By Paddy Kenna (JEG Diageo team)
For those of you that don’t know what this is (picture above), it is one of the six crusher rollers that form part of the three mills on site in the brewery. Each mill gets overhauled annually and these rollers have to be removed and replaced with re-surfaced rollers which have been shipped from Germany. Each roller weighs approx. 2.7 Tonnes. When they arrive in from Germany they are covered in a protective coating that needs to be gently removed using nylon abrasive pads before installation. The method in place for this was placing the rollers on timber chocks purposely made and with the use of a lifting frame and chain blocks rotating the roller as you were cleaning.
This was a very labour intensive operation with the potential for either manual handling issues or damage to the roller surface. To overcome this problem, Sean Whelan and Robbie Eagers (from JEG ACMT crew) designed and put together with the sign off of Bob Hatfield (JEG hoist inspection supervisor) a trolley that is load rated and allows the rotation of the roller without any additional lifting. This has proven very successful and has saved a lot of time in the preparation work that takes place on each roller. The manual handling has been greatly reduced and positioning the rollers is now a much easier and safer operation. The process improvement has impressed the client so much they have requested a second trolley be manufactured by the team.
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