Engineers at Selas-Linde have come up with a solution that allows them to deliver ethylene cracking furnaces to customers where on-site assembly would be too difficult or expensive. The Linde experts pre-assemble the furnaces off site and ship the extremely heavy modules individually to the customer by ship and truck. The individual modules are then assembled on location.
Most children have played with LEGO at one stage or another. However, these colorful building blocks don’t just inspire little people. Engineers have long been using this perfect example of modularization for their own purposes. Specialists at Linde Engineering apply the same concept, building plants in modules at “remote module yards” before shipping them to their final destinations. The company even has a dedicated Competence Centre Modularization (CCM) that focuses on the various modularization challenges that arise in different projects. “In the past, process plants were typically stick-built. In other words, virtually every component that went into that plant was assembled on site,” explains Kay Funk, Director Sales & Execution at Selas-Linde. Headquartered in Pullach, Germany, and part of Linde Engineering, Selas-Linde is a global leader in industrial furnaces. “Today, we think more in terms of a LEGO building instructions. In other words, we initially build the different parts of an industrial furnace off site, sometimes in different locations. Then we ship all the elements to the construction site for final assembly.”
“The biggest challenge for us and our external partners is drawing up a painfully precise timeline,” continues Funk. “Every component destined for the yards has to arrive on time and in top quality. In a stick-built project, it’s also a problem if components arrive behind schedule. But it’s easier to deal with any delays and, if necessary, continue building somewhere else.” In a modular project, logistics and timelines are even more important – and it’s vital that everyone involved knows what they are doing and how this impacts the entire project. “Everything has to run like clockwork,” elaborates Funk. “We have to be able to rely 100 percent on our suppliers and all of the external partners who are helping us with pre-assembly work at Gijon,” adds the Selas-Linde expert. Which is why the industrial furnace specialists make sure from the very outset that subcontractors can also meet the high quality standards and deadlines required for the project. In recent years, Selas-Linde has further refined its expediting activities to support technical procurement and has now established a global procurement network. The material for the cracking furnaces produced in Gijon is sourced from more than a dozen countries.