Founded in 1971 in Detroit, Michigan, as a manufacturer of chemicals used in various industrial and food applications, Diversified Chemical Technologies, Inc. (DCT) has grown in the ensuing four decades into a global powerhouse that now consists of six closely integrated subsidiaries that operate in Detroit and nearby Ferndale, Michigan, with a client list featuring some of the world’s most recognizable and successful brands from the automotive, food and beverage, packaging, electrical and consumer-products industries.
To meet the daily needs of this global client base, DCT and its subsidiaries manufacture an unarguably diversified array of chemicals, adhesives, polymers, epoxies, lighting solutions, and recycled rubber products at its nine manufacturing facilities in the greater Detroit area. To keep an operation this ambitious running and meeting the needs of its clients, DCT relies on thousands of pieces of equipment at its various facilities.
A crucial component in the manufacturing cycles of DCT’s subsidiaries are industrial pumps, but the keen eye of a new hire noticed that while the company was usually meeting the manufacturing quotas demanded by its clients, it was not always doing so with pumps that offered the best solutions for time and cost effectiveness, maintenance needs, operational efficiencies, energy consciousness, and, in the end, return on investment, so he went to work fixing the problems.
THE MAN WITH THE PLAN
Almost from the moment he began working at DCT in 2005 as its corporate director of maintenance, Santos Flores sensed the inefficiencies in its operations; nothing major, mind you, but niggling incongruencies in areas like pump sizing and flow rates that would have almost imperceptible effects on a specific operation at any one time, but would result in lost efficiency and revenue in the long run.
“I saw a lot of processes that they had here that I knew could have great improvement, especially with a lot of our fluid-processing, our pumping different things, our metering,” says Flores.
In his previous life as a metal-fabrication business owner, Flores had become familiar with the work of American Controls, Inc., Farmington Hills, Michigan, a leading distributorship for industrial pumps, meters, and accessories, and also a trendsetter in the design and construction of customized liquid-control systems. Through the relationship he had built up with Tom Matheson, a field specialist with ACI, Flores immediately began forging a plan to makeover DCT’s production processes with an eye toward improved operational efficiencies and cost savings in the areas of maintenance and utility expenses.
“I became familiar with ACI and Tom through the different processes that they had that I used to use when I owned my company,” says Flores. “I got a lot of suggestions from ACI in the way to improve the processes here.”
FINDING SOLUTIONS
At its facilities, Flores estimates that DCT has as many as 1000 pumps that are in operation at any one time. With the help of ACI, the journey in replacing those 1000 pumps with more efficient options began with one step—choosing air-operated double-diaphragm (AODD) pumps from Wilden®, Grand Terrace, California, a part of the Dover Corporation’s Pump Solutions Group (PSG®).
Specifically, DCT chose Wilden’s Advanced™ lines of metal and plastic AODD pumps that featured Wilden’s patented Pro-Flo® air-distribution system (ADS) to meet its diverse production needs.
“The old pumps we were using were very maintenance-intensive to take apart, put back together and get back online,” says Flores. “We had a competitor pump that we almost had daily failures on. Tom’s team came in and showed us how the Wildens worked and how they operated. They were good enough to come in and do little maintenance classes with our people, show them how they operated, how to do preventive maintenance, how to do repairs. We’ve reduced downtime 50 percent with the Wilden pumps. We get stuff back up and running a lot faster—when we need to work on the Wildens because so far they’ve been performing really well and we don’t have too many issues with them.”
According to Matheson, DCT began installing Wilden AODD pumps four years ago with approximately thirty currently in use at various locations. Most of the pumps being used are Wilden Advanced Series (bolted) pumps from the P200 (1 inch / 25.4 millimeter) to P1500 (3 inch / 76.2 millimeter) sizes with flow rates from 56 to 260 gallons per minute (3.53 to 16.4 liters per second).
