Catalysts, cars and best practice
30 Oct 2008
Johnson Matthey's site in Billingham is making big strides in the areas of overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and energy efficiency through a continuous improvement (CI) programme that includes best practice techniques picked up from the automotive industry.
The Haverton Hill Road site operates as part of JM's Vertec division - a global supplier of titanate and zirconate catalysts for the production of polymers, and additives for printing ink, paint and other applications. Manufacturing is based around two primary lines - Line 1 and Line 3 - for the production of titanium and zirconium alkoxides from metal chlorides and three secondary production lines.
"The chemicals industry is not as hot on continuous improvement as say the automotive industry, but the process is essential to make us more competitive," believes Fraser Thomson, site manufacturing manager, explaining how the CI concept has been applied on three separate projects at the site:
- An OEE improvement project focused on reliability issues on Line 3;
- A rationalisation effort on Line 1;
- A site-wide energy-efficiency project.
The Line 3 project was launched last year with targets to deliver a 15% increase in the, then, throughput of 250 tonnes/month - targets that were met and exceeded within six months.
As Thomson said: "By focusing on teamwork and getting everyone to run the kit in the optimum way, we have achieved 320 tonnes/month and another several months at around 300 tonnes/month, which was around a 28% improvement." He links the gains to a CI Masterclass, which has helped the team adopt a structured approach to identifying bottlenecks and other productivity issues across the site.
The project has included reducing lost time due to blockages on process equipment - for instance by installing knocking equipment on slurry handling lines — and optimising the operation of equipment, particularly a new centrifuge.
Another improvement was the introduction of visual-management techniques, based on benchmarking work at the Nissan factory in Sunderland.
Visual management is about ensuring that all the required tools are always to hand and in place for the work that needs doing, explained Rob Peeling, operations manager at JM's Teesside facility. Similarly, a daily log of production against targets on the board outside the control room enables the production team to see exactly how they stand at any moment in time.
On Line 1, meanwhile, the JM team identified an opportunity to combine operations from Line 2, which had previously run in parallel, to create a single production line. As well as reducing the shift team by a man per shift, the project increased production by 60% to 161 tonnes/month - an extra 15% above target.
Another focus was the reduction in changeover times on Line 1, which produces about six products and has a capacity of around 5 tonnes/day. A team was tasked with halving the 48 hours it took to carry out a grade change from one product to another.
"The team actually achieved a 21-hour grade change applying a process called SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Dies)," said Thomson. "This is an improvement tool that OneNorth East brought to us based on how the automotive industry changes dies - the equivalent of a grade change in the process industries."
According to Peeling, previously everything had been done on "a task-by-task basis, with maintenance throwing projects in and many other things happening around the grade change. So we took out the maintenance work and planned it in a different way."
Project leader Rob Tanfield explained how the SMED approach involved identifying all the tasks involved in the grade change and assigning a time slot for each. "Duties were then split between each operator so that one operator was cleaning out the system, another operator was emptying the tank and so on," he said.
"We worked out five different types of grade change," continued Tanfield. " Bigger tasks are broken down into smaller standardised charts, to show how long each [element] should take and identify the reason for any overshoot."
Before, it could take up to eight batches and a few days' production to get running to specification between grades, added Peeling. "We cut that down to about a tonne and are damn near in-spec first batch, and definitely on the second batch. This has also helped us to modify the frequency of grade changes, reduce stock and be better attuned to customer demand."
The production team has since gone a step further and applied SMED to look at the cycle time of each batch, noted Thomson. "Batch time typically averaged 6.85 hours. But, again, by looking at the sequential operations and recording the time taken for each batch, we cut the cycle time by about 20% to 5.44 hours."
JM launched its energy efficiency project in late 2007, with a target of reducing consumption by 5% across the site, which has a total spend on gas and electricity of about £600,000-700,000 a year. This target has again been exceeded, with the CI team expecting to deliver a saving of 7% this year.
The project team targeted its brine system for cooling main reactors, which includes cooling towers and pumps, and uses about 40% of electricity usage on site.
"We were running at about minus 11°C, but found we could take this up by three, four or maybe five degrees with no adverse effect on system availability or the behaviour of the reactors, said Thomson. "Scaled up, this has provided annual savings of £21,000."
Another project has involved rearranging a network of pipes for a separate cooling water system, which has provided annual savings of £14,000, noted Thomson.
The JM managers went on to highlight the potential for much more significant savings, such as from investment in variable speed drives and, more significantly, a CHP installation - all electricity and steam is currently imported into the site.
JM's energy project is being supported by Steve Williamson, a lean operations specialist at SJW Associates (UK) Ltd, who was involved in developing a Resource Efficiency Club with NEPIC and worked with One NorthEast to develop best practice for tracking energy and other resources coming into a process site.
The work at JM involves guiding the managers and employees on the adoption of a systematic "plan-do-check-and-act" approach to energy efficiency, explained Williamson.
"This is a teaching process and bringing the skills in to people who are actually working out on the site," he added. "The aim is to establish a team of people on the site with the skills and capabilities, and then to help them apply them. They then get to a point of running the improvement Masterclass on a regular basis themselves without support or intervention."
