Background
Our client is situated in Germany's third largest chemical industry location and offers integrated solutions for supplies and waste disposal to companies located at the site. The client generates and supplies electricity, steam, com-pressed air and cooling systems, and also operates plants to treat waste heat, process water, cooling water, and chemical residues. In order to build its competitive advantage, the client wanted to identify and develop potential for performance improvement. Thanks to successful previous projects, the client chose T.A. Cook as its consulting partner.
Challenge
Lean and continuous maintenance processes are essential to ensure maximum availability and cost effectiveness. T.A. Cook was to analyse the current situation to identify opportunities to optimise performance. After the initial analysis, a project was required to develop and implement optimised processes, and incorporate them into an integrated IT system.
Solution
Plant operation is subject to clearly defined legal requirements and responsibilities. When carrying out a process analysis it is therefore crucial to examine and organise maintenance processes across the entire plant. To this end, interdisciplinary work groups were set up, comprising qualified supervisors, technicians and engineers from both production and technology. Together with these work groups, T.A. Cook developed new processes, ensuring that all legally required functions and responsibilities were fulfilled, making sure that these were as simple and robust as possible and that the support documents were reduced to a minimum. IT support requirements were also defined, developed and installed to underpin the whole process.
Once processes had been optimised they were incorporated into the SAP system. Here the main focus was full integration of all interfaces throughout the plant and to improve usability. The golden rule was: "all required information must be in the system". This prevented data from having to be entered twice (potentially in different systems) and ensured that every member of staff could access essential information or query the current status of a particular activity, for example, the processing of permits-to-work by production.
Staff received full training on the processes, support documents and the SAP system in. This required the creation of workshops tailored to their respective duties and requirements. For two months after implementation all participants were provided with further assistance.
Although the project focused on optimising maintenance, shutdown planning, execution and engineering changes, support services such as contractor management, materials management, key performance indicators and financial/budget control systems were also assessed and, where necessary, improved. The development of competencies, roles and responsibilities and Document Management, were also analysed for major weakness and changes made accordingly.
Benefits
The client experienced the following benefits thanks to the implementation of the optimised processes:
Maintenance
• Almost double the number of planned activities versus unplanned
• 8% reduction in average order cycle times
• Optimised integrated interfaces allowing the targeted exchange of information, e.g. scheduling deadlines, permit processing, work clearance management
Shutdown management
• Proactive planning and preparation of maintenance processes regardless of scheduled repairs. (Pre-planned work orders "ready to go")
• Reduction of the total duration of plant downtimes by 5%
• Reduction of planning costs by one third due to the development of standard processes to manage recurring downtime issues
• The development and integration of IT tools with SAP and MS Project compatibility to plan and execute plant shutdowns
• Compilation and production of support documentation on processes and work plans
Plant change/optimisation
• Compliance with technical standards, legal requirements and company regulations and simplification of compliance procedures
• Development and evaluation of individual solutions for specific tasks/work processes
• Cost-saving on outsourcing by bundling change/optimisation procedures.
In total the project achieved an immediate reduction in maintenance costs of 15%. Further cost-savings can also be expected long-term from the introduction of Continuous Improvement Processes (CIP).
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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