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Articles > Current Best Practices – an
Educational Journey
by Ian Farrell, UPM-Kymmene, UK
Source:
Maintenance
Management Consultants - Idcon
The concept of Best Practice is easy to describe and discuss – the
more difficult part is determining your path towards Best Practice
and more importantly, sustaining standards and developing a continuous
improvement culture.
However, being armed with the best techniques, procedures and systems
does not mean that you will enjoy a trouble free life with the best reliability
figures on the planet.
Ian Farrell, UPM-Kymmene, UK
The approach to maintenance must be considered in full view of the papermaking
business with all parties and departments aware of the targets and
goals of the individual mills and business units. In short each department,
and in most cases this refers to the daily interface between Production
and Maintenance must be aware of the points of focus.
“Process and Equipment
Reliability”
Above all, a Production plan must exist in response to the market demand.
The maintenance effort must then be built around the production plan
to support the business. The risks involved in the delivery of the production
plan from the point of view of each department much remain in full focus
of all concerned.
The impact of our short and long term decisions is seen in how the business
functions and the many cases of balance of the ‘risk’ component
is different if you work in Operations or Maintenance. The ‘risk’ of
running equipment beyond repair intervals is clear to maintenance personnel – the ‘risk’ of
not meeting the market or not achieving production targets is clear to
operations personnel.
The management of this ‘risk’ can be made easier if the ‘right
things’ are done to support the business.
This paper will outline the work carried out by the Caledonian and Shotton
mills during a CBP audit to identify where they ranked beside Current
Best Practice – information the mills will now use to develop their
maintenance departments in the continued support for the papermaking
business within UPM-Kymmene.
UPM-KYMMENE
UPM-Kymmene is one of the world’s leading forest industry companies,
with production plants and sales companies on every continent. This enables
the provision of a local service to all customers, both large and small,
who manufacture products to make life easier.
UPM-Kymmene – Caledonian
Caledonian Paper is the UK’s only manufacture of LWC. The annual
production capability is in excess of 250,000 tonnes. The mill services
the local markets as well as exporting to Europe, the USA and to Asia.The
mill is situated on the South West of Scotland some 35 miles from Glasgow.
UPM-Kymmene – Shotton
Shotton Paper is the largest newsprint manufacturer in the UK. The output
is around some 470,000 tonnes which in turn supplies 20% of the daily
needs of the entire UK newspaper industry. Shotton Paper recycles around
350,000 tonnes of old newspapers and magazines. The mill is situated
in North Wales only a few miles from the city of Chester.
CURRENT BEST PRACTICE AUDITS
The maintenance management of the Caledonian and Shotton mills had a
desire to benchmark their actual equipment reliability and draw comparison
against the Current Best Practice.
The goals of the exercise being:
- To increase the awareness of the organization in the area
of Best Practice.
- To build a positively challenging relationship across the
maintenance departments of Shotton and Caledonian.
- Create a learning opportunity for the development and education
of maintenance people.
- To identify the most important improvement opportunities
and encourage the most appropriate actions.
- To create an atmosphere where people will readily share
experiences and information.
- Maximize effectiveness of our people.
Traditional maintenance audits may center around functions which
do not offer a chance to improve on the effectiveness of maintenance.
These may be driven around a review of the budget, or the establishment
of meetings and brainstorming sessions.
It is fundamentally obvious that unless an organization is prepared to
expose itself to a system where feedback can be given on all maintenance
related issues then the opportunity to create improvement may be minimized
or lost.
The opportunity to audit out maintenance performance
in line with world class comparisons gave Caledonian and Shotton
a first class opportunity to develop. The benefit of having
internally trained personnel facilitated by IDCON was viewed
as a further opportunity for the development of our maintenance
practices.
We realized through our communication that an opportunity was
there to have a look at how each mill shaped up to the World
Class utilizing a Best Practice Audit.
THE CBP PROCESS
- Audit team training. This team training took two days and
was facilitated by Christer Idhammar.
- Input data from plant.
- CBP seminar triggers start.
- CBP seminar gives initial direction.
- Audit team interviews 50 people using 270 prepared CBP questions.
This process took one week in each mill.
- All 270 questions scored against a known world class benchmark
figure.
- Scores evaluated.
- Scores agreed.
- Strengths are indicated.
- Improvements and developed.
- Presentation of results to initial seminar audience took
place at the end of the week long audit.
THE INPUT DATA
The audit commenced by each team selecting their audit team. In our case
we selected four maintenance people from each mill. The individuals were
trained in maintenance auditing by IDCON.
In its simplest form, the CBP exercise looks at ‘what is’ versus ‘what
could be’.
The audit process being as follows:
- Mills Select Teams
Caledonian and Shotton selected teams comprising four persons. A multi-disciplined
approach was obtained from both mills.
- Detailed Questionnaire
A questionnaire was requested to enable the audit requirements to be
set and the commencement of a benchmark against other known elements.
The questions being:-
- How is the mill divided by production area?
