The research reported in this paper aims at developing means of Non Destructive testing (NDT) to\nincrease the line efficiency of pipe production in oil and natural gas pipe manufacturing plants\nusing the Standard Allowed Minutes (SAM) method. Existing line production stations encounter\ndifficulties in maintaining the recommended testing speed of smaller diameter pipe, due to limitations\nin the Visual Inspection (VI) station. We propose to implement one additional technique\nwhich will prevent the decline of line efficiency in a pipe production factory. The range of diameters\nidentified as a problem in this research is from 254 mm to 762 mm. Microwave techniques are\nexpected to improve the line efficiency by increasing the production of the plant. This happens as\na consequence of maintaining the production rates of the identified pipe diameters, so that they\nequal the production output of the larger pipe diameters. We analyze the velocity traveled by the\npipe through Radiographic Testing (RT) according to the VI output (production). The RT velocity\nis decreased for the diameters identified above, in order to maintain quality control and cover the\nshortcoming of the VI. The number of pipes produced is computed during shift hours of the factory\nand pipe lengths of the forming department are determined. We compare the output (production)\nof a series of NDT line stations with and without the microwave technique for the first of the three\npipe cases considered in this study, classified as perfect pipe (PP), repair pipe (RP) and scrap pipe\n(SP). The velocity of RT stations analyzed in the paper ranges from 50 mm/s for larger diameter\npipe, and decline to 16.667 mm/s for the identified diameters. The analytical calculations of line\noutput (production) and line efficiency demonstrate the solution of this velocity problem after the\nmicrowave technique is introduced. It demonstrates that an economical and precise methodology\nto extend the production capability of the pipe plant has been determined.
Loading....