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When bosses at Alba asked for suggestions to improve business, one worker came up with a plan that is saving the company BD300,000 per year.
Superintendent Engineer Abdul Hussain Ghareeb has worked at the aluminium smelter for 35 years so management took notice when he went before the Good Suggestion Committee with his study on cost savings on liquid argon gas for cast house.
His project proposed setting up a cryogenic storage tank to replace supplying argon gas by cylinders.
Mr Ghareeb, 52 from Janabiya said: "Argon is used to treat metal. What Alba does is treat aluminium slabs by passing it through a unit called the degassing unit which is used to get the hydrogen gases out of the metal.
"If the metal has any traces of hydrogen, then it will create small bubbles or blisters hence reducing the efficiency of the metal. To avoid this, you need to have 99.998 per cent argon.
"I found that the company can save a fortune by replacing gaseous argon with liquid argon by using two pressure valves instead of having these small cylinders in palettes which are spread over the plant.
"The reason for this is when you have argon in liquid form you don't need as much as gaseous argon.
"When you have centralised vaporisers converting the liquid into gases in-house you need 50 per cent less from the local supplier.
"In this case we can save around BD300,000 just using liquid argon instead of gaseous argon in our plant."
In 2005 when the company celebrated its $1.7 billion (BD640.75 million) Line 5 Expansion project Mr Ghareeb grabbed the opportunity to present his BD175,000 project.
He said: "It is never too late to improve our system and so I thought of beginning my study in 2003. I then tried to find financing for the project to buy high pressure valves.
"Then when the line 5 expansion was opened in 2005, I took the opportunity to get this project implemented.
"When they were talking about $1.7 billion project, so a BD175,000 investment was nothing.
"I submitted all my project work to the team and by the end of 2005 it was in operation.
"Since then, we have seen big savings and the most important benefit was for our employees who we previously constantly changing the cylinders every time they were empty. We used to cast three drops per shift, now we can go for four drops per day because we don't have to change cylinders. It is an improvement.
"There was also a risk of leakages from the cylinders.
"We were able to resolve not just operational problems but also maintenance, safety and finance issues."
Mr Ghareeb heads the cast house reliability engineering team which includes seven engineers.
The Good Suggestion Programme was started in 1995. Any employee can come up with a suggestion for the benefit of saving the company money as well as improving safety, morale and the environment.
Mr Ghareeb said: "Every company is thinking about saving money, getting benefits from any corner but at the same time we try not to harm our local contractors ... especially those who have been supplying gases to Alba for many years.
"So instead of making a dramatic cut down of BD1.5 million, we thought about just converting gaseous into liquid argon.
"That way we still cut our costs and also our suppliers will still be supplying us with argon just as a liquid form instead of gas."
Mr Ghareeb's biggest reward from this experiment, he explained, is that the project is now being referred to as the Ahmed Hussain Project, which he feels is honourable.
"I am happy I could do something good for the company," he said.
"To improve the plant you have to innovate something. "I came up with a suggestion of using polyester plastic strapping instead of steel strapping, hence saving some money. "If I put in two suggestions that save Alba BD600,000 in one week, imagine how much money could be saved if each of the 3,000 employees put in their suggestions?"
