Think out of box

In one of the cement plant where I worked for long, there was a three roller vertical grinding mill for coal. In this the rollers’ wear segments were to be turned (one roller at a time) by 180 degree every month or two months depending upon the wear pattern of metal, after taking shut down of coal mill. For doing this job in one roller it used to take 6 hours minimum. The fine coal stock availability even when hoppers were full, used to be for maximum 5 hours, even when kiln kept running at reduced output. The result was that the plant was to be shut down every time during the above kind of maintenance, resulting in heavy losses. This trend was continuing for long, till I took over. After brain storming for many days we could find out a method to avoid kiln shutdown during the above maintenance. In my next post I would write about the solution what we had adopted. Till then you can also explore, as there could be many other solutions to the above problem. I would love to receive your ideas for possible solution.