High-precision, innovation and reliability Schneeberger

or government; they must be central to any organisation’s strategy for sustainable growth and leadership. They are central to our growth too. We are driving the development of new concepts and technologies through collaborative R&D, and our focus is firmly on innovation – to benefit our clients and society’s future.

Shall we talk about the culture of quality in Italy?

Lloyd’s Register in a certain sense acts as a guarantor of continuity in qualitative terms. It often happens that companies, in an effort to make savings and manage costs, get rid of their best employees when they arrive at a critical age, and thus they lose the experience acquired over by the years by these employees. Therefore, unless a younger employee has worked side by side with the expert to facilitate the transfer of experience and knowledge, the risk is that all the know-how acquired over time will be lost. If one loses sight of the overall process in concentrating on an individual process, value flows are interrupted, and the risk is that the very quality upon which the success of Italian companies depends will be lost. In the specific case, the handover and succession between an expert employee leaving and a newcomer is crucial and needs to be planned in order to give enough time to the knowledge transfer.

Lloyd’s Register often acts as an advisor, supporting the manufacturers or EPC contractors in understanding the importance of ‘end to end’ value process monitoring, concentrating on every single process in the creation of value, but mostly on the overall ‘big picture’ and end result.

What should Italian entrepreneurs be concentrating on, and what strategy should he or she opt for?

Concentrating on quality requires things done properly at the first time and proving it through certification. Certification has a cost which is accepted only if it’s a value added. Just think about the value creation process, for example in a power plant construction project. The company which is going to build the plant (EPC contractor) has to consider several phases, their deliverables and related costs. These phases could be seen as Design and Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Installation, Commissioning and Testing and Start Up. Afterwards a performance test period follows, where the end user and the EPC contractor check the parameters which indicate the correct functioning of the whole.

Therefore we can immagine a certain number of engineering hours budgeted for that phase, a budget for buying all necessary materials, components and services in the Procurement phase, costs for man-hours and machinery in Construction, etc.

All the process owners of these single processes (the ones who manage and are responsible to deliver in each phase) are pushed to save money or even cut costs in their own process in order to make savings and increase the project margin, but in many cases, normally when inexperienced project managers are acting or in case of companies whose main objective is the financials and not the overall success of the project, including, most importantly customer satisfaction. These uncontrolled cuts are very dangerous, because it makes people loose the focus on the end to end project process and its end result, and can create and avalanche of quality issues and mistakes, which propagate and reach potentially enormous proportions at the end, causing not only a margin erosion but, in many cases, huge losses, due to liquidated damages or penalties for delay and missing deliverables. When this is realized, normally it’s too late.

One of the root causes of this issue is that peoples performance is normally measured only on the process they manage, and not also on the end result of the project. Changing this approach by using KPI’s extended to the overall result creates a better quality culture, team spirit, unity, focus on the end client and, very importantly, saves a lot of time and money.

The lesson here is that while focusing on the single process we should never lose the focus on the end to end process chain and its final result. Modifying something in a single process could negatively impact the final outcome. The ones who understood this principle are the successful ones.

Lloyd’s Register

Lloyd’s Register is unique. At its heart, a charity with a mission to protect life and property and to advance transport and engineering education and research. And funding this is our operating arm, a successful, profitmaking business which relies on the skills, knowledge and experience of our employees – professionals and experts in their fields.

We provide independent assurance and expert advice to companies operating high- risk, capital-intensive assets in the energy and transportation sectors. We help our clients to ensure the quality construction and operation of critical infrastructure – ships, oil platforms, power plants, trains. Through our business assurance services we help companies manage their systems and risks across a wide range of sectors.

Technical excellence

As an independent third-party, Lloyd’s Register needs to keep at the forefront of technology and increasingly understand the fundamental science and academic analysis behind new technologies. Through this we can assess the risk of new technology before it is applied to engineering solutions, helping to ensure that people are safe and that essential assets perform as required.

Our reputation for technical excellence relies on retaining, developing and attracting the best engineering and technical talent, with over 9,000 employees in 78 countries supporting clients worldwide. Through the investment of around £100 million in two global technology centres, in the UK and Singapore, we are developing and supporting the innovations that will play a vital role in the immediate and long-term future of shipping and energy.

