Chemical Processing - November 2007 - (Page 28)

• increased plant ef ciencies (25%) via manufacturing processes optimization and enterprise integration; • higher production yields (10%) by proactive monitoring of manufacturing events; • lower maintenance costs (10%) due to more effective practices, and alignment with manufacturing metrics; • reduced capital investments (10%) because of better asset availability; • smaller inventory (10%) through more efficient and consistent operations; and • enhanced value chain agility and customer responsiveness by complete value chain integration and visibility. The first step in your quest is to decide on the elements that make up your perfect plant — such as better quality analysis, enhanced maintenance strategies that ensure better uptime, more effective procurement, etc. Once you can “see” your perfect plant, you can start prioritizing the individual items based on their bene ts and then begin implementing those items piece by piece. However, the devil is in the details. The following four cases illustrate some pitfalls. Inventory surprises Everyone believes (and they’re usually correct) that inventory levels are too high. One of the prime causes is incorrect data in the planning process. Everyone calls accurate inventory counts or the master schedule crucial. Yes, they’re important; and don’t believe that just anyone can count inventory. Other, more fundamental areas can cause signi cant errors that impact the inventory levels, though. For instance, don’t assume that the bills of materials or recipes are correct. It’s amazing how many people can compare a bill of materials/recipe report to the original and miss errors. My favorite errors are around decimals; 10.0 looks a lot like 100 after hours in front of a terminal. Then, there’s getting the conversion factor the wrong way around. However, even if the bill of materials matches the speci cation, things can go wrong. In one facility, we consistently had too much material in inventory at period end. When we showed the operators a computer generated pick list for the product and asked them what they thought the problem was, they told us that if they ever used the listed quantities of materials the product would be too thick to ow through the pipes. As this shows, what’s reviewed, audited and approved by management and supervisory staff isn’t necessarily what happens on the shop floor. So, do a reality check. The best way I’ve found is to generate a bill of materials’ explosion for normal production batch quantities. Then give the list to the operators who pick and move the material and so have a good idea of what’s really normal, and ask them if it makes sense. Production blind spots At another site (and typical of many others), manage28 • November 2007 >> The hill climb challenge Figure 1. Success requires aligning asset utilization, operations planning and manufacturing execution. ment didn’t have visibility onto the shop floor and couldn’t reliably say what amount was being produced at any stage in the process. As we analyzed the requirements to provide such visibility, we realized that we had a worse problem than we thought. Not only could we not see what was produced, we couldn’t even get the data to visualize. Some of the counters didn’t detect product, flow meters with low volumes of material going through didn’t register any activity, and lots of equipment had no sensors or counters attached. Visualization dashboards are only as good as the data available. To collect all the data that are needed may require investment in equipment. Data deficiencies Becoming aware of signi cant excess capacity at a facility or, more correctly, inef cient use of the capacity, we decided to see what could be done to increase asset utilization. The plant’s Industrial Engineering Department was the custodian of all the documentation and information concerning the equipment. While these details were correct, it soon became apparent that we didn’t have enough data. Modern integrated capacity-planning systems require more sophisticated data than the information that was being collected. This was very obvious for some of the vintage equipment, which had been installed around fty years ago and for which we could get only extremely basic information. Once we had identified the data that the system required, we initiated a shop floor review. Engineers performed studies on how the equipment was running to gather the performance metrics needed. At the same time, we compared the physical plant to the engineering drawings. We were considering implementation of an EAM system in the future and knew it required www.chemicalprocessing.com http://www.chemicalprocessing.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chemical Processing - November 2007

Chemical Processing - November 2007 Contents From the Editor ChemicalProcessing.com Field Notes In Process Energy Saver Compliance Advisor PAT isn't Standing Pat Pursue the Perfect Plant Eliminate Exchanger Tubing Troubles Portable Conveyor Speeds Paint Production Process Puzzler Plant InSites Equipment & Services Product Spotlight/Classifieds Ad Index End Point

Chemical Processing - November 2007

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