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Case Study

By switch­ing to a new way of work­ing, a petro­chem­i­cals pro­duc­er increased pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty by 7% and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by 24% — while keep­ing costs down

2023/03/31

Back­ground

The petro­chem­i­cal indus­try is a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to the glob­al econ­o­my. Petro­chem­i­cals are the build­ing blocks for many of the prod­ucts we use every day, includ­ing plas­tics, syn­thet­ic fibres, rub­ber, and med­i­cines. With­out petro­chem­i­cals, many of these prod­ucts would not exist, or they would be more expen­sive and less effi­cient to produce.

Our client is a lead­ing pro­duc­er of PET sheet and resin, man­u­fac­tur­ing pack­ing and bot­tle grade mate­ri­als with large-scale pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties in the Mid­dle East. They devel­oped inno­v­a­tive PET-related prod­ucts that are chal­leng­ing the tra­di­tion­al mar­kets for polypropy­lene, poly­styrene, and PVC in terms of performance.

These prod­ucts are also ful­ly recy­clable, and the client has devel­oped process­es where­by feed­stock in part is made up of recy­cling material.

The increase in demand for this prod­uct has left the com­pa­ny capac­i­ty con­strained. As a result, man­age­ment sought to improve cur­rent oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy before addi­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing capac­i­ty came online at a lat­er time. This required a reliability-centred main­te­nance pro­gramme to improve equip­ment reli­a­bil­i­ty and sup­port pro­duc­tion that could meet the increased demand.

Analy­sis

The three-week analy­sis phase involved detailed main­te­nance and oper­a­tions stud­ies. We want­ed to assess what improve­ments could be made to cur­rent process­es to deliv­er the tar­get­ed benefits.

The analy­sis includ­ed obser­va­tion­al stud­ies, data reviews, SMED (Sin­gle Minute Exchange of Dye), Ratio Delays, OEE, debot­tle­neck­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, among oth­ers. The analy­sis con­clud­ed with senior man­age­ment align­ment, a project road map, a gov­er­nance mod­el and detailed man­age­ment action teams (MATs) designed to deliv­er the ben­e­fits at pace.

Based on the analy­sis, we dis­cov­ered that we could sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve prod­uct changeovers, machine ramp-up and sta­bil­i­sa­tion times using SMED (Sin­gle Minute Exchange of Dye) tech­niques to dri­ve new stan­dard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dures for operators.

Project Approach

We estab­lished a steer­ing com­mit­tee (con­sist­ing of senior site man­age­ment) as well as MATs to fos­ter own­er­ship of the required changes. MATs met week­ly to assess progress and agree on reme­di­al actions. A full-time task force (con­sist­ing of client staff and sup­port­ed by our con­sul­tants) was respon­si­ble for ensur­ing prop­er knowl­edge trans­fer of the change man­age­ment tech­niques and the ade­quate resourc­ing of the change pro­gramme itself.

The project itself would cov­er two main workstreams:

WORKSTREAM I: Production

  • Objec­tive: Deliv­er out­put increase by reduc­ing ramp-down, change-over and ramp-up times. 
  • Tar­get: 5% OEE increase
  • How: Reduce sta­bil­i­sa­tion times, increase line avail­abil­i­ty to pro­duce increase in saleable quan­ti­ty and quality

WORKSTREAM II: Maintenance

  • Objec­tive: Imple­ment revised main­te­nance strat­e­gy, use SAP for Main­te­nance more effectively
  • How: Review main­te­nance organ­i­sa­tion and man­age­ment of spare parts to ensure needs were being met as effi­cient­ly as possible

Project Imple­men­ta­tion

The 30-week pro­gramme was designed to be dynam­ic and flex­i­ble. The joint client-Renoir team were able to imple­ment a rapid design phase and deliv­er the ben­e­fits ahead of sched­ule. New pro­ce­dures were designed, test­ed, refined and then rapid­ly rolled out across all shifts.

“Not many projects over-deliver ahead of sched­ule, but to get a 5:1 return on invest­ment and real­ize 40% more than what was con­trac­tu­al­ly promised — which is worth mil­lions to our bot­tom line — is a great result!”
CFO

Text BoxDig­i­tal dash­boards were devel­oped that pro­vid­ed vis­i­bil­i­ty of key pro­duc­tion and main­te­nance KPIs across the site. An over­all dash­board showed KPIs for all activ­i­ties and were reviewed dur­ing the revised shift, dai­ly and week­ly Man­age­ment Action Meetings.

As part of improv­ing effec­tive super­vi­sion skills in Main­te­nance, a new man­pow­er plan­ning tool for main­te­nance was imple­ment­ed. This allowed mon­i­tor­ing of effi­cien­cy dai­ly, and framed dis­cus­sions of how to increase productivity.

Struc­tured week­ly root cause analy­ses and the sub­se­quent man­age­ment of actions were sup­port­ed by train­ing in FMEA, Ishikawa and 5 Whys. Assur­ance that actions result­ed in the required oper­a­tional impact was achieved through follow-up and for­mal auditing.

Results

The rapid gains result­ed in long-term sus­tain­able results. The pro­duc­tion increase was the equiv­a­lent of one new pro­duc­tion line’s worth of out­put for 12 months and exceed­ed the clien­t’s project tar­get by 15% — with the plant even­tu­al­ly achiev­ing 90% OEE for the first time in its 10-year history.

7% 

increase in production 

$390,000

Main­te­nance costs reduced 

24% 

Main­te­nance labour productivity 

13 Weeks 

Project payback 

By com­bin­ing our Imple­men­ta­tion and Change method­olo­gies with the tech­ni­cal exper­tise of the task­force — and con­duct­ing sig­nif­i­cant train­ing ses­sions to ensure all involved were informed and able to deliv­er — the project was able to accel­er­ate the deliv­ery of results in a time­frame which was once con­sid­ered impossible.

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