Boost­ing Plant Per­for­mance: A Com­pre­hen­sive Trans­for­ma­tion Journey

BACKGROUND

The Client is a lead­ing petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­ny in the Amer­i­c­as with oper­a­tions in two busi­ness seg­ments: Poly­ester (PTA, PET and poly­ester fibers) and Plas­tics and Chem­i­cals. It is one of the world’s lead­ing pro­duc­ers of PTA and PET and is the oper­a­tor of one of the largest polypropy­lene fac­to­ries in North Amer­i­ca. Its world­wide pres­ence includes 7 pro­duc­tion plants and 32 locations.

THE CHALLENGE

The com­pa­ny was faced with the chal­lenges of low equip­ment avail­abil­i­ty and OEE, which direct­ly impact­ed on its busi­ness results. Typ­i­cal­ly, these chal­lenges reduce pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty, increase down­time, and lead to poor prod­uct qual­i­ty. To increase the com­pa­ny’s com­pet­i­tive­ness and prof­itabil­i­ty in the mar­ket, they asked us to under­take an analy­sis of one of their facil­i­ties in North America.

ANALYSIS

The analy­sis iden­ti­fied sev­er­al improve­ment opportunities:

1. Increas­ing labor productivity.
2. Estab­lish­ing key per­for­mance indicators/effective main­te­nance exe­cu­tion control.
3. Improv­ing super­vi­sion by spend­ing more time at ground level.
4. Com­pli­ance with the Main­te­nance Man­age­ment Sys­tem, includ­ing activ­i­ty plan­ning and scheduling.

Dur­ing the analy­sis, the main­te­nance orga­ni­za­tion, process­es, and best prac­tices were exam­ined using a world-class stan­dard for com­par­i­son. This helped iden­ti­fy areas need­ing improve­ment, such as an effec­tive man­age­ment sys­tem for quick­ly ana­lyz­ing and address­ing devi­a­tions. As a result, repair times and down­times were to be reduced, enhanc­ing over­all efficiency.

PROJECT APPROACH

As a result, Renoir com­mit­ted to a trans­for­ma­tion pro­gram of 34 weeks with the fol­low­ing objectives:

1. Reduce exe­cu­tion time and remove activ­i­ties that do not add value.
2. Devel­op a cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous improve­ment and oper­a­tional reli­a­bil­i­ty, increas­ing OEE by 3.4% whilst main­tain­ing oper­a­tional continuity.

The 34 weeks trans­for­ma­tion pro­gram was to be deliv­ered through two Man­age­ment Action Teams (MATs):

1. OEE Man­age­ment & Reli­a­bil­i­ty Improve­ment (con­tin­u­ous improve­ment cul­ture and oper­a­tional reliability).
2. Main­te­nance & Ware­house Man­age­ment (reduc­tion of in the job devi­a­tions and exe­cu­tion time).

Both MATs were both formed by a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary group that con­tributed enor­mous­ly to the suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of the man­age­ment sys­tem ele­ments. MAT lead­ers, MAT mem­bers, Task­forces, main­te­nance tech­ni­cians, safe­ty, ware­house and pro­duc­tion per­son­nel — every­one active­ly and direct­ly con­tributed to make the imple­men­ta­tion sustainable.

After the main pro­gram, the project was fol­lowed by the after­care phase, focus­ing specif­i­cal­ly on full adop­tion, con­tin­u­ous improve­ment and sustainability.

“The project has brought us improved avail­abil­i­ty, which is very valu­able for the pro­duc­tion process.”
Pro­duc­tion Manager

IMPLEMENTATION

The trans­for­ma­tion pro­gram start­ed with the Renoir Focus Process®, which has been devel­oped specif­i­cal­ly to fos­ter own­er­ship and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Process­es, pro­ce­dures and the key ele­ments of the Main­te­nance Man­age­ment Con­trol Sys­tem were mapped, reviewed and cri­tiqued in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the client’s team members.

As a result, new per­for­mance indi­ca­tors were agreed, and the entire exe­cu­tion team was trained in how to suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment per­for­mance improve­ments. This process allowed a wider group of indi­vid­u­als to under­stand the scale of the oppor­tu­ni­ty and par­tic­i­pate in defin­ing the changes required; which in turn allowed them to com­mit to the finan­cial tar­gets of the program.

In the first 24 weeks of the imple­men­ta­tion phase, Renoir facil­i­tat­ed the imple­men­ta­tion of sys­tems and process­es that became rou­tine, such as:

1. An improved new main­te­nance man­age­ment process that inte­grates main­te­nance engi­neer­ing, reli­a­bil­i­ty, inspec­tion, plan­ning & sched­ul­ing and execution.
2. A full Main­te­nance Man­age­ment Con­trol Sys­tem with sev­er­al man­age­ment tools such as: frozen week­ly sched­ules (activ­i­ties and resources), short inter­val con­trols and rou­tines (devi­a­tion and action tak­en), main­te­nance per­for­mance reports, active super­vi­sion rou­tines and per­for­mance review meetings.
3. Con­trac­tor man­age­ment process­es and man­age­ment systems.
4. A struc­tured way-of-working that focus­es on pre­ven­tion, main­tain­abil­i­ty, and reliability.

Changes to processes/systems allowed the main­te­nance func­tion to bet­ter plan and man­age their dai­ly activ­i­ties to reduce break-ins, back­logs and improve pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Bet­ter use of key main­te­nance method­olo­gies (such as fail­ure modes analy­sis for crit­i­cal equip­ment) led to the improve­ment in OEE.

The com­pa­ny and Renoir col­lab­o­rat­ed dur­ing the Renoir Focus Process® and the sub­se­quent imple­men­ta­tion stage to imple­ment the oppor­tu­ni­ties iden­ti­fied dur­ing the analysis.

Because of the improve­ments in both lag­ging and lead­ing main­te­nance KPIs, the project improved the avail­abil­i­ty of the plant to 97%. In addi­tion to the finan­cial ben­e­fits, staff involved in the MATs acquired key skills in change man­age­ment, as a cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous improve­ment was estab­lished dri­ven by a com­mit­ment for the excellence.

“The project has helped us to orga­nize our ways of work­ing in a struc­tured fash­ion, as well as our process­es, pro­ce­dures and roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties. It has helped us to com­mit to Excel­lence.”
Main­te­nance Manager

KEY RESULTS