INDUSTRIAL vs. CHEMICAL PLANT

A Work Experience Paper

by

Alexis Stacy Chemical Engineering DepartmentClassification- SeniorThird Co-op Work TermValsparSummer 2013

presented to

Victor UgazTexas A&M University

September 1, 2013

Approved by: Dwayne Illerbrun Plant Engineer Valspar 701 S. Shiloh Rd. Garland, TX 75042 972-485-7159

ABSTRACTMy expectations coming into my third co-op term were to be out of my element, after being located in the resin and packaging plant for my first two terms where I was able to relate a lot of what I learned in my major. For example, I understood a lot about heat exchangers, reactors, and chemical reactions. However, the industrial plant consists of mainly mechanical and industrial engineering. I was hoping for larger scale projects to scope and manage. Since I was no longer a first term co-op, my goal was to apply to the industrial plant what I learned my past two terms in the resin plant. I will describe Forklift Battery Chargers Relocation, the largest project I managed and almost came to completion, and Automated Fill Floor, a larger project I began scoping.

TABLE OF CONTENTSTable of Figures4Background5Objectives..7Activities and Results.7 Forklift Battery Charger Relocation...7 Fill Floor Automation....10Conclusion..13

TABLE OF FIGURESFigure 1: Valspar Logo and Slogan5Figure 2: Project Phase Breakdown.8Figure 3: Phase Two Completion..9Figure 4: Current Fill Floor Layout..10

BACKGROUNDValspar is currently the fifth largest manufacturer for paint and coatings in North America and is a global company with several different products. I accepted my first Cooperative Education job at Valspar over a year ago, and since then I have learned an abundance of valuable information. For the first, second, and third term I moved to Garland, TX, one of the larger plants located in the United States which is made up of three smaller plants: Consumer, Industrial, and Packaging. First, the Consumer plant, also known as the Latex plant, mainly works with water based products. The Consumer plant packages the products into the gallons of paint you would see at Lowes. Several automated assembly lines glue the labels onto the cans, fill them with paint, put the lids on, and shrink wrap them to be shipped off. Second, Packaging, or more commonly referred to as Resin, the packaging coatings used on several name brand cans and bottles such as Gerber baby food, Bud Light, and Campbells Chunky Soup. Packaging is also referred to as the Resin plant because they manufacture the intermediates and resins that are shipped off to customers and other Valspar plants. I had the opportunity to spend my first and second term with the Packaging plant which is actually made up of several smaller departments: Process Floor, Reactor 6 Building, Monomer Bunker, RT-Tank Farm, E-coat Room, GEN VI, Quality Control, and Shipping and Receiving. To give a little background information on some of the departments, the RT-Tanks located in the tank farm hold the bulk raw materials that are needed for production, the E-coat room makes electrical coatings for metal applications, the R-6 Building is where all body sprays and canned/bottle coatings are made, and the GEN VI room, the most recent department, makes the canned and bottle coatings that are Bisphenol A (BPA) free. Quality Control, also known as QC Lab, is where all products are tested in different stages of production to ensure that they are made properly and turn out with the correct specifications when it comes to viscosity, solids, etc. Lastly, the Industrial branch creates a majority of solvent based products which produces coil and extrusion coating. The Industrial plant coatings are provided to large industrial companies who use range from the coil you would find on a refrigerator to the metal coatings on the outside of sky scrapers or the new Dallas Cowboys stadium. My third term I had the opportunity to intern for the Industrial Plant where I learned about the different products and how they are all made. The industrial products are made in different areas of the plant depending on the process for production, for example, coil and extrusion products can be divided into high performance products such as Fluropon, Valflon, and Polylure or basic industrial coatings. Fluropon contains a Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) resin that makes it withstand weather conditions such as sun exposure, staining from dirt and optimum adhesion. Valflon is a fluropolymer (FEVE) resin based coating that is also durable enough for outdoor weather and is used by costumers, Exxon, Valero, and gas stations all over because of their vibrant color. Another product that is relatively new to the industrial plant is the automotive coatings. These products were moved to the Garland facility in the fall of 2012. Automotive coatings consist of the House of Kolor line which contains vibrant colors and different finishes for a customized look on automobile. It also makes OEM Trailer products which are used on horse and livestock trailers all around the nation.Figure 1: Valspar Logo and Slogan

