UK Chemical Company - Operational Excellence

The Challenge:

• 100+ year old site with inconsistent performance and engrained, poor safety, supervisory and performance behaviours
• Declining market share in some products facing fierce Asian competition with lower unit costs
• Lack of flexibility in a highly unionised workforce with low levels of responsibilities and accountability, especially in areas requiring continuous improvement
• Lack of coordination between highly interdependent production plants, support services (waste and energy) and engineering
• Inadequate Planning and Reporting with an ineffective Execution Control Systems
• Limited use of Short Interval Controls, KPIs and Root Cause Analysis
• Little control over the usage and cost of: raw materials, contractors, overtime and energy consumption and costs

What we did:

• Implemented a new workforce model with a shift performance management system
• Implemented a more effective Execution Control System that included introducing greater SICs and reporting KPIs on a shift / daily basis with a focus on data driven performance
• Implementation of lubrication program, bad actor process; RCFA process; Criticality index / asset care strategies & PM prioritisation
• Contractor jobs included in work order system and established contractor management process
• Implemented RACIs on waste & energy management and trained workforce on energy & waste awareness

The benefits:

• Higher levels of consistent performance, allowing the site to more than double production volumes within 12 months and consolidate production from another site
• Increased levels of management control and consistency
• 15% increase in labour efficiency & improved labour flexibility to allow for safe reallocation of resources in a more cost effective manner
• Improved communication and coordination between departments with common goals and objectives
• Short interval controls installed on 18 plants measuring the performance critical processes
• Creation of a continuous improvement system & culture
• Savings on: overtime £0.2m, raw materials £0.5m, waste £0.2m, energy £0.2m and contractors £0.3m