Imagine manufacturing powerful motors and generators up to 100,000 hp weighing as much as 75,000 lb, measuring in the range of 17 ft wide by 17 ft high with an order-to-delivery cycle of 55 weeks for final customer delivery.
Then imagine cutting that delivery down time to 32-35 weeks and reducing machining time on critical components by more than two thirds.It would be a tremendous challenge, but that’s exactly what GE Energy’s Motors and Generators division did when it decided to revamp part of its 750,000 sq ft manufacturing plant in 2008 and install a new Okuma double column machining centre, the MCR-BII.
The new machining centre was a big change for this GE plant. Established circa 1890 as the Edison Electric Company, the manufacturing plant’s 40-plus machine tools—lathes, horizontal boring mills and vertical boring mills—are decades old.
The older machine tools can handle forgings on lathes that weigh more than 35 tons, are 350 in. in length and 60 in. in diameter. Horizontal boring mills can handle parts over 350 tons, longer than 500 in. in length, 100 in. in height and W or Z axis travels of 40 in. The vertical boring mills handle parts that weigh more than 100 tons, measuring 120 in. high and 130 in. in diameter.
GE Energy’s Peterborough plant manufactures synchronous high speed and low speed motors, induction (asynchronous) motors and generators. The major markets that use its motors include the oil and gas, power and energy, and mining industries. The high speed and low speed motors are produced in one machine shop on the east side of the plant, while the induction motors and generators are produced in another machine shop in the west side of the sprawling 1.5 million sq ft manufacturing facility. As well, large motors, including induction, are produced on the east side of the plant while AC traction motors for rail applications are produced on the west side.
Up until 2006, the machine shop that manufactures the synchronous low and high speed motors operated with few hiccups, delivering products around the world. (Approximately 80 per cent of the motors produced in the machine shop are exported, with a significant proportion destined for China and the Middle East.)
Then management noticed a change in the demand for motors.
“What we were seeing was that between 2006 and 2007 the product mix completely flip flopped,” says Tom Sayer, strategic growth leader for manufacturing at GE Motors. “We went from 65 per cent of our product being high speed motors and 25 per cent being low speed to the exact opposite, with 65 per cent of the products we were making being low speed machines.”
