Exemplary service wins grinding wheel contract

Tyrolit succeeds in securing a majority of the spend each year on grinding wheels and dressers within Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery.

A supplier will often claim to have forged a 'partnership' with a customer to imply that a high level of service is provided, although the term tends to be over-used.

However, Tyrolit's success in securing a majority of the spend each year on grinding wheels and dressers within Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery (SIT ), Lincoln, must rank as one of the most successful examples of a partnership approach to business in the manufacturing consumables sector.

Usually, the last thing that a salesman on commission does is recommend to a customer a new product or process if it will generate less income.

Yet this is exactly what Tyrolit engineers have done on several occasions, according to SIT.

The confidence and goodwill that the impartial advice has generated at all levels within the company, together with the quality and performance of the grinding products, were instrumental in Tyrolit winning nearly all of the consumables business.

Moreover, it was achieved in just one year from a standing start during the mid 1990s, in the face of stiff competition from incumbent suppliers.

A majority of the Tyrolit grinding wheels used at the Lincoln facility are a mixture of VIPER (very impressive performance extreme removal) and other types for creep feed applications.

Power turbine blades and discs, rotor blades and stator components are produced from nickel alloy castings and forgings for the hot end of industrial gas turbine engines, designed for generating up to 15 MW of power for the industrial power generation and oil and gas industry.

Underpinning the service that Tyrolit provides is consignment stocking of over 50 varieties of grinding wheel at five locations throughout the Lincoln site, SIT paying for wheels only when they are used.

Stocks are replenished weekly using a foolproof system whereby the driver counts the number of wheels of each type that remain and delivers the balance the following week to return the stocks to the agreed levels.

There are a few wheel types, for producing older turbine models, that are rarely used but even these are included in the weekly audit.

SIT also holds a considerable stock of new rotary diamond dressers to support the production processes.

It was back in 1994 that Tyrolit first approached the Gas Turbine business in Lincoln, at the time that a Dorries-Scharmann vertical grinding centre was being installed - a very advanced machine for its time.

The company was keen to maximise production output from this expensive investment so it was receptive to the comprehensive applications engineering input from Tyrolit concerning choice of wheel, grit size, feeds and speeds, direction of rotation, coolant flow rate and correct amount of dressing.

It became apparent during the discussions that more benefits could be gained by optimising grinding parameters throughout the Lincoln site.

However, in general, grinding wheel suppliers were not offering such depth of technical consultation, but with the service offered by Tyrolit the potential financial gains were considerable.

The company wanted to have the same supplier provide the wheels and the diamond roll dressers, so that there was only one point of responsibility if there was a problem with the way they interacted.

In this connection it noted that Tyrolit produces wheels and dressers, the latter in its Crawley factory, whereas other vendors were offering different manufacturers' products.

So the first order was placed with Tyrolit to supply the wheels and dressers for the Dorries-Scharmann machine.

The benefits became apparent so quickly that, within a year, Tyrolit was able to negotiate a consignment stocking agreement for the entire Lincoln site.

Today, grinding is carried out mainly with aluminium oxide wheels on a variety of machines at Lincoln, including Bridgeport 6-axis vertical-spindle and Makino 7-axis horizontal-spindle machines, performing VIPER operations without continuous dress, while various other machines use a continuous dress or pulse dress process.

When VIPER grinding was first used in 2000, Tyrolit was well placed to supply the special wheels required and advise on the best parameters to use, having been instrumental in developing consumables for the process in collaboration with Rolls-Royce, which patented the technique.

In the same year, Tyrolit again provided close consultation when the company, that is now SIT, wanted to optimise coolant flow rate and pressure on its new 5-axis Magerle grinding centre, which employs continuous dressing of the wheel.

The latest addition to Tyrolit's service portfolio is a new range of safety training courses, which SIT is evaluating with a view to bringing all grinding machine operators up to date in respect of the latest legislative requirements concerning the safe use of bonded abrasives.

With more PUWER (Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations) regulations being introduced alongside Health and Safety directives, SIT is well aware of the need for risk analysis of existing processes and for assessment of competence levels among employees.

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