Advanced Series pumps ensure total product containment since they are bolted together and won’t leak. This design makes them ideal for pumping raw materials from holding tanks to batch tanks, and pumping finished products into totes, drums, 5-gallon (18.93 liter) pails and, in some cases, tanker trucks, chores that are performed on a continual basis at DCT’s facilities. The Advanced Series’ metal or plastic construction also gives them the versatility to handle products with a wide range of characteristics, while a variety of elastomer options, including Teflon® PTFE, allow them to conquer abrasion, temperature and chemical compatibility concerns. Advanced metal pumps are offered in die-cast aluminum, stainless steel and alloy C, while the plastic pumps are available in polypropylene, PVDF, and Teflon® PFA.
DCT also benefits from the pumps’ Pro-Flo ADS operation. The Pro-Flo ADS incorporates only three moving parts: an unbalanced air-valve spool, a pilot spool and the main shaft/diaphragm assembly. This design gives the pumps an enviable operating cycle where pressure in the pump is directed in a way that allows the liquid to be pumped in the most efficient manner possible.
“Pro-Flo ADS is a big deal,” says Flores. “It cuts the time down in half when you have to do a rebuild because there’s only one moving part, really simple. You put it back together again, put it back online, there’s no issues, no leaks. With the competitors’ pumps, everything had to be absolutely perfect. You’re losing time for repairs, it takes time to put the pump back in place. That was the big thing we wanted to eliminate. As far as the time we save in labor and loss of product, the Wildens completely make up the cost.”
In fact, Flores estimates that his maintenance staff, which includes full-time employees at each facility working three eight-hour shifts, as well as a staff at a main maintenance crib where fabricating duties and equipment rebuilds are done, is now spending only 25 percent of its time on maintenance in the areas where the Wilden pumps are used, as opposed to the 75 percent of the time that was spent on maintenance with the competitors’ pumps.
“Now, it’s just normal preventive maintenance that we do—we have not had a failure on a Wilden pump to date,” says Flores. “For preventive maintenance we check fittings, check for leaks on the pump, check the daily operation on it. Some PMs come up annually, weekly, depending on which process it is. The only maintenance that we are doing on those Wildens is just the preventive maintenance that is recommended by the manufacturer. With the Wildens, we haven’t had any failures after having almost daily failures on some pumps in the past.”
Pro_1
By switching to Wilden’s Advanced™ Series air-operated double-diaphragm (AODD) pumps, Diversified Chemical Technologies (DCT) improved overall performance.
JACK OF ALL TRADES
This pump reliability and dependability is paramount to the success of DCT’s operations because it’s impossible to overstate how varied its operations are. Flores points to two examples that help quantify the versatility that the Wilden pumps offer.
The first involves working with a “rubinate” at DCT’s Recycled Polymeric Materials facility. Rubinates, which are combined with polyals to make recycled-rubber seals for use in the automotive-products industry, are tricky things to handle in that once they come into contact with air, they immediately solidify. This property means that they have to be handled by pumps that will not develop leaks, which falls right into the sweet spot of Wilden’s Advanced Series pumps.
“If there’s a little leak whatsoever and the rubinate solidifies, that pump seizes up and creates a lot of problems, plus it’s just a big mess,” says Flores. “Now with the Wildens, we haven’t had any leaks or problems like that at all and our downtime is cut tremendously.”
Secondly, Flores points out a finished product that is manufactured at DCT’s Coat-It facility in Ferndale. 60B4 is a polymeric material that is used in a wide range of industries, including automotive, furniture, aerospace and electronics. It presents its own set of handling problems in that it is a very viscous and very delicate material, meaning that it can sheer if it is run through the wrong pump or at the wrong speeds.
“With the Wildens, it just doesn’t do that; it’s almost like a free-flowing movement through the pump so it isn’t creating the friction or the heat that some of the other pumps in the past have done, which would scrap the entire batch,” explains Flores. “You can make the whole finished product and when it’s time for the last pumping step to put the product in a tote or a drum or whatever the container may be, with Wilden, at the end, we’re confident that we know that if we pump it, it won’t add the heat or the sheering effect. That saves us a ton of money.”
