PROJECT SUMMARY

Project title: Evaluating performance and its optimization at Bhubaneswar

concrete plant

Concrete is a very common construction material. Projects ranging from a single family home
to a high-rise building all may need concrete for their foundation, slabs, columns, beams,
walls, etc. to be constructed.
The concrete production plant (CP30 model) operating in Bhubaneswar is a newly
established plant producing standard ready mix concrete to be delivered once an order arrives
from customers. Concrete production starts with the arrival of the concrete order from the
customers followed by the order processing, production of concrete at batching plant and
delivery at respective sites by transit mixers.
The batch plant has limited production capacity which is determined either by batching
capacity or delivery capacity. The batching capacity of the Bhubaneswar plant is 0.5 cum per
batch which is determined by the time needed to measure, dispense, and mix ingredients, then
load them into a transit mixer. The delivery capacity is 48 cum with 8 transit mixers (having 6
cum of maximum capacity) working 24*7 for on time delivery to a site from plant. The
delivery of concrete is managed by centralized dispatch system which is used for all kind of
communication with the customers either for concrete delivery timings or dispatching of
concrete using transit mixers.
The cycle time of delivery of concrete at any particular site is the sum of time taken for
production of concrete at plant and time taken for delivery of concrete at site and returning
back to the plant. The cycle time varies based on site distance from plant as well as is based
on whether the supply of concrete will be manual supply or pump supply. Usually manual
supply elongates the cycle time of concrete delivery in comparison to supply with pump due
to manual unloading of concrete at site. Hence, cycle time is dependent on type of concrete
supply to be made at the customers site and distance at which the supply has to be done.
At Present the average batching efficiency of the plant is around loading of 2 to 3 Transit
Mixers or we can say around 12-18 cum of concrete production per hour whereas the ideal
rate is around 72 cum per hour. Although with the current mixing capacity of 0.5 cum per
batch it will be tough to achieve ideal average rate but still we can achieve better than the
current average.
With rectification of minor bottlenecks occurring at the batching plant and in delivering of
concrete we can try to achieve loading of around 4 Transit Mixers or production of 24 cum in
an hour. Hence, with the improvement in the batching plant efficiency and in reduction of the
cycle time thus may lead to increase in productivity of the plant.