Shamrock Boats (Cape Coral, FL) is committed to building high-quality boats, which requires a high-quality manufacturing plant. The Shamrock plant, which has about 130 employees, is approximately 60,000 square feet and operates 10 hours a day. With such a heavy production schedule, the boat manufacturer was noticing a decline in overall air quality in the plant. Shamrock invited Florida officials to check the air quality and help the plant get into compliance with OSHA standards. The air quality test confirmed that there was a dust problem.

After performing a thorough anal-ysis of the plant, Shamrock decided on Nilfisk-Advance America Inc.'s (Malvern, PA) GM 811 and 83 industrial vacuums. These products helped the air quality improve by 94.4 percent during the course of one year.

The plant is divided into two sections, parts production and assembly. The lamination process involves laying out fiberglass and creating a boat shell, pulling out the mold, trimming it and grinding the parts to finish the basic shell. During this trimming process, large amounts of dust are created. Because the dust being generated during the grinding process was never captured, it circulated into the air around the plant. The solution was to hook up the GM 811 industrial vacuum cleaner to the cutting saws to pull dust and debris away from the cut, retaining them in the vacuum.

The other stage of production is the actual assembly of the boat. This involves drilling and fastening the parts of each boat, which leaves debris in the boat hull. Previously, the dust was blown out with an air hose, but while the dust was being eliminated in the boats, it was building up in the plant. The GM 811 now captures the dust at the bottom of each boat. This entire system of dust control is also being used at workstations, and cleanup is performed throughout the day. The GM 83 is used for overall maintenance, which enables reaching overhead pipes, as well as cleaning the plant's walls, air filters, floors, machines and aisles.

For more information on industrial vacuums, call Nilfisk-Advance America Inc. at 610-647-6420, visit www.pa.nilfisk-advance.com or Reply 4.