Productivity Improvement in Pipe Butt Joint Fit-up In a Boiler Manufacturing Industry

This paper presents a work undertaken in a pipe line manufacturing company which welds (butt joints) different diameter of pipes which are used for manufacturing of boiler. In order to weld two separate pipes, initially both of them has to be aligned and dimensionally checked to reproduce the data in the Engineering drawing. It takes up a lots of time and man power. And also, to make sure that the pipes do not lose its orientation, after the aligning bridge pieces are tag welded with the pipes to arrest all the degrees of freedom of the pipes and thereby immobilizing it. Our project gives the alternative for welding of bridge pieces in pipes for butt joints. By implementing the suggestion of carrying out the process by using fixture, we can reduce the total welding and fit-up time to 75% of the actual time. It also neglect other major problems such as, welding of brittle materials like P91, unnecessary reworks, human efforts, reduction of defects on parent material.