This pump features a more robust hose, which makes it less prone to failure. Also, as the pump is a more modern design overall, the hose can be swapped-out more quickly when required.
Peristaltic dosing pump in-situ
Result
The customer initially installed one new ProMinent dosing pump as a trial. When this proved successful, the second pump was also replaced.
Each new pump’s hose requires replacement only nine times a year, instead of around fifty-two times for the previous models. And with a ProMinent workshop nearby, the customer can rely on fast support and parts supply when required.
Running costs have been drastically reduced: to just £180 per pump every six weeks, for parts, labour and downtime. That’s a total of £3,240p.a. for the two pumps, or a total saving of £27,960p.a. – with a payback time of less than 12 months.
The new pumps are also future-proofed, with a variable speed drive and PLC interface. So the customer can change from manual to automatic dosing control, if they want to give their operators a break from making snacks, to have a snack.
