Achiev­ing Oper­a­tional Excel­lence: A 23% Leap in Main­te­nance Labour Productivity

BACKGROUND

Oper­a­tional excel­lence is a key area of focus for many orga­ni­za­tions and includes opti­mi­sa­tion of main­te­nance process­es. By adopt­ing a com­pre­hen­sive and proven frame­work, com­pa­nies can sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve their oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies and unlock sub­stan­tial mar­gin oppor­tu­ni­ties. These can include the impact on work­force pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, main­te­nance costs and loss­es, reli­a­bil­i­ty, and over­all suc­cess in the indus­try, and a last­ing cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous improvement.

THE CHALLENGE

The Client is a pro­duc­er of chlo­rine, caus­tic soda and PVC. Their plants ship over 4 mil­lion tons of dif­fer­ent chem­i­cal prod­ucts every year and employ more than 1,000 peo­ple. The com­pa­ny pro­duces key inputs for var­i­ous man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors, like tex­tile, paper and cel­lu­lose, alu­minum, toys, shoes, food, bev­er­ages, med­i­cines, and civ­il engineering.

The Client under­stood that there were sig­nif­i­cant mar­gin oppor­tu­ni­ties by improv­ing oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies. Giv­en Renoir’s expe­ri­ence in sup­port­ing chem­i­cal and petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies, we were asked to analyse the com­pa­ny’s main­te­nance organ­i­sa­tion and process­es, com­par­ing them with best prac­tices by using the Main­te­nance Pyra­mid World Class Stan­dard as a reference.

This allowed for val­i­da­tion of the process­es and sys­tems that need­ed improve­ment, such as a ful­ly utilised man­age­ment sys­tem that allowed devi­a­tions to be analysed and actions tak­en in a short peri­od of time thus lead­ing to short­er time-to-repair and hence short­er downtimes.

ANALYSIS

Renoir per­formed a thor­ough analy­sis which revealed that:

1. Region­al Field Oper­a­tions Main­te­nance plan­ning was too rigid 
2. Alarms man­age­ment was not standardised 
3. Regions and Head­quar­ters were both lack­ing prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels and coordination 
4. The com­pa­ny had out­grown sev­er­al busi­ness process­es, which were no longer capa­ble of sup­port­ing its fast-growing Net­work infra­struc­ture requirements 

PROJECT APPROACH

The 26 weeks trans­for­ma­tion pro­gram was struc­tured to install a sus­tain­able main­te­nance process and a man­age­ment sys­tem through 2 Man­age­ment Action Teams (MATs):

1. Reli­a­bil­i­ty Man­age­ment (con­tin­u­ous improve­ment and reli­a­bil­i­ty of infor­ma­tion), and
2. Main­te­nance Man­age­ment (reduc­tion of down­time and improve­ment of productivity)

The MATs were formed by two mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary groups that con­tributed enor­mous­ly to the suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of the man­age­ment sys­tem ele­ments. From MAT leader, MAT mem­bers, Task Forces, Main­te­nance Tech­ni­cians, Engi­neers, all of them active­ly and direct­ly con­tributed to sus­tain­able imple­men­ta­tion. Con­se­quent­ly, we entered the post imple­men­ta­tion phase focus­ing much more on con­tin­u­ous improve­ment than on sustainability.

IMPLEMENTATION

The trans­for­ma­tion pro­gram began with the Renoir Focus Process®, which was devel­oped specif­i­cal­ly to fos­ter own­er­ship and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the com­pa­ny’s team mem­bers, process­es, pro­ce­dures and the key ele­ments of the Main­te­nance Man­age­ment Con­trol Sys­tem were reviewed and critiqued.

As a result, new per­for­mance indi­ca­tors were agreed, and the entire exe­cu­tion team was trained in how to suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment per­for­mance improve­ments. A week­ly review meet­ing mod­el was ini­ti­at­ed, and the team was coached in act­ing on the root caus­es of vari­a­tions by using the infor­ma­tion avail­able in the new man­age­ment system.

As part of 26 weeks sched­ule, we imple­ment­ed sus­tain­able changes to be part of the stan­dard rou­tines such as:

1. A Main­te­nance Man­age­ment Con­trol System
2. Active Super­vi­sion and Planner’s Routine
3. Dash­boards: Crit­i­cal Func­tions Pan­el, Pro­duc­tion Loss­es, Reli­a­bil­i­ty (MTBF and MTTR), Main­te­nance Plan­ning and Scheduling
4. Gate Keep­ing pro­ce­dure and review of work per­mis­sion routines.

The result­ing changes to processes/systems allowed an increase in work­force pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, bet­ter qual­i­ty on notes in SAP sys­tem and, in turn, an improve­ment in reliability.

KEY RESULTS