AND THAT’S NOT ALL
In addition to the benefits realized with the switch to Wilden AODD pumps, DCT is also reaping the benefits of using the pumping technology offered by another member of the PSG—Griswold Pump Company of Grand Terrace, California. Griswold® has product lines dating back seventy years and has become most known for its 811 ANSI Series of centrifugal pumps for industrial applications. The 811 Series has a full range of pump sizes and options that can be tailored to meet virtually any fluid-processing application. As it turns out, a Griswold 811 pump was the perfect solution to an ongoing problem that Flores was having within the air-compressor system at DCT’s Adhesives Systems facility. The environment at Adhesives Systems, where adhesives for consumer and industrial packaging are produced, is harsh, especially in the area where hot-melt adhesive is made. Therefore, keeping the facility’s air-compressor system properly cooled with a steadily pumped stream of water is a demanding, 24-hour job, which was made less demanding when Flores replaced the competitors’ centrifugal pump that had been used with a Griswold 811.
“There were a lot of problems in that area in the past,” Flores says. “It’s a harsh environment, there’s a lot of powders in the air, and also little fines and silts that get into the water system. When we had the competitors’ pump, when that compressor would die off, even though there was a back-up compressor, that compressor doesn’t keep us at 100 percent capacity. We would bring in a rental sometimes and that just got very, very expensive, let alone that we could miss shipments, and we don’t like doing that.
“Ever since we have put in the Griswold we have had no problems. That air compressor runs all of the pumps, all of the actuated valves, is used in the hot-melt process with three different reactors, used for the pelletizer; if that compressor is not running correctly, we are in deep trouble. For example, for me to rent a compressor would cost $2000 a month, and that’s savings right off the bat because I don’t have to do that any longer. We also experience savings from not having to shut the process down, or missing shipments if I can’t make my product.”
The Griswold 811 ANSI Series pump has performed so far beyond Flores’ expectations that he’s anticipating he’ll place an order for three additional 811 pumps in the future.
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Santos Flores, director of maintenance for Diversified Chemical Technologies (DCT), relies on Wilden’s Advanced™ Series air-operated double-diaphragm (AODD) pumps for their superior containment, energy efficiency, and ease of maintenance.
CONCLUSION
Being the manager of an operation as expansive and, yes, diverse as DCT’s is a big task. But not only does it involve managing a lot of moving parts, in these difficult economic times, every penny saved is one to be cherished. That’s why operational inefficiencies are no longer tolerated, no matter how minuscule they may seem. When he arrived at Diversified Chemical Technologies four years, Santos Flores put into place a plan to streamline the operations at all of the company’s facilities and to eliminate waste of any kind—be it time, product, environmental or monetary.
In utilizing the pumping technologies from Wilden and Griswold, Flores has found willing partners in the effort to make DCT as lean and efficient as possible, while also continuing to meet the high expectations of its client base. To that end, Flores is prepared not to rest until every operation has best-in-class equipment at its disposal.
“We really have thousands of pumps here, tons of applications, and we want to make sure we go through them correctly, methodically, so we can fix them once then move on to the next project,” he says. “That’s why I brought Tom and ACI in here, to make sure we size the pumps correctly and have the right one for the product. The ones that we’re losing the most money on are top priority and then we’ll go right down the list. The Wilden and Griswold pumps have made my job a lot easier.” ■
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Zuckett is a regional manager for Pump Solutions Group (PSG®), Oakbook Terrace, Illinois. He can be reached at Tom.Zuckett@psgdover.com. Both Wilden and Griswold, are operating companies within Dover Corporation’s Pump Solutions Group (PSG). PSG is comprised of several of the world’s leading pump brands including Abaque®, Almatec®, Blackmer®, Griswold™, Neptune™, Maag®, Mouvex®, Quattroflow™, and Wilden®. You can find more information on PSG and its brands at www.psgdover.com.
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MODERN PUMPING TODAY, June 2013
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