Problem
Unnecessary supply disruptions caused by maintenance and spare part management failures
Our client was experiencing unnecessary and unexpected supply disruptions at four sterile pharmaceutical manufacturing plants in North America and Puerto Rico. After a number of root cause workshops identified cascading facility system failures and chronic equipment downtimes pointed to major flaws in their preventative maintenance and spare part inventory management.
Approach
Triage sites while identifying benchmark gaps and improvements to deliver a unified Maintenance Excellence strategy
WGA’s Consulting Team worked with our client regional leadership to shape an effective approach to balance urgent business needs with a long term strategy. WGA delivered the following approach 1) immediately triage operations at each pharmaceutical plant to stabilize customer service levels 2) conducting RCP benchmark exercise and identify gaps and improvement actions 3) Define a comprehensive Maintenance Excellence strategy for the four pharmaceutical plants.
Solution
Stabilize production volumes, prioritize gaps, develop unified plant network Maintenance Excellence strategy and action plan
WGA dispatched triage teams to each plant to identify and prioritize stabilization countermeasures. Concurrently, we began the RCP benchmark exercise and identified between 145-219 gaps per plant. The benchmark gaps uncovered clear policy and culture problems across all of the plants. We worked with the client to prioritize the remediation action plans that were plant specific and those impacting all pharmaceutical plants. Given the severity and magnitude of the gaps, we structured the Maintenance Excellence strategy over a 3 year period to allow for deployment of improvements, staff development and training.
Results
Maintenance Excellence strategy delivers sustained bottom line results
As of 2014, the four plants are 2 years into the Maintenance Excellence Strategy and have achieved the following:
◾Adopted unified maintenance policies, organizational changes and preventative maintenance improvements across all sites
◾Capital investments replaced end-of-life environmental systems
◾Increased % of Planned PM Work from 35% to 94%
◾Improved Equipment Uptime (OEE2) from 42-51% to 74-81%
◾Decreased TMC/ERV of 13.8% to 6.9%
◾Decreased Monthly Maintenance Backlogs by (-87%)
◾Decreased Annual Labor Cost/TMC from 31% to 19%