Asset project lets Matthew Walker 'have its cake and eat it'

Heanor, UK – The evocative smell of rich dried fruits, exotic spices, and cognac mingled with sherry aromas and a recognisable presence of warm ‘home’ baking hovers around the Matthew Walker Christmas Pudding Factory in Heanor, Derbyshire.

A very British passion for these Christmas puddings is fed by all-the-year round production at the company’s Heanor facility.  Millions of puddings are produced annually with the option of over 200 different recipes in a variety of different sizes. This variety places pressure on production systems, personnel skills and machinery availability.

Five years ago, chief engineer Nick Garnett at Matthew Walker was asked by its parent company Northern Foods, to undertake an asset management audit to help develop a best practice benchmark.

The group’s businesses were involved in the project which initially focused on sharing best practice across a wide number of sites, some with similarities in equipment and others, like Matthew Walker, that were autonomous in products and processes.

Before the audit the plant ran like many others with basic systems, word of mouth, anecdotal evidence of possibly machine or process problems and a more reactive approach to breakdowns or downtime.

This worked reasonably well, but with the increasing demands of health and safety legislation, production cost savings, and traceability audits as demanded by key customers and suppliers; the need was evident that a fresh approach be taken.

At this stage that Nick Garnett called in Peter Gagg of MCP Consulting and Training.  MCP developed the AMIS auditing and benchmarking service under the aegis of the then DTI in 1987. Since then the service has been used by over 4000 sites worldwide to measure maintenance and asset management performance.

Garnett’s requirement was “How to make improvements in a small company without spending recklessly and disrupting the business”

The process commenced with a series of visits, interviews, and Q&A sessions, which quizzed the engineering department as to their perceived effectiveness. The results when collated and analysed resulted in Matthew Walker implementing a number of important improvements.

The need for a plant register was the first step, where every piece of process and production machinery and major instrument was recorded and numbered, with its basic history logged and a maintenance programme prepared.

Restructuring

The engineering department was restructured with dedicated production engineers responsible for the ‘pre-cook’, and ‘post cook’ sections.  An improvements/project engineer and planned maintenance engineer were also part of the overall restructuring.

Each request for equipment checking, repair, service or failure is logged on an individual ‘job card’.  This provides details of:

>      The Machine,

>      The fault

>      The reason for the repair

>      The initiator of request,

>      The engineer responsible

>      Time taken and result

The system of having specific engineers responsible for a certain plant area now means that the correct person is called for by name rather than a general request for an ‘engineer’.

These cards are computer logged and spreadsheet produced by week of operational effectiveness against a % score. Major discrepancies are easily spotted and over time the results form a comprehensive record via a KPI spread sheet at the end of the year.

Each key machine operator was given individual time sheets, split into 5 minute intervals. These detail process, down time and other events leading to lost production. Again these were analysed and scrutinised for areas of improvement.

These AMIS audits help with planned maintenance and demonstrate to major customers that quality control systems are in place. Although still a paper based system this is seen by customers as more relevant than just computer records as it is a bottom up record of what is actually occurring.

The company also now undertakes test recall traceability programmes where if a ‘what if’ scenario occurs the offending machine or process can by identified and isolated.

Part of MCP’s programme was to develop operator asset care. Here production line staff, under the authority of their supervisor, are taught to handle simple technical problems typically concerned with hygiene, start up, change overs and system tripping. This frees up the engineer and hands more responsibility to the production line team.

The audit process not only involved engineering but their production colleagues. It is often the case that these two disciplines have contrasting agendas, but by early and close involvement potential conflicts are avoided.

Likewise the production staff are part of the AMIS journey by participating in feed back sessions and training: typically progressing from NVQ 2 to NVQ 3 in fault finding, problem solving and asset care.

Now with 4 audits under his belt, Garnett looks back at the progress made: “ I now have a workable, simple-to-use and effective system in place to prove to the [parent] group and to our demanding customers that we have strategies in place to show we are achieving best practice.

” Our overall equipment effectiveness has improved and I have tangible figures on available machine time and a criticality analysis of key plant. I never let my team forget that maintenance is also about preventing contamination which could have a disastrous impact on our business, potentially costing thousands of pounds per event.

The programme recognises us as innovators in best practice, enhanced machine utilisation, cost effectiveness and end customer satisfaction … based on the internationally benchmarked AMIS audit.”