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

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: