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TECHNICAL TRAINING

What Does It Really Take To Build a Machine to Loram Standards?

By Denis Zilmer, Director of Project Management

If you are like me, many processes from the outside seem much simpler than they really are. For instance, all of us
have taken on a new employment/role at some time in our life. The role looked achievable from the outside. How-
ever, once we were fully engaged into the new role, we realized it was much more complicated than we thought.
Another example is parenting. The only people you will meet that say raising kids is simple are those without kids.
Once the baby arrives, the unique set of tasks begin that you can only know once you hold that screaming, wonder-
ful child in your hand.
Let’s look at what it takes to build a Loram quality machine. From the outside, it may look like Uncle Phil directing a
bunch of money into a pot, throw in a little steel, maybe a computer or two, and out
comes a rail grinder. After all, isn’t that what happens at the Ford plant? You put in your
order and the robots punch out that forest green F-150 Lariat like you have always
dreamed about. (Maybe just me.)

But we all know that the effort to build a machine is much more complicated than a sim-
ple black pot. Yet, how much more complicated? Dave Dorow started a flow chart for
discussion on the process as shown below. This flow chart will conceptually give you a
sense of how many detailed processes are involved. And each of the rectangle green
boxes is filled with many sub processes.

In laymen’s terms:

1. An Idea 10. Financing the Build 13. Parts on Order
2. Performance Specs 11. Scheduling 14. Assembled by Manufacturing
3. Request for Information a. Engineering 15. Tested by QA (VVP)
(RFI) b. Procurement 16. Ops/Maintenance Manuals
4. Technical Spec c. Production Created
5. Cost d. Learning & Develop- 17. Spare Parts and Tools on
6. Project Definition ment Board
7. Cost Analysis on Margin e. Tech Comm 18. Machine Commissioned
8. Schedule Review f. Quality 19. Staff Trained
9. Executive Signoff g. Commissioning 20. Machine in Production
12. Design for Specific Build

Volume 2 : Issue 2 Page 10