- What product types are manufactured.
- A total breakdown of all maintenance staff functions.
- A total breakdown of all operations staff functions.
- Other staffing levels.
- Hourly rates.
- Identification of mill bottlenecks.
- Production data.
- Maintenance productivity.
- Maintenance costs.
- Manufacturing cost.
- Safety record.
- Training programmers.
- Run maintenance categorization.
- Breakdown of Predictive maintenance staff.
- List of Condition Monitoring tools.
- Maintenance prevention resource and techniques.
- Maintenance shift staffing and workshop organization.
- CMMS system set up and utilization.
- Materials management system.
- Planning and scheduling performance.
From the questionnaire three further areas were developed.
- PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE
- Mechanical inspection routes.
- Grease routes.
- Oil sampling reports.
- Balancing standard.
- Alignment standard.
- Lubrication standard.
- Equipment criticality analysis.
- PLANNING AND SCHEDULING
- Planning and scheduling manual.
- Work order flow process.
- Planned task documentation.
- Scheduled task documentation.
- Backlog statistics.
- Shutdown evaluation.
- ROOT CAUSE PROBLEM ELIMINATION
- Documented solutions to problems.
A comprehensive summary can be built up of the key maintenance
data along with Operations and safety statistics.
THE AUDIT TRAINING
From the summary documentation it is possible to build up a fairly accurate
picture of how things are in the participating mills – also it
starts to awaken a feeling that the maintenance practices are not all
that they could or should be.
A picture starts to be formed in the minds of the audit teams that the
exercise that they are about to take part in will not only be informative
but extremely useful for the ongoing development of the mill maintenance
system and practices.
The audit training was aimed at giving the team members the confidence
to be able to conduct an audit in an effective professional manner. The
training of the audit teams was carried out at the Shotton mill over
a two day period. It was carried out by Christer Idhammar.
The “Training Mission”
- Was to educate and unify the audit teams in both the approach
and definition.
- The planning and scheduling process linked specifically
to the audit programmer.
- To assign the individual notes of the team.
The approach of Christer when training the teams was a key factor.
Christer spent a lot of time positioning the importance of the project
and explaining its potential benefits, if carried out properly.
The training language was simple and a systematic path was followed through
the business needs and how maintenance can have a major impact on the
results of a business.
This was then developed to the items and functions which were to be audited
and exploring the pre-prepared documentation to ensure that everyone
fully understood the task ahead and the importance of their part.
The teams became familiar with the questionnaires and methods to be undertaken
in the audit. The initial questionnaire concentrated on front line maintenance
and the impact of the individuals connected with the maintenance effort.
THE SEMINAR
It called for the auditor to ask questions and rank each answer from
1 (poor) through to 10 (excellent),
eg. How well do we:
- Do detailed cleaning?
- Do lubrication?
- Do fixed time maintenance?
- Do condition monitoring?
- Avoid emotional break-in work?
After the general questions some more detail was required around the
Planning and Scheduling of Daily and Shutdown work.
This was to measure the effectiveness around the maintenance effort from
Break-in through to Planned and Scheduled.
The final stage of this aspect brought together the questions around
Preventative Maintenance and Planning and Scheduling,
e.g.
- Backlog management ? we know the trend
- Job status ? we know the status
- Spare parts ? we can find easily
- Spare parts ? are always available
- Problems ? we analyze and find root cause
- Operations and Maintenance ? we have a close partnership
- Training ? we have a training plan
The survey results would be presented at the end of the week
long audit along with all other data.
The audit team found themselves taking on different roles, documenters,
presenter and information processor. The process can be summarized.
AUDIT DETAIL
The 270 questions are detailed. Current Best Practice elements of world
class maintenance. When examined there is not one single item which does
not have a relevance to a maintainer.
The elements not only proved relevant to the Caledonian and Shotton Mills
but started the teams on an educational journey – a voyage which
would challenge and develop their ways of thinking about maintenance.
The interviews were broken down in 10 categories,
- Preventive Maintenance
- Planning and Scheduling
- Root Cause Problem Elimination
- Technical Database
- Materials Management
- Leadership
- Safety
- Skills
- Equipment Condition
- Engineering
The 10 categories or maintenance processes can be broken down
via sub-processes to the elements which are the lowest level
of detail in a key process.
KEY PROCESS – These processes
which are key to the discipline of maintenance and can
be used to support the papermaking business.
SUB PROCESS – Lower in
the hierarchy then a process but when grouped with several
sub processes becomes a process.
ELEMENTS – A CBP is equal
to an element, which is the lowest level of detail in a
key process. It is the best way to do something.
- KEY PROCESS – Planning and Scheduling
- SUB PROCESS – Work Request
- ELEMENTS – Scope, Definition, Priority, Documentation
The elements are put together as questions. The questions then take the
auditors through the Key Process areas.
Example:
SUB PROCESS – Planning and Scheduling
The data to the Element questions being gathered and scored is then put
together and averaged against each of the Sub Process areas under the Key Process.
