Asset care plan raises Flexsys site to world class
5 Jul 2007
Despite having been awarded ‘Oliver Wight Class A’ in planning and control, the Ruabon site was unable to consistently meet all of its production planning targets.
While a key monthly measure, Production Planning Performance (PPP) was consistently at or close to ‘Class A’ levels and day-to-day performance to plan (MSP) was close to ‘Class A’, the weekly measure, MPSP, was struggling to achieve half this target.
Failure to meet all of the measures was related to the basic manufacturing system, and could not be changed through improved management processes – or could it?
When Flexsys engineering manager Roger Mason looked into the poor weekly performance numbers, the causes for regular misses leapt out - poor reliability of the manufacturing units.
Whilst the planning systems could catch up from breakdowns in a month, and mostly, could predict the following day’s performance, in a week it was impossible. Failures could not be predicted, and seven days was never enough time to catch up from a breakdown.
Having agreed with the operations manager that reliability was the root cause of the production planning problems, the company jointly set reliability as a key improvement area for the site.
Mason called in engineering consultants MCP to perform its ‘AMIS’ audit at the end of 2003. This found that Ruabon was below its sector average, with a score of 38% -- reflecting a production-led demand to ‘fix-it-quick’ whenever there was a breakdown.
“We had a site of expert fire-fighters” said Richard Jones of MCP. “As a site management we had demanded this ‘fix-it-quick’ performance from our maintenance teams, and they had responded. In fact, ‘Class A’ probably increased this demand for reactive maintenance. The management behaviour had created a system that was doing exactly what it was asked it to – but not what they wanted it to”
In response, Flexsys launched a programme, called Asset Care Excellence (ACE), to set the basis for redesigning the entire site maintenance process. For this, a project team, comprising representatives from the operating and support teams, developed a new work order management process.
The ACE team used the 6-sigma FMEA analysis to decide on critical adjustments to the new process. Adherence to the new process, and the accountability for the new KPI’s was to be given to the local production managers.
In addition to the new work order management process the ACE team coordinated improvements in most aspects of ‘Asset Care’
· Daily equipment check routines for operators
· Redesign of lube oil storage & application
· Oil Debris and Machine Condition analysis routines
· Re-design of the site ‘Term Contractor’ support arrangements
· Introduction of official satellite stores
· Root Cause Analysis of all failures which required ‘reactive’ working
· Equipment Maintenance Strategy reviews
· 5S Workplace Excellence
After the first 12 months the AMIS score was raised from 38% to 60%. Most of the improvements were still ‘WIP’ at this stage. One interesting finding of the second audit was that there were still very few KPI’s, apart from the headline ones driving the work-order process.
The focus had been on changing the system, with the belief that the improvements would come, measured or not. This reflected the management’s systems-based thinking. They recognised that the outputs of the new systems would define how well they were working, and measurement too early could lead to inappropriate tweaking too early in the process.
However, progress did seem to be slowing down, 60% was a good performance, maybe it was enough? Engineering manager Mason was determined to push for the ‘World Class’ threshold of 75%.
During the first year of ACE, the Ruabon Works management team had questioned how much of the achievements were ‘in the bones’ of their team. The change from reactive work to working with structured schedules seemed difficult for many people on site.
Management didn’t look to the ‘overtime heroes’ for salvation from breakdowns, instead the ACE process considered such episodes as failures. Some managers felt that their ‘core competence’ for the management of major problems was no longer valued. The site management recognised that for a change as significant as ‘ACE’ and its partner ‘5S’ to work these more deep-rooted issues of individual’s behaviour and sense of self-worth needed to be addressed.
The management team designed and implemented personal and team development programmes, which looked at and beyond behaviours and interaction. They established an open culture of individual awareness, using one to one feedback as an everyday activity, which is sought rather than feared.
Individuals had the opportunity to understand their real value to the site, and recognise that some of their old beliefs about the need for ‘breakdown heroes’ could be limiting the site’s ability to really make the changes it needed to.
This ‘people’ work progressed alongside the continued implementation of changes in the asset management systems. As the two parts of the change process came together, more and more people became involved in making the changes work. In particular there were increased discussions with the plant operators, who were doing more and more asset-care activities as part of their basic role.
As the operators’ involvement increased, so did the number of suggestions that they had for longer term reliability improvements. By the end of 2004 the ACE and 5S processes had become core to the site’s activities.
There was a common alignment of the site’s goals with the personal values of the key staff on the site. This has resulted in the pace of change accelerating, since everyone was working from a strong sense of personal motivation and personal responsibility.
The third audit recognised these changes, with a score of 75% - World Class. At this point Jones of MCP gave Ruabon a challenge – he pointed out that achieving the target of 75% gave us 2 choices;
- Continue with the proven systems, now that our goal had been achieved or,
- Look for improvements to establish Ruabon as a true ‘World Class’ performing site.
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The challenge was to push the process forward, and see how high we could get on the AMIS audit. Indeed, for a high AMIS score the concept of continuous improvement must be built in to the way things are done, so once a site joins the league of World Class players “the only way forward is up”.
And this was true for Ruabon; there followed a third year of ACE improvements. In particular, the work order management process, the foundation of the whole ACE process was redesigned. The ACE process also led to changes in HR, where the ACE team led the introduction of a new database of personal training and development.
Of even more importance to the site the weekly production planning performance measure, MPSP has doubled, it is still noisy, but it is regularly achieving the ‘Class A’ performance of 95%. OEE, a measure introduced from the AMIS audits is regularly over 90% and averages over 85%.
After 4 years of “ACE”, Ruabon has moved from 38% to 84% on the AMIS audit – and the output from the latest audit (which put Ruabon close to its Sector Highest score) – An improvement plan of over 50 further ideas for 2007!
These changes have led to opportunities elsewhere on site. Mason, with the site manager, Simon Howarth, recognised that the whole operations organisation was designed around less reliable operations. They set to designing how to organise a World Class, reliable site – leading them to launch “Project Ebony”.
This latest project encompasses plans to combine separate plant operating teams, with common control rooms, and significant operator reductions. This combined with supervision re-organisation and other related improvements now gives Ruabon the very real prospect of delivering manufacturing costs comparable with its far Eastern competitors.