As a part of the drive to save energy in the Company, the Ring Plant decided to concentrate efforts on to reduce the power consumption. All the Officers of the Ring Plant along with the Electrical Technology Group took-up the cudgels. Edward Debono's Thinking Hats were donned by the team members and a total of 54 very simple but innovative ideas were suggested. Here is a glimpse of three suggestions which were implemented.

A nitriding furnace of 175 kW capacity is used for heat treating the forging tools (see page 14 of Will to Win Issue 24 ). Though this furnace is utilised only during the general shift hours, it was kept ON for all 24 hours because it takes around 4 hours to be ready. This resulted in large wastage of energy. A simple solution was evolved -a timer was provided so that the furnace could be automatically switched ON at 4:00 AM for heat treatment at 8 AM each day.

Another example of the energy saving efforts was in the fourth zone of the annealing furnace where fast

cooling (from 800°C to 720°C) is carried out using a fan. This fan remains continuously ON. As soon as the temperature as indicated by a pyrometer reaches 720°C, the heaters of this zone are automatically switched ON to arrest any further reduction in the temperature. The idea given was to stop the cooling at 720°C and switch ON the heaters at 710°C. When this idea was actually tried, it was found that the fourth zone heaters are not required to be switched ON at all.

Three electrical control rooms were cooled by a central air conditioning plant with a total electrical load of

80kW. The maintenance cost of the unit was Rs. 30,000 per month. It was decided to install separate window air conditioners and remove the central air conditioning plant. The four window air conditioners consuming only 12 kW have been found to be sufficient to meet the cooling requirement.