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Original Date: 07/20/1998
Revision Date: 01/18/2007
Information : Conveyor System
A decision made by the BRAC 1995 committee resulted in SIAD transitioning its mission to support the increased handling and storing of War Reserve Material and Operational Projects Stock, and demilitarizing conventional munitions. To support this requirement, SIAD formed an in-house home improvement team. The team’s goal was to upgrade existing facilities and equipment to a level that would support this increase in material handling, kitting, and storing and at the same time keep expenses for this change to a minimum. Prior to this, there was little need for any type of automated system to support the mission of SIAD. Therefore, no in-house, on-site resources were available to use for this upgrade of the material handling facilities. If automation was to occur, the necessary resources would have to be found elsewhere.
The team recognized that to be competitive in this new mission, an automated conveyor system would be required to handle the increase in the amount of material being processed by the Depot. The industrial processes in use needed to be examined and refined to eliminate or reduce the amount of handling or movement of the materials. The team would also have to ensure that materials delivered to a worksite were correct and received when needed. The team was able to find an existing excess conveyor system at Defense Distribution Depot in Ogden, Utah (Figure 3-2). By using this excess equipment, SIAD would be able to keep the cost of an automated conveyor system to a minimum. SIAD acquired the excess equipment and developed an automated conveyor system with six individual work stations. The conveyor system is capable of high capacity throughput of materials with minimum manipulation by other material handling equipment or personnel within the building. By centralizing the storage of the incoming material, automating the delivery of this material to the proper workstation, and returning it to its proper storage location by means of the automated conveyor system, SIAD greatly reduced the need for any other in-house material handling equipment. The conveyor system is installed in building 301, where productivity levels are expected to increase five times over the previous methods used.
Figure 3-2. Conveyor System
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