Colloquia

Summary

Heat tracing is a generic term for the application of heat to a pipeline or vessel to prevent the medium from freezing, to maintain the viscosity or maintain a specific temperature. Most heat tracing systems will trace the piping of the medium. Oostendorp Apparatenbouw manufactures the piping of the heat tracing systems. The demand of the piping is expected to increase in the coming years and the current production operation's capacity is not sufficient to meet this demand. For this research, the absence of a production system was identified as the core problem. Therefore, the goal of this research was to increase the capacity of the production operation by establishing a production system.

The to-be established production system is divided into eight components: the production process, facility layout, quality control, scheduling, material handling and the management of inventory, resources and cost. First, the current situation with regards to the components is defined and analyzed. Secondly, the different improvement methods for the components are explored and compared by literature research. As a result, the production system for the future of the piping production operation can be established.

The facility layout and scheduling components were focused on more in-depth. To establish a facility layout, the CORELAP algorithm was modeled in Python for the production operation. The model was used to explore the possible solution of a facility layout based on the relationship between departments. 

For the scheduling component, the Production Planning Tool (PPT) was created to schedule and organize the production orders of the operation. The tool calculates needed resources, type of production process, throughput time and mass of the desired piping. The tool also allows the production manager to keep track of batches, used resources, generate work instructions for batches and generate invoices for customers.

The goal of the research was to increase the capacity of the production operation, this goal was reached by comparing the capacity of the production system in the current and improved situation. The improved situation would increase the capacity of the operation when implemented.