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Case Study

Improv­ing Qual­i­ty, Reduc­ing Costs: Renoir’s Focus Process® Suc­cess in the Chem­i­cal Industry

2023/04/05

BACKGROUND

To remain com­pet­i­tive in the mar­ket, chem­i­cal com­pa­nies must focus on dri­ving bet­ter pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Increased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty can help these com­pa­nies achieve cost effi­cien­cies, which can trans­late into high­er prof­it mar­gins and bet­ter returns on investment.

Improv­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the chem­i­cal indus­try can also lead to bet­ter inno­va­tion. By invest­ing in research and devel­op­ment and adopt­ing new tech­nolo­gies, chem­i­cal com­pa­nies can devel­op new prod­ucts that are more effi­cient, sus­tain­able, and cost-effective. More­over, increased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty can lead to more con­sis­tent prod­uct qual­i­ty, which is essen­tial in main­tain­ing cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and loyalty.

Our client is a world lead­ing chem­i­cal com­pa­ny, who oper­ate an engi­neer­ing plas­tic com­pound­ing plant that pro­duces com­pound­ed poly­mer pel­lets to meet the demand­ing require­ments of spe­cif­ic indus­tries, such as auto­mo­tive, aero­space, and electronics.

THE CHALLENGE

The Client required an analy­sis to eval­u­ate its cur­rent pro­duc­tion, main­te­nance, and qual­i­ty sys­tems and process­es due to evolv­ing demands for increased out­put, improved qual­i­ty, and reduced costs. To meet this require­ment, Renoir was engaged to con­duct the assess­ment. Along with the process­es and sys­tems, the analy­sis also exam­ined the cul­ture and behav­iours of the organisation.

ANALYSIS

The analy­sis showed that sig­nif­i­cant and mea­sur­able ben­e­fits could be obtained through the orga­ni­za­tion­al ele­ments men­tioned above. Sub­se­quent­ly, an imple­men­ta­tion project was planned and agreed upon to achieve sus­tain­able improve­ments in performance.

The key objec­tive of the project was to achieve behav­iour­al change across all lev­els with­in the organ­i­sa­tion to ensure more effi­cient man­age­ment and con­trol of the busi­ness in Pro­duc­tion, Main­te­nance and Qual­i­ty, there­by increas­ing over­all Oper­a­tional Efficiency.

PROJECT APPROACH

The focus of the Project was on improving:

  1. Align­ment of the organ­i­sa­tion — RACI, KPI’s, clear Roles & Respon­si­bil­i­ties and set­ting Objectives.
  2. Inte­grat­ed plan­ning – Bet­ter Plan­ning, Dri­ving Productivity.
  3. Per­for­mance management- Struc­tured Reviews of KPI’s & Effec­tive meetings

Proac­tive­ly man­ag­ing process­es to ensure max­i­mum pro­duc­tion sta­bil­i­ty and increased avail­abil­i­ty was a crit­i­cal aspect of suc­cess. Work­ing at all lev­els of the organ­i­sa­tion, the Team set about to agree the key oper­at­ing para­me­ters, defin­ing revised tar­gets, and estab­lish­ing clear roles, respon­si­bil­i­ties, and process changes to ensure that tar­gets were achieved.

The roadmap was refined by the Task Force, MAT mem­bers and Renoir con­sul­tants. This laid the foun­da­tion for dis­ci­plined project man­age­ment, which includ­ed agreed base­line eval­u­a­tions, so that progress could be mea­sured against them.

“When we start­ed the project, it was a bit like start­ing to exer­cise for a Marathon… espe­cial­ly for those who have not exer­cised in such a man­ner. Our mus­cles will sure­ly ache and we dis­cov­er that we had mus­cles in places that we didn’t know exist­ed! And that is the process of dis­cov­ery, of learn­ing and of tak­ing action to improve. ‘One Team, One Goal’ has now become our mantra to dri­ve Busi­ness Results improve­ment continuously.”

Oper­a­tions Direc­tor – Asia

IMPLEMENTATION

Renoir’s Focus Process® ini­ti­at­ed the Project and fol­low­ing two key stages of Design and Devel­op­ment, teams com­menced imple­ment­ing the required changes to busi­ness process­es and man­age­ment con­trol systems.

