Background
The client operates sites manufacturing chemical, plastic and rubber-based products on an international basis. In one of its US sites over 500 employees, including 100 in maintenance, produce specialised materials and products on 7 lines 24 hours/day, 7 days/week. It was deemed necessary to increase OEE (overall equipment efficiency) and following on from other very successful projects in the same group, T.A. Cook was chosen once again to lead the project.
Objectives
The project was targeted with achieving a 5% increase in OEE without significant capital expenditure. This required a reduction in stoppages and breakdowns, as well as the elimination of unnecessary rate and yield losses. T.A. Cook was charged with the co-ordination and management of the OEE project and ensuring sustainability – something that would be closely measured after the end of the project itself.
The solution
In order to determine the potential improvement opportunities and hence establish the necessary plan of action for reaching these goals, it was first necessary to undertake an analysis of overall processes, systems, performance and, importantly, behaviours and interactions. Given the OEE focus of this exercise, the next stage required building up a detailed picture of the nature and criticality of reactive and planned maintenance activities. This included developing a comprehensive understanding of personnel deployment, skills, materials and related costs.
As project managers, T.A. Cook’s accountabilities ranged from helping the maintenance personnel develop a greater understanding of OEE through the generation of appropriate technical solutions to the running of training and support of workshops and the co-ordination of the Steering Group.
To kick-off the project the definition of OEE was agreed and a base value calculated. Thereafter the team undertook a productivity study of selected production lines and packing areas to ascertain precise OEE performance, trends and variations to plan. Having established a base understanding and determined key influencing factors, further work on remaining lines across the whole site allowed the team to build a complete picture of losses, criticality, frequency and their influence on OEE.
Analysing the as-was maintenance plan, the work content, its prioritisation and estimated manning and time requirements, allowed the T.A. Cook team to establish work standards for the most important jobs - independent of whether these jobs were to be undertaken by internal staff or a contractor. These work standards provided the basis for tighter and better-targeted planned and predictive maintenance schedules freeing up time to improve further the root cause understanding of failures and also facilitating the reduction in contractor numbers.
In addition to the main project, the team also investigated the planning and control of capex, non recurring revenue and minor project work. A similar analysis-definition-implementation process defined and installed significant changes to management of these elements with considerable secondary benefit of a positive effect on OEE.
The overall OEE project was completed on budget and on time after 14 months.
Client benefits
Response times for maintenance teams covering breakdowns were halved from an average of 45 mins or more to just 20 mins. Changeover times were reduced by one third in one area and two thirds in another and the time needed for preventive maintenance routines was reduced by 30%. The collective effect of the improvement programme and the installation of targeted measures facilitated an increase in OEE of between 5 and 8% depending on product. Additionally, savings of between 2.5 and 2.8% were achieved in maintenance spend and contractor costs.
The net benefits of the T.A. Cook exercise could be simply described as the accelerated achievement of greater and more predictive output at lower cost.
For more information contact:
Rupert Clark
Marketing Manager
Direct: +44 (0) 1183 260 229
Mobile: +44 (0) 7792 926 696
r.clark@tacook.com |
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