The global eye care company Alcon has a 30-year relationship with Batchelor & Kimball. A regular mission is to perform system updates every year during the holidays. In 2019, the timetable to prepare for those updates had to be halved – from 12 weeks to six weeks. To meet that aggressive deadline, we leaned on longtime supply partners, ramped up our teams in the fabrication shop and the field – and leveraged our technology to orchestrate every movement precisely.
You make really good use of the other five days.
For Batchelor & Kimball, this challenge has become a holiday tradition. In the days between Christmas and New Year’s, we work long days – and nights – to complete a year’s worth of upgrades at Alcon Laboratories’ manufacturing facility outside Atlanta.
Alcon is a global eye care company, and its Atlanta location is one of its largest in the world. Here, 1,000+ employees make and ship more than a billion contact lenses a year. The machines almost never stop running. And every shutdown hour counts.
Over the years, B&K has returned during the holidays to support the installation of new production lines, expand the HVAC system, add solvent tanks and air compressors and make tie-ins for process gases, plus water and chemical lines.
One of our fully welded stainless steel tanks is moved into the Alcon facility. The tank stores solvent chemicals required for manufacturing.
One of our fully welded stainless steel tanks is moved into the Alcon facility. The tank stores solvent chemicals required for manufacturing.
In 2019, we received one of our toughest assignments yet.
Typically, we have a 12-week window to strategize a plan of attack, assemble skilled craftspeople, model the work in CAD, fabricate custom assemblies and acquire supplies.
Project Manager Gordon Dunn explains why we do all this work before making a single weld.
“When you’re in a 4 or 5-day window to do maybe 200 or 300 jobs,” he says, “it’s very difficult to accommodate changes or errors.” Planning and logistics must be impeccable to ensure all tools and materials are at the workstations, and everything fits.
But in 2019, down-to-the-wire strategizing at Alcon meant that 12-week preparation window closed to just six weeks.
With twice as tight a timetable, we sprung into action.
The project involved about 300 tie-ins, areas where duct systems, new piping containing solvents, gases and water would need to be connected to existing lines.
To get it all done in the few days around Christmas, we would need a massive team: 60 pipefitters, 20 plumbers, 15 sheet metal workers, 15 insulators, six millwrights and two cranes. All willing to work a lot of holiday overtime.
A team that size demands skilled coordination. Our B&K project squad set out to procure and organize the complex schedule of people, tasks and supplies.
We drew the designs in CAD and fabricated the custom pieces in our in-house fabrication shop.
But the biggest challenge, by far, was acquiring supplies.
Many of the valves and instruments would need to be specially manufactured. That typically means a lead time of 8 to 10 weeks for instruments and valves. Clearly not an option.
After 40+ years in the business, B&K has made a lot of friends; it was time to lean on those. For some components, we called dependable partners and expedited items from our suppliers in Germany. For others, we worked with our engineers to find smart substitutions that could be located quickly. Still others we pulled out of B&K’s own “spare parts bin.”
Somehow, we got every piece we needed, except for a single valve from Germany that came in three weeks late. (We used a temporary alternate until it arrived!)
Each annual shutdown brings its own challenges. One year, it was wet, icy winter weather. Other times it involved making simultaneous upgrades to electrical systems — which involves renting and setting up generators. And in other instances, the work involves finishing a project that was started by another contractor.
“Alcon knows we’re adaptable and we can flow with whatever design or scheduling changes they give us,” says Dunn. “Plus, we meet the deadlines.”
B&K has worked at the Alcon facility for three decades, including playing a key role with a major 2012 expansion. Since 2012, we’ve helped Alcon…