In the Pareto above, the total hours lost on this plant in 2019 equalled 862 Hours of potential production time.
Develop a Project and Communication Plan
With the mini improvement projects identified, we need to then develop a project plan to track progress which can also be used as a method of communication with site leadership. Raising awareness of the projects across site will also require a good communication plan. Communication plans could involve different tiers of communication throughout the organisation and cover different means of communication.
Utilisation Improvement Team — Reliability Excellence
- Performed RCM Study to improve reliability of No7 plant rotary drier. Availability increased by 12%
- Facilitated RCA on critical feed pump on No3 Plant — MTBF increased by 7500 hours
- Calibration Issue corrected on level indicators on No2 Reactor allowing for increased batch sizes — 9% increase in batch
- Optimised spares for No 4 plant to reduce waiting time for spares on critical asset list. — Eliminated waiting time by 336 hours this year
Utilisation Improvement Team — Operational Excellence
- Calciner leaks causing raw material loss, seal upgraded, and new fixing arrangement installed. Throughput increased by 5%
- Removed the need for manual raw material testing at stage 1 on reactor 3 with auto tester. Reduced batch waiting time by 1 hour.
- Changeover process from product A to product B was analysed and new changeover procedure developed, reduced change overtime by 26 hours.
Utilisation Improvement Team — Process Knowledge
Figure 2 — Project Examples Celebrate Success
Let us not forget to celebrate when we have achieved our goals, we want this success to be recreated on the other improvement projects. Any changes that are required need to be sustainable to ensure the gains are not short-lived. We need to increase awareness and engagement in the improvement so that the new way of working becomes business as usual. We might need to create new Operating Procedures; including Business Process Maps to identify work patterns, roles and responsibilities .
Summary
They key to the success of Continuous Improvement projects are that they are just that, continuous. If not, the benefits you achieve will be relatively short-lived. The CI project needs to be kept alive so that the processes you have improved are reviewed continually and adapted as needed. This will maximise the benefits of your projects and avoid the need for larger-scale transformation which can potentially interrupt operations. A focus on asset utilisation using the various techniques described, is just one area in which a business can identify these opportunities and show real benefits. Let us start to turn that hidden profit into actual profit.
Written by : Gary Tyne CRL of Pro-Reliability Solutions and Dr Mariesha Jaffray of MAJCI Ltd.
Authors Bio:
Mariesha has 25 years’ experience delivering continuous improvement and change management in academia, healthcare, and oil & gas. She is a Lean Six Black Belt and has a PhD in Change management. She coordinated OGUK’s Industry-led Efficiency Task Force and mostly recently supported delivery of CNOOC’s programme of Continuous Improvement. She runs her own improvement company supporting organisations to optimise their business processes to eliminate waste and maximise quality, this ranges from the provision of training in the use of CI tools and methodology, improvement project mentoring to developing and implementing internal programmes of continuous improvement. Mariesha@majciltd.com Gary boasts an extensive 35 year-career in the maintenance and reliability field. He has delivered various reliability programs, root cause analysis investigations, and maintenance and reliability training courses around the world. These are within numerous industry verticals such as oil and gas, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, chemical, automotive, and general manufacturing companies based both in the UK and overseas. He is also author and co-author of several reliability focussed papers and has presented papers at various global conferences. gtyne@pro-reliabilitysolutions.com
Originally published at https://pro-reliabilitysolutions.com on June 12, 2020.
