Mechanical Technology April 2015

⎪ Power transmission, bearings, bushes and seals ⎪

Above: A Bonfiglioli 300-series planetary drive under test at Bonfiglioli’s ISO 9001: 2008 accredited Linbro Park assembly facility. Left: An overland conveyor drive for the Kendal Power Station based on the Bonfiglioli HDO 130 bevel-helical gear reducer. Five of these were locally assembled in Bonfiglioli’s ISO 9001-accredited facility in Linbro Park. Right: An HD-series gearbox housing being loaded onto Bonfiglioli’s precision press for assembly. According to Beukman, ISO accreditation offers “peace of mind to our Italian parents and to our local customers, who benefit from better reliability, longer life cycles and ultimately lower costs”. times and meeting tight supply sched- ules. “And our Bonfiglioli parent has no qualms about supporting localisation. But our gearboxes are often critical plant components, so quality is paramount. Should we fail to meet the global stan- dards for any product, then we could be forced to import. Because we now have local accreditation, though, along with full internal quality management support, Bonfiglioli Italy are comfortable enough to allow us to assemble the full product range, including complex drives and drive train systems, even those that we have not assembled locally before. This significantly reduces lead times for local clients. “ISO accreditation offers peace of mind to our Italian parents and to our local customers, who benefit from better reliability, longer life cycles and ultimately lower costs. In Africa, downtime is a seri- ous issue. Anywhere in Europe or here in Gauteng, a gearbox can be brought into a workshop for a quick inspection and

The positive result of this is that all local assembly facilities and manufactur- ers of sub-components are operating to globally benchmarked quality standards. “We are also under pressure to im- prove the quality standards of our local suppliers. Part of the analysis that we are required to feed back to Italy is the product specifications and quality ac- creditations of our local supply chain. We are sent recommendations from Italy on the component and material quality required, and we send samples to Italy for testing, approvals and ongoing quality monitoring,” he continues. While some variations might be tolerated, every com- ponent used in any system needs to be inline with global quality requirements. “Bearings, for example, all have des- ignated specifications, which we send to all local suppliers. But everything from the paint used on a housing to the steel for a base plate has to conform to qual- ity standards. And this applies to all of our engineering sub-contractor too. On engineered components, for example, such as customised flanges, couplings, customised shafts, base plates and other assembly components, while these often need to be manufactured locally, we can only use ISO 9001-approved companies, which must also meet all the Bonfiglioli- specified quality requirements such as those for material specifications and machining tolerances,” Beukman relates, adding that quality has a flow-through ef- fect that pushes everyone involved in the supply chain to “up their game”. Localisation is key to reducing lead

repair. But this can’t be done so easily from remote places in Africa. Quality and the associated reliability therefore become key issues, and these need to be managed, from the design at the outset all the way through to onsite commission- ing,” Beukman concludes. q

Mechanical Technology — April 2015

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