PICME: “Business as usual”

Manchester, UK -- PICME (Process Industries Centre for Manufacturing Excellence) has undergone significant development since its transfer from the Chemical Industies Association, according to new owner the Haden Freeman Group.

The industry consultancy became an independent business within Haden Freeman late last year, and, said PICME chief executive Michael Glass: “With Haden Freeman, we are able to further develop our services and expand to meet our growing demand.”

According to Glass, it has been very much ‘business as usual’ for PICME throughout 2007, with several new projects in place since the acquisition. The Centre, he said, is also continuing to work with public bodies and has recently been contracted by the Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Service to support the Scottish chemical sector.

“On behalf of sector skills councils PICME has revised the national occupational standards of an NVQ in business improvement techniques (includes Lean and Six Sigma) to make it more widely applicable to both the process industries and to non-manufacturing roles,” said a Haden Freeman statement.

PICME is also looking at synergies across Haden Freeman, which involves working with the company's risk management business to address identified market needs, the company said.

Major projects

PICME listed its notable projects this year as including:

- Helping Lucite International apply Lean thinking to reducing the duration of plant shutdowns and equipment turnarounds. A recent turnaround was swift enough to avoid the need for a four day plant outage.

- Helped Ineos improve the efficiency of a large scale continuous plant's effluent recovery system to recover £150k per year extra organics.

- Reducing downtime and increasing throughput at a Johnson Matthey Catalysts plant enabling them to set new production records.

- Training to continuous improvement leaders for Akzo Novel business