To realise the ben­e­fits, changes were made in the fol­low­ing areas:

  1. Pro­duc­tion
    • Mas­ter Pro­duc­tion Sched­ul­ing
    • Pro­duc­tion Loss­es Report­ing – Cap­tur­ing accu­rate infor­ma­tion and util­i­sa­tion of bet­ter deci­sion mak­ing tools.
    • Shop Floor Con­trol Sys­tem – Imple­ment­ing Short Inter­val Con­trol mech­a­nisms relat­ing to process KPIs.
    • Active Super­vi­sion – Instill­ing a ‘Man­age­ment By Walk­a­bout’ cul­ture.
    • Prod­uct Changeover Con­trol – Imple­ment­ing ‘pit­stop’ plan­ning and exe­cu­tion con­trol sys­tems to reduce delays and wast­ed effort, there­by reduc­ing prod­uct changeover times.
    • 5S Effec­tive­ness – Engen­der­ing own­er­ship of key pro­duc­tion equip­ment, improv­ing super­vi­sion and improv­ing the audit­ing of procedures.
  2. Main­te­nance
    • Reli­a­bil­i­ty Cen­tred Maintenance/Risk Based Main­te­nance – Embed­ding FMEA tech­niques and ver­i­fy­ing pre­ven­ta­tive and condition-based main­te­nance require­ments.
    • Main­te­nance Plan­ning – Strength­en­ing job scop­ing (parts, equip­ment, labour), sched­ul­ing and resourc­ing.
    • Main­te­nance Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty – Devel­op­ing ‘pit­stop’ plan­ning and exe­cu­tion and ‘Man­age­ment By Walk­a­bout’ to reduce delays and wast­ed effort, there­by improv­ing main­te­nance respon­sive­ness and equip­ment reliability/availability.
  3. Qual­i­ty
    • Qual­i­ty Sys­tem Effec­tive­ness – Improv­ing super­vi­sion and audit­ing of pro­ce­dures.
    • Process Con­trol Stan­dards – To help improve the out­put qual­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy by iden­ti­fy­ing and con­trol­ling vari­a­tions in the process.
    • Qual­i­ty & Pro­duc­tion — To dri­ve improved process capa­bil­i­ty.
    • Struc­tured Root Cause Analy­sis (RCA) – Imple­men­ta­tion and adop­tion of the DMAIC Methodology.

“ Renoir has played an inte­gral role and through their unique approach, sim­ple to under­stand and imple­mentable solu­tions have enabled us to achieve a 15% improve­ment in a short time frame.

This improve­ment has been achieved through Renoir’s abil­i­ty to dri­ve behav­iour­al change, which is clear­ly evi­dent with­in the organisation. ”

Senior Vice Pres­i­dent, Asia Pacific

RESULTS

15% 

OEE increase 

12% 

Total Out­put increase 

42% 

Prod­uct Qual­i­ty increase 

10% 

P&L Con­tri­bu­tion Margin 

CONCLUSION

The case study of our client, a lead­ing chem­i­cal com­pa­ny, high­lights the impor­tance of invest­ing in improv­ing pro­duc­tion, main­te­nance, and qual­i­ty sys­tems and process­es. Includ­ing the crit­i­cal impor­tance of the behav­iour­al aspect of achiev­ing sus­tain­able change. 

The analy­sis con­duct­ed by Renoir iden­ti­fied the need for behav­iour­al change at all lev­els of the organ­i­sa­tion to achieve sus­tain­able improve­ments in per­for­mance. The imple­men­ta­tion of the Focus Process® result­ed in sig­nif­i­cant and mea­sur­able ben­e­fits, includ­ing a 15% OEE improve­ment in a short time frame.

The suc­cess of this project demon­strates that the key to achiev­ing sus­tain­able improve­ments in per­for­mance lies in focus­ing on organ­i­sa­tion­al align­ment, inte­grat­ed plan­ning, and per­for­mance management.

The imple­men­ta­tion of process changes, such as active super­vi­sion, pit­stop plan­ning and exe­cu­tion, and struc­tured root cause analy­sis, con­tributed to improved effi­cien­cy and reduced costs. Fur­ther­more, the adop­tion of FMEA tech­niques and ver­i­fy­ing pre­ven­ta­tive and condition-based main­te­nance require­ments led to improved main­te­nance respon­sive­ness and equip­ment reliability/availability.

Ulti­mate­ly, the suc­cess of this project has enabled our client to remain com­pet­i­tive in the mar­ket and achieve bet­ter returns on invest­ment while main­tain­ing prod­uct qual­i­ty, and thus cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and loyalty.

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