OBJECTIVESThe objective of this paper is to describe in detail my personal experience in the Industrial plant, to discuss the projects and tasks that I completed throughout my third term, and the outcome and attributes I gained.ACTIVITIES AND RESULTSWhile my first two terms were about scoping, writing Appropriation Requests, and the approval process, my third term at Valspar focused on managing and scoping larger projects while multitasking and prioritizing multiple projects.FORKLIFT BATTERY CHARGERS RELOCATIONWith the recent move of automotive business to the Garland industrial plant the automated filling machines, lid crimpers, and conveyors all needed a home. These machines took the place of the old pre-staging area where operators would stage raw materials and powder sacks for the next batch that was to be made. This pre-staging area was located near the forklift battery chargers which were acceptable at the time because there were no open or handling of flammable material. However, the new automated machines, which filled flammable material into pails and quart sized containers, required the battery chargers to be removed from the newly rated area. This was the first reason for moving the chargers. The second reason was with the growing automotive business there was a need for storage space for the packaging supplies such as boxes, pails, quarts, labels, etc. By moving the battery chargers from the area there would be an entire wall of racks to remove clutter from the automotive fill area. Although I was not the one to scope the project or write the Appropriate Request, I was assigned as the project manager to carry out and complete the project upon approval. The major challenges throughout the project were the strict timeline and ensuring that forklifts, pallet jacks, and drum haulers could all still be charged during the moving process. A few challenges arose throughout the project as assignments were added and plans changed. Due to the challenge of ensuring all lifts could be charged at all times the project was divided into three smaller phases as seen in Figure 2. Phase one required moving the rental chargers from along the wall in the shipping warehouse to the back west warehouse. In order to complete this phase, a disconnect was installed in the back west warehouse, and conduit and wiring were run to a box to supply power to all ten wall plugs. Next, an eyewash station and battery watering station had to be installed as well. Once the area was set up, chargers were moved to the west warehouse which freed up the shipping warehouse wall for the next phase. The challenges during the first phase consisted of contractors not showing up to work on time, working slower than what you had planned time wise, and not following directions explicitly. Also, since one of Valspars main goals is housekeeping, there was a request to paint all walls that were encompassed in the project which pushed back the timeline. Phase two was the largest of the three and the goal was to move two electrical cabinets and all twenty-four chargers from the automotive wall to the now clear shipping warehouse wall. Because of the electrical cabinets needing to be moved this would require the power to be cut off to the industrial plant; therefore, the moving of the electrical cabinets and the chargers had to be completed on a weekend. LP Electric pre-ran conduit and pulled wires ahead of time so on Saturday they moved the cabinets, DanCar mechanical contractors installed the racks, and maintenance assisted in moving all the chargers from one wall to the other. Although it was a thirteen hour work day, on Sunday, the first shift had all chargers operating. The completion of the second phase can be seen in Figure 3. The very last phase consisted of tearing down the old battery charger racks and installing taller and newer racks as needed for the storage automotive. The challenge I ran into during the third phase was that the battery acid had corroded away a majority of the concrete under the old racks. This set us back more than expected since it was necessary to scrub the floor with baking soda and patch all of the holes with Quikrete. Although I did not see the final product of the third phase, on my very last day I witnessed the racks go up along the automotive wall. This project was by far the largest project that I had the opportunity of managing over my ten month co-op with Valspar. There were multiple contractors on site at all times doing different tasks to get the project completed in an efficient and timely manner. West WarehouseShipping WarehouseAutomotive AreaFigure 2: Project Phase BreakdownPhase 1Phase 3Phase 2Figure 3: Phase Two Completion

FILL FLOOR AUTOMATIONOne of the larger projects, currently still in the scoping and bidding phase, was to implement automated fill machines on the industrial fill floor. This project was by far the largest and most difficult project to grasp in reference to finding the money and payback needed to justify and implement the project. As seen in Figure 4, the current fill floor for the Industrial plant is extremely manual and several operators are required to complete the labeling, filling, and moving process. One of the very first tasks I was assigned was to complete an audit on filled drums to determine how much we are over/under filling drums by. This process was more complicated than I had predicted. Recently, Industrial switched from new drums to recon/refurbished drums for filling. The refurbished drums posed a problem regarding my data for over/under fill because not all of the drums were the same weight; therefore, I had to complete an audit on 100 recon drums to determine a mean weight for the recon drums and ensure the spread in weights were not to obscure. With the use of Minitab, the statistics computer software, the mean of the 100 recon drums was determined and based on the statistical data the weight range of the recon drums was not too wide that the under/over fill could not be easily detected. After completing the recon drum audit I moved to the filled drum audit. I was given a list that randomly generated filled containers of different products from different batches that already had the current net weight, tare weight, and gross weight printed on the drum label. In order to complete this audit, I had to work around the shipping warehouse schedule because I am not trained to drive a forklift. Their least busy time of day was on third shift between the hours of 3 and 6 in the morning. Consequently, I arrived at that time for three days to work with a shipping warehouse employee to pull filled drums down from the rack that were on my list so that I could reweigh the contents. After completing the filled drum audit on 100 random drums, the data I collected was input into Minitab and once again a mean and range was determined for how much the drums were over/under filled. The mean drum overfill was found to be 1.2 pounds and this eventually translated into the first cost savings number to justify this project. It was difficult to find the number of recon drums that are filled annually, the number of batches and products which use those recon drums, and the average price for all of the products that Valspar sells. The second source of cost savings came from the time that would be cut down for an operator to fill each drum. Currently the operator takes approximately five to seven minutes to fill a drum and with the automated fill machine this will cut the time to one to two minutes to fill each drum. Besides the audit and cost savings portion of this project, I worked closely with production to determine what batches are made in each tank that the fill machines would be using. The fill machines would have to support fifty-two tanks and the hundreds of different products which are made in each tank. This posed an issue regarding contamination. I determined a list of batches made in each tank and then worked with lab techs to determine contamination issues. We came up with a chart that ranked the contamination between products on a scale between four and one, four being the worst. Once the contamination issues were understood, it took a while to separate the tanks to determine which can share pumps, lines, and fill machines. The list was approved by the lab that none of the pairings would pose issues in the future and I began a more detailed cost savings analysis for each of the three fill machines. While going through the products made in each tank and looking through thousands of lines from past year reports, I was able to determine the quantity made of each product in the past year. Using the data found from the audit I created a cost savings of each fill machine and the payback for each machine. In the end and after all the work it was disheartening to discover that in actuality three fill machines would not be fiscally responsible and the process will start all over again with only two automated fill machines. Unfortunately, this is a long term project that will not be completed for several months and will take others such as engineers, production, and lab tech inputs, but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of learning about cost savings, product contamination, and automated fill machines and how they are such a small part of a larger project that will come together in the end. Figure 4: Current Fill Floor Layout

CONCLUSIONSAfter the third term, approximately three months total, I have retained vital information regarding the importance of safety in the plant environment, proper communication skills between contractors and coworkers, engineering knowledge, and the most suitable way to manage several projects at once. I have enjoyed the time here as well as the experience accumulated on the Industrial side of the plant. 13