Are your maintenance processes documented, including preventive maintenance schedule and equipment servicing history?
Increasingly, such documentation will be required to meet the quality assurance demands of leading customers, according to Ralph Rupert of Millwood Inc. Rupert spoke at the 2016 Western Pallet Association Annual Meeting in Rancho Mirage, California. His theme was quality assurance for the 21st Century, and one of the areas he touched on was plant maintenance. He stressed that customers are increasingly looking to validate the quality of pallet supplier documentation and processes.
“Our customers are expecting more and we as an industry need to step up to the plate,” Rupert said. “This (customer requirement) is not going to go away. That bar is going to continue to be raised. Your documentation of your work flow, processes and training will help your business and the pallet industry as a whole.”
To get a feel of industry readiness for this type of requirement regarding plant maintenance, Pallet Enterprise connected with three industry providers to get a feel for how at least a few leading pallet companies manage their maintenance programs and documentation. Here is the result.
Nefab North America
Dallas, Texas-based Nefab North America is a leading provider of transport and industrial packaging systems to a range of industries including telecom, energy, automotive, health equipment and aerospace. The company operates nine North American plants. Globally, Nefab employs roughly 2,400 people with annual sales of over $350 million.
Steve McConkey is the quality, environment and health and safety manager for Nefab North America. He is based at the Peterborough, Ontario facility although about 75% of his time is allocated to the other plants. Before joining Nefab, he spent 17 years working as a quality engineer in the automotive industry. McConkey serves on the CWPCA Board of Directors and sits on the group’s Packaging Committee.
The key to Nefab’s maintenance program, McConkey reported, is CWorks, a CMMS (computerized maintenance management system). The program has been in use at Peterborough for more than nine years. The commitment to such an approach comes at the beginning. The software requires