In a Jishu Hozen (Autonomous maintenance) project a HMT Machining Center was taken up for cleaning. As the machine was being cleaned intensely (as such the machine undergoes cleaning once every month) a lot of abnormalities were typically discovered and tagged. During this cleaning the team observed that the coolant that was being used in the process was supposed to go through three stages of purification. There was a centrifuge, followed by a magnetic separator and then a rotating paper filter. The observation of the team was that the centrifuge was ineffective and also the magnetic separator. And that only the paper filter logically should be adequate. Another observation made was that despite the paper filter the coolant being sprayed was dirty. The team then started cleaning the coolant tank.

Then came the discovery…The final filtration tank (which should contain filtered coolant) was actually interconnected to the other tanks and despite the paper filter dirty coolant was only being circulated. So the machine for the last ten years was actually circulating dirty coolant with everybody thinking nothing was being effective.

The team then decided that due to the nature of operations only the final paper filter is adequate and dispensed with the centrifuge and magnetic separator. Thus the no. of motors reduced from nine to three motors and they would have spent about Rs 10 lakhs on power costs in the last ten years to no effect.

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