The Sub Process areas when viewed as a graph or bar chart can be tracked
against CBP. A score of 85 is rated as world class. The Caledonian and
Shotton mills fell short of world class which was a prediction made by
the host teams in each case.
RESULTS
The results were obtained by giving each ELEMENT a score, when compiled
we have a score for each SUB PROCESS. The scores for the SUB PROCESSES
are then added together and when averaged we have the overall KEY PROCESS
SCORE.
The education of the audit teams really starts to develop at this stage – the
awareness of their own mills shortcomings is instantly apparent. The
comments start to come through.
“We say we do this, but we never do!”
“We have a maintenance management system which could be used to greater
effect”.
“Why don’t we have documented standards”.
“We are good at maintenance but we could be much better”.
“If everyone in my organization knew our direction then we could improve
rapidly”.
The first aspect in the maintenance education is to find out where you
are – ie. The starting point and when the information is available
to develop world class targets then it is easy to define the area where
everyone would like to get to.
The method used to audit and obtain results focused on the evaluation
and measurement of key equipment reliability and the maintenance processes.
- How are processes documented.
- How are processes executed.
- How are processes tracked.
The simplification of the process for data gathering and analysis develops
the learning experience and broadens the educational horizon.
Caledonian and Shotton when compared to other similar mills (not named)
came out ahead in the overall stakes. This we felt was good for our mills
and indicated the sense of great pride to be part of the UPM-Kymmene
network of sites – this pride developed through the strong relationships
and information sharing already in existence globally.
KEY PROCESS SCORES
As stated previously the key process scores for both sites fell short
of world class, not significantly, however we placed an expectation on
each mill to use the audit as a means to improve.
There were similarities and stark differences in the final results. This
had a positive effect on the audit teams.
- When a good score was achieved they could draw from the
learning how that score came about.
- When a poor score was achieved a positive determination
to create improvement now exists.
- Each mill now had the support of the other.
- Learning is also possible via the UPM-Kymmene group.
From the key process scores, the top three improvement areas were identified
for each mill. Some progress has been made in these areas to date.
Shotton – Key Improvement Areas
- Leadership & OrganizationThis
improvement need was based on the following:-
- Requirement for a written and communicated long-term
maintenance strategy.
- Key Performance Indicators which are clearly associated
with the business should be followed and developed
as an improvement trend.
- Communication of targets and feedback of the performance
should be improved.
- PM / ECCM (Preventive Maintenance / Essential
Core and Condition Monitoring
The lack of maintenance standards:-
- Written guidelines clearly outlining procedures eg. Lubrication
practices, balancing, bearing fitting filtration, alignment
etc.
- Action plans to resolve number of oil leaks.
- Skills Development
- Identification of core skills required for each job.
- Skills matrix being used to identify areas lacking.
- Develop training programmer.
- Root Cause Problem Elimination
- Implementation of a standard process to document problems
and identify solutions
Caledonian – Key Improvement Areas
Leadership & Organization
With some KPI’s in place and some CBP’s Caledonian still
fell short in this area.
- Establish future plant wide direction for maintenance CBPs
and KPIs (3 year plan).
- Set goals for timing an track the organizations progress
against goals.
- Establish detailed plans which include for example “standards
regarding balancing, alignment, equipment cleaning, backlogs,
priorities, and recording of history.
Planning & Scheduling
Continue bringing Planning and Scheduling up to world class.
- A work prioritization system should be scoped and agreed.
- Backlog management should be defined.
- Scheduling of tasks for each trades person should be improved
and have a more systematic approach.
- Standard job plans are required for all key tasks.
RCPE (Root Cause Problem Elimination)
- Initiate a standardized site wide RCPE program for all failures
using standardized (5 whys) methodology.
- Integrate this program with the rest of the maintenance
systems.
- Use RCPE as a trigger to select cost effective maintenance
methods such as FTM, CBM, etc. when problems cannot be eliminated.
CONCLUSIONS
- The audit gave Caledonian and Shotton a unique opportunity
to view each other in a ‘no holds barred’ situation.
- The mills are now committed to making improvements in every
direction.
- The mills are now committed to working together.
- The audit gave the individuals involved an educational experience
second to none. They were able to view 2 organizations from
the ‘inside’, an opportunity which can only present
itself in this structured manner as set out by IDCON.
- It is now up to the maintenance management of each mill
to develop their entire maintenance strategy in support of
the papermaking business.
- Inside UPM-Kymmene there are around 53 paper machines. We
have only touched on maintenance benchmarking in the past.
An opportunity exists within UPM-Kymmene that we use a tailor
made organized benchmark framework to carry out benchmark audits
and reviews in a planned ongoing basis.
REFERENCES
IDCON CBP Audit Caledonian and Shotton – July 2001
CBP at Shotton – Antti Wiksten, Maintenance Manager, Shotton
CBP Audits – a view – Hal McCoy, HR Development Manager,
Shotton
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