Like many small start-ups, P.P. Profiles Ltd was a business conceived in a remarkably small building. In this case, a basement of a cotton mill in Walkden, Greater Manchester.
43 years and the profile and processing company has bought a plasma and flame cutting machine from Kerf Developments that, at 39 m in length, wouldn't fit in most factories, let alone the basement of a cotton mill.
Almost as soon as the business started, it generated immediate success that brought the formation of P.P. Profiles (West Yorkshire) Ltd in 1978, a company that has moved twice down the years before settling in its current 70,000 sq/ft site in Batley. Over the last four decades, the subcontract manufacturer has built a reputation for providing cutting solutions for carbon steel, stainless steel and a range of additional materials in the nuclear, oil and gas, construction, rail, bulk handling, food, water and waste, storage tank and yellow goods industries.
The 40-employee business produces anything from one-offs to small and large batch runs that range from small components to the extremely large.
To get a scale of the workload at the heavy engineering business, it is processing an average of 400 to 500 tonnes of steel every month, almost 40 percent of this material is run through the new Kerf RUR4500. It is this reliance on the Kerf Plasma and Flame cutting machine that justified its acquisition. The level of investment at P.P. Profiles (West Yorkshire) Ltd now stands at more than £2m in the last two years.
Kerf creates efficiency
The reason behind the investment in the colossal Kerf RUR4500 was due to two older 12 m by 2.5 m flame cutting machines and a 6 m plasma machine proving unreliable, creating an inefficient workflow.
Commenting upon the acquisition of the Kerf RUR4500 machine, P.P. Profiles(West Yorkshire) Ltd commercial director, Daniel Morley says: “We specified the Kerf RUR4500 with a single high definition 400 A plasma cutting, head on a 12 m by 4 m bed and a two-machine 24 m by 4 m bed that consists of both a 6-head and a 4-head flame cutting gantry, all in a single 39 m by 4 m cell. This allows us to load much larger jobs and it has opened us up to new markets, as parts over 12 m long parts are not uncommon."
The arrival of the Kerf RUR4500 machine made the previous two flame and one plasma machine surplus to requirements, reducing the required floor area and drastically improving efficiency and workflow.
Referring to the savings, Daniel Morley says: "Anybody wishing to not only survive but thrive in the UK manufacturing sector must have efficiency at the forefront of their minds and prior to the arrival of the Kerf RUR4500, we had to run a late shift and a night shift. The Kerf machine cell instantly eradicated the need for extra shifts and we now only work a day shift.
This is because each of the three previous machines required loading, material processing, unloading the steel sheets that could be up to 12 m long and then cutting the sheet remnants into smaller sized quantities for scrap disposal. This would be very labour intensive and alI happening when the machine was not cutting. Our crane operator would be feeding three machines with material instead of just one.”
"Now, we have four people running the three machines within the Kerf RUR4500 cell. There are operators running each of the two flame cutting gantries and another operator on the plasma machine. Feeding the Kerf machine is a crane operator that organises and sorts material flow as well as ensuring the three machines are always loaded with material, he also removes the plate remnants. This workflow configuration has reduced our processing times by at least 50 percent.”
"The 50 percent time saving is credit to having the ability to pendulum load and process our workflow. This means we can cut steel plates on the extremely large bed and whilst this process is ongoing, the crane operator can load the next plate. So, as soon as the machine has cut one plate, it can move on to the next. This eliminates non-cutting times and slashes setup times. During cutting times. the crane operator is constantly loading and unloading plates to ensure all three stations are constantly running. As the new Kerf plasma head is running on a 12 m bed compared to the previous 6m bed, the benefits of pendulum loading, and unloading are particularly pertinent on this station.”
The typical lead times at P.P. Profiles (West Yorkshire) Ltd are three to five days. However, the Kerf installation has eliminated bottlenecks, improved workflow and scheduling and given the company the facility to react much faster to customer demands. On top of this, the ability to service sectors where rush jobs and breakdowns are frequent is crucial to PP Profiles, so having machinery that hinders this is not an option.
Quality installation
Daniel Morley continues: "Machine uptime and service are critical to our business. We bought a Kerf water-jet machine over 10 years ago and the support has been outstanding. We have machines from several suppliers and the service from Kerf is something that any company could learn from. If we ever have an issue, Kerf will get an engineer out straight away and the problem is always resolved in less than 24 hours. What is equally impressive is the customer care, Kerf will regularly call us or pop-in to check everything is running smoothly. It is just excellent service and customer care."
As well as previously experiencing frequent breakdowns, the other reason for investing in the Kerf machine was quality and consistency. "We found with our old flame cutting machines that dimensions were susceptible to drifting during cutting and this could lead to re-working and scrap parts. While the Kerf flame machines can cut beyond 300 mm thick material, we are generally cutting up to 150 mm plate and at these dimensions, drift was possible in all axes. The Kerf RUR4500 has eliminated this issue," Daniel Morley explains.
He concludes: "The Kerf RUR4500 has delivered everything we wanted and more. It has streamlined our workflow, reduced labour requirements, improved machine utilisation and uptime by 50 percent and it has improved productivity by over 20 percent. Additionally, we have a reliable, well supported machine that is very accurate with the UltraSharp cutting technology and that gives us the confidence to take on any future challenges."
Kerf Developments Ltd
Tel: 01706 757 670
Email: sales@kerfdevelopments.com www.kerf.flywheelstaging.com