Our global technology centres serve as the cornerstone for our global research and development network, which currently includes over 50 academic and technical institutions sponsored by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation.

Public benefit

Through these services we support a significant part of the Lloyd’s Register Foundation’s charitable objectives, and generate the profits to fund science, engineering and technology research for public benefit worldwide.

The Lloyd’s Register Foundation also funds education, inspiring and supporting the next generation into careers in science, engineering and technology, from school through to university and post-graduate research.

Life matters

Lloyd’s Register’s compliance, risk and technical consultancy services give clients confidence that their assets and businesses are safe, sustainable and dependable. The safety we expect in our everyday lives depends on things working – and working properly. The transport system that takes us to work, the platform producing the oil that fuels our vehicles, the ships carrying people and cargoes and the systems and equipment that enable life to proceed as normal – all these assets must be checked and properly managed to ensure they are meeting the relevant standards. This is the task of the Lloyd’s Register Group. n

Please contact us for further information in SW Europe area at: Lloyd’s Register EMEA Via Cadorna 69 20090 Vimodrone (Mi) - Italy E: milan@lr.org T: +39 02 36575 31 W: www.lr.org

LR Energy Business SERVICES:

- 2nd and 3rd party inspection and certification, including Design Appraisal, according to various codes and standards such as ASME, EN directives (PED, TPED, ATEX, CE marking), MOM, DOSH, OSH, IBR, MLHW - Technical Due Diligence also known as SMART Inspection - Technical Training - Technical advice – project lifecycle for Oil & Gas and Power sectors APPLIED TO:

Materials & equipment such as boilers, heat exchangers, piping, valves, motors, compressors, pumps, pressure vessels, welding qualifications and welders certifications, supply chain qualification

SECTORS COVERED:

- Manufacturing - Oil & Gas upstream - Oil & Gas downstream - Traditional Power (thermal, hydro, nuclear) - Renewable Power (wind, solar, geo-thermal)

Since its establishment, the name Schneeberger has been a synonym for modern linear technology all over the world. Over the years the company has introduced technological innovations which have set new market standards, as Barbara Rossi learnt.

HIGH-PRECISION, INNOVATION AND RELIABILITY

Established in 1923, today Schneeberger stands for pioneering innovations in linear motion technology. Linear bearings and profiled rail guideways together with measuring systems, racks, slides, positioning systems and mineral casting are all part of its extensive manufacturing capability and product range. Schneeberger serves original equipment manufacturers operating in various industries worldwide – from machine tool, solar and semiconductor technology to electrical and medical engineering, among other products. Schneeberger commercial companies and sole agents are present in all the main industrialised countries, ensuring a global customer service.

Optimum profiled guideways for heavy loads

Highly reliable profiled linear guideways are fundamental when the heaviest loads in milling, turning, drilling or grinding machines need to be moved in an accurate manner. The Monorail MR Schneeberger product line is the ideal solution for the most varied types of applications and for very different weight categories, as it is able to handle heavy tools of up to 150 tonnes, always with the utmost precision.

When producing large engines to manufacture generators or dealing with aeronautical or space technology, as well as with other heavy machinery producing sectors, the components to be moved to work centres are often very heavy. Maximum precision is nevertheless required in their manufacture, thus the linear guideways used in this process are a decisive and fundamental factor. Exactly because of their full awareness of this issue, with the MR Monorail range the Schneeberger technicians and engineers have developed profiled guideways which are custom-designed for this type of applications and available in five different sizes. For normal applications the standard version allows for accelerations up to 50m/s2 and is designed for speeds up to 3m/s.

The monorail MR 100 model is the most important of its series and offers a 1.5 Mega-Newton (150 tonnes) load capacity and is therefore perfect for very heavy loads. In addition to this, Schneeberger is able to supply guideways of different sizes calibrated to the specific precision categories of the various applications – from G3 (standard) to G2 and from G1 to G60 (high precision). Moreover, it’s possible to also integrate AMS positioning into the reading system.

The basic technical structure of all the systems of the Monorail MR range is identical. The basic bodies of the guide carriage and the track are manufactured in high quality hardened steel, so as to guarantee to be lasting. The rotating bodies used are rollers of a special shape, designed to obtain maxi-