Business Case Study: Reducing Downtime on Concrete Block Equipment

The customer is a manufacturer of concrete block and concrete wall systems used for decorative and structural applications.

The customer was experiencing a significant amount of downtime when changing between colors and mixes for different precast concrete block products. The process involved having two workers using pneumatic equipment to chip off any of the material stuck to the inside walls of the hopper. This process could take as long as 2 hours and dramatically slowed production.

Plan Tech provided the solution by casting sheets of Armorglide Composite urethane, which could be bolted into place inside the batching and mixing equipment. The Armorglide Composite sheets greatly reduced the amount of material that stuck to the inside of the equipment and dramatically shortened the amount of time it took to clean the equipment. The time to clean the equipment was reduced from as much as six man-hours to as little as thirty minutes for one person.

The customer got a solution to a problem that was slowing down their production, costing them both man hours and blocks produced as well as one that helped to protect their equipment, providing them with longer equipment life and reduced equipment maintenance expenses.

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