The Haverton Hill Road site operates as part of JM's Vertec division - a global supplier of titanate and zirconate catalysts for the production of polymers, and additives for printing ink, paint and other applications. Manufacturing is based around two primary lines - Line 1 and Line 3 - for the production of titanium and zirconium alkoxides from metal chlorides and three secondary production lines.
"The chemicals industry is not as hot on continuous improvement as say the automotive industry, but the process is essential to make us more competitive," believes Fraser Thomson, site manufacturing manager, explaining how the CI concept has been applied on three separate projects at the site:
- An OEE improvement project focused on reliability issues on Line 3;
- A rationalisation effort on Line 1;
- A site-wide energy-efficiency project.
The Line 3 project was launched last year with targets to deliver a 15% increase in the, then, throughput of 250 tonnes/month - targets that were met and exceeded within six months.
As Thomson said: "By focusing on teamwork and getting everyone to run the kit in the optimum way, we have achieved 320 tonnes/month and another several months at around 300 tonnes/month, which was around a 28% improvement." He links the gains to a CI Masterclass, which has helped the team adopt a structured approach to identifying bottlenecks and other productivity issues across the site.
The project has included reducing lost time due to blockages on process equipment - for instance by installing knocking equipment on slurry handling lines — and optimising the operation of equipment, particularly a new centrifuge.
Another improvement was the introduction of visual-management techniques, based on benchmarking work at the Nissan factory in Sunderland.
Visual management is about ensuring that all the required tools are always to hand and in place for the work that needs doing, explained Rob Peeling, operations manager at JM's Teesside facility. Similarly, a daily log of production against targets on the board outside the control room enables the production team to see exactly how they stand at any moment in time.
On Line 1, meanwhile, the JM team identified an opportunity to combine operations from Line 2, which had previously run in parallel, to create a single production line. As well as reducing the shift team by a man per shift, the project increased production by 60% to 161 tonnes/month - an extra 15% above target.
Another focus was the reduction in changeover times on Line 1, which produces about six products and has a capacity of around 5 tonnes/day. A team was tasked with halving the 48 hours it took to carry out a grade change from one product to another.
"The team actually achieved a 21-hour grade change applying a process called SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Dies)," said Thomson. "This is an improvement tool that OneNorth East brought to us based on how the automotive industry changes dies - the equivalent of a grade change in the process industries."
According to Peeling, previously everything had been done on "a task-by-task basis, with maintenance throwing projects in and many other things happening around the grade change. So we took out the maintenance work and planned it in a different way."
Project leader Rob Tanfield explained how the SMED approach involved identifying all the tasks involved in the grade change and assigning a time slot for each. "Duties were then split between each operator so that one operator was cleaning out the system, another operator was emptying the tank and so on," he said.
"We worked out five different types of grade change," continued Tanfield. " Bigger tasks are broken down into smaller standardised charts, to show how long each [element] should take and identify the reason for any overshoot."
Before, it could take up to eight batches and a few days' production to get running to specification between grades, added Peeling. "We cut that down to about a tonne and are damn near in-spec first batch, and definitely on the second batch. This has also helped us to modify the frequency of grade changes, reduce stock and be better attuned to customer demand."
The production team has since gone a step further and applied SMED to look at the cycle time of each batch, noted Thomson. "Batch time typically averaged 6.85 hours. But, again, by looking at the sequential operations and recording the time taken for each batch, we cut the cycle time by about 20% to 5.44 hours."
JM launched its energy efficiency project in late 2007, with a target of reducing consumption by 5% across the site, which has a total spend on gas and electricity of about £600,000-700,000 a year. This target has again been exceeded, with the CI team expecting to deliver a saving of 7% this year.
The project team targeted its brine system for cooling main reactors, which includes cooling towers and pumps, and uses about 40% of electricity usage on site.
"We were running at about minus 11°C, but found we could take this up by three, four or maybe five degrees with no adverse effect on system availability or the behaviour of the reactors, said Thomson. "Scaled up, this has provided annual savings of £21,000."
Another project has involved rearranging a network of pipes for a separate cooling water system, which has provided annual savings of £14,000, noted Thomson.
The JM managers went on to highlight the potential for much more significant savings, such as from investment in variable speed drives and, more significantly, a CHP installation - all electricity and steam is currently imported into the site.
JM's energy project is being supported by Steve Williamson, a lean operations specialist at SJW Associates (UK) Ltd, who was involved in developing a Resource Efficiency Club with NEPIC and worked with One NorthEast to develop best practice for tracking energy and other resources coming into a process site.
The work at JM involves guiding the managers and employees on the adoption of a systematic "plan-do-check-and-act" approach to energy efficiency, explained Williamson.
"This is a teaching process and bringing the skills in to people who are actually working out on the site," he added. "The aim is to establish a team of people on the site with the skills and capabilities, and then to help them apply them. They then get to a point of running the improvement Masterclass on a regular basis themselves without support or intervention."
