Iron Foundry News
JULY 2020
Health & Safety
The Health & Safety Executive are concerned regarding foundry fume and the long term effect on employees health. They have an ongoing policy to visit all UK Foundries to ensure compliance with COSHH (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health).
We are committed to improving the Health & Safety of our employees and reducing the environmental impact of our process to ensure sustainability of our industry.
A decision was made to capture the casting fume at source and Extraction Hoods over both Furnaces and an Extraction System have now been Installed at a cost of £80,000. In addition, all employees who come into contact with foundry fume now wear powered respirators at a cost of £25,000.
JULY 2020
Bay 1 Refurbishment
During our Spring holiday Bay 1 was refurbished in line with our ongoing improvement policy throughout the Foundry.
JULY 2020
Recognising Key Workers
In an attempt to find some positivity during the Covid 19 Pandemic, the company recently ran a drawing competition for the local primary schools to recognise the efforts of our NHS and Key Workers with the first and second place winners receiving Amazon Gift Vouchers.
JULY 2020
Donation to Hamilton Grammar School
George Taylor & Co (Hamilton) Ltd donated £1,000 to Hamilton Grammar School for them to manufacture Protective Visors for the NHS and Care Home Workers.
AUGUST 2019
Current Order Book
We are increasing our numbers on the shop floor and associated training in preparation for an expected increase in the order book in the coming months.
AUGUST 2019
Succession Management
Our ongoing policy of encouraging and development of Succession Management within the company has led to the promotion of Dawid Blazynski as the youngest Charge Hand we have ever had in the company.
JULY 2019
JIB Cranes
We installed two new jib cranes for our Inspection / Dispatch areas to speed up casting processing and reduce manual handling.
JUNE 2019
GIFA
Pawel Batog, our Foundry Supervisor attended GIFA in Dusseldorf. GIFA is the world’s largest foundry trade fair, showcasing new technology and equipment from around the world.
MAY 2019
Pattern Warehouse
Large areas of the floor in the 10,000 sq ft Store in Blantyre were re-concreted in preparation of the arrival of another 2 sets of 5m racking to accommodate more pattern equipment.
APRIL 2019
Re-Tarmacing Yard
As per our ongoing policy for yard maintenance and repairs, we tarmacadamed the damaged areas of the yard.
MARCH 2019
ABS Re-Accreditation
We renewed our ABS Accreditation back in March which will hopefully lead to increased opportunities for us with our current and prospective Customers.
FEBRUARY 2019
There's a Storm Coming
The Health and Safety Executive will be visiting foundries within the UK to ensure they comply with COSHH (Control of substances hazardous to health) in relation to fume created from furnace melting, pouring and casting of moulds. We were one of the first to receive a visit back in January and are the first Iron Foundry in the UK to be instructed to install an extraction hood above both our furnaces to capture fume while melting and pouring.
All employees involved with melting, pouring and casting must now wear FFP3 dust masks or powered respirators if they are not “clean shaven”. The capital cost of the furnace extraction system is £80K and will be installed during our September shut down. We have also invested a further £25K in powered respirators and additional health monitoring.
SEPTEMBER 2018
Factory Building Painting
To compliment the recent painting of the inside of the foundry we are now painting the outside of the building.
SEPTEMBER 2018
Core Shop
We are investing £200,000 redesigning our Core Shop layout to allow the installation of a new 20L core blower and streamline production from our existing six machines.
SEPTEMBER 2018
Energy Reduction
To address increased electrical costs and reduce our carbon footprint, we continue our policy of replacement of all lighting with modern LED systems.
SEPTEMBER 2018
Internal Floor Replacement
During the summer shut down we continued our programme of replacing damaged areas of internal floor.
SEPTEMBER 2018
Staff Training
Pawel Batog our new Foundry Supervisor continues to grow in experience and has introduced a number of successful new ideas in production and shop floor training. The company continues to support a number of our polish employees improving their English at night school.
JUNE 2018
Foundry Supervisor - Pawel Batog
Pawel is 26 year’s old and from Poland, with a Masters Degree in Iron Foundry/Metallurgy. He will assist Mike McMahon our Foundry Manager with shop floor management, to improve quality, training, production and delivery.
We plan for Pawel to grow and develop into the company’s future succession management plans.
JUNE 2018
School Work Experience
Arron Findlay is a 15 year old student at the local secondary school who joined us for work experience. We have an ongoing connection with local schools to give students experience of the work environment and encourage them into engineering.
JUNE 2018
Admin Assistant - Caitlyn Douglass
Caitlyn joined the company at the beginning of June and is currently working towards achieving a SVQ level 3 Modern Apprenticeship in Business and Administration.
MAY 2018
ISO 9001:2015
George Taylor & Co (Hamilton) Ltd constantly strive to develop quality standards and are delighted to announce that we recently achieved re-accreditation to the new Standard of ISO 9001:2015.
NOVEMBER 2017
UPTURN AND CONFIDENCE IN THE MARKET
Over the last 4 to 5 months we have seen a steady increase in order intake and we are continuing to match this with growing numbers of Staff and Foundry Operatives.
SHOT BLAST ENCLOSURE
We recently purchased a second hand Blasting Enclosure which is now fully refurbished and operational. This allows us to hand blast much larger castings resulting in an improved surface finish and faster turnaround.
£20,000.00 investment.
FORK POSITIONERS
We purchased 2 x New Fork Truck Cascade Clamping Systems back in the summer. This allows us to handle a more diverse range of casting sizes, more efficiently and safer.
£11,000.00 investment.
NEW METALLURGICAL CONTROL
Last month we updated our metallurgical control with blue tooth connectivity to temperature dips and carbon equivalent measurement. Readings are sent directly to our computer system, allowing real time access and monitoring for management.
£7,000.00 investment.
SHOPFLOOR BARCODE RECOGNITION SYSTEM
We recently installed additional new software onto our Production Control System (Synchro) which allows us to use wifi hand held tablets to scan barcodes for coremaking, moulding, production control and work instructions.
£5,000.00 investment.
NOVEMBER 2017
JON, DOUGLAS & SCOTT
Both Jon and Scott celebrated 30 years with the company this year and Douglas celebrated 35 years service.
Jon Burn |
Scott Little |
Douglas Kerr |
NOVEMBER 2017
ABIGAIL McGILLIVRAY - ADMIN ASSISTANT
Congratulations to Abigail for recently achieving her HNC in Administration and Information Technology.
OCTOBER 2016
Ongoing Investment
BAY 3 ARTICULATED MIXER
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We have recently completed installation of our second articulated sand mixer. This will increase moulding production and give us greater flexibility in bay 3.
£75,000.00 investment.
SHELL CORE MACHINE
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Due to an increase in demand for shell cores, we have purchased a new Shell Core Machine to complement our existing unit.
£70,000.00 investment.
GAS SUPPLY INFASTRUCTURE
With future expansion of the plant in mind we have made the decision to renew and expand our gas supply system.
£12,000.00 investment.
DRESSING SHOP REFURBISHMENT
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Our entire dressing shop is currently being refurbished. This includes new dust extraction equipment, personnel breathing respirators, hand tools and jib cranes expanding to 9 operators.
£50,000.00 investment.
APRIL 2016
Investing in New Plant and Equipment
Whilst we have been a little shorter of work over the last 4 months, we have been keeping ourselves very busy spring cleaning and investing in new Plant & Equipment.
New additional 5 Tonne Overhead Gantry Crane in Bay 3.
With the success of our new 20 tonne Articulated Sand Mixer in Bay 2, we are now installing a new 10 tonne Articulated Mixer in Bay 3. This further increases our capability to manufacture larger moulds quicker than before.
Last week, three new Doosan Forklift Trucks arrived on site at the Foundry in Hamilton and a fourth was delivered to our Pattern Storage Site at Blantyre.
APRIL 2016
Housekeeping
We have cleaned and painted everything that is bolted down!!
APRIL 2016
Other News
Whilst we have been a little shorter of work over the last 4 months, we have been keeping ourselves very busy spring cleaning and investing in new Plant & Equipment.
• Refurbishments of each of our 5 Shot Blast machines.
• Our 500 kwh Furnace was removed and sent to Induction Melting to be refurbished.
• Ongoing refurbishment of our Dressing Shop.
• In January, we were granted re-accreditation by American Bureau of Shipping (ABS).
RECENT
Recent Investments to our Foundry
As part of our ongoing commitment to continually invest in our foundry’s property and equipment, we have made the following additions:
We installed our new Kaeser/ HPC Variable Speed Air Compressor in our Dressing Shop. With a range of energy efficiency benefits, this will help reduce our carbon footprint by a further 2%. Investment has also been made to the Dressing Shop’s air tools to address the occurrence of Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome (white finger).
We installed a 20 Tonne Articulated Sand Mixing Machine into Bay 2. The 6 metre machine allows us to manufacture moulds of improved quality and has twice the capacity and a speedier turnaround over the previous machine.
Investing in the Foundry
As part of our ongoing commitment in offering our customers the very best possible service, we will continue to invest in the modernisation of our foundry property and equipment. We opened production Bay No 3 and on the following year we announced the re-opening of Bay No 1. Both will improve our rate of production and reduce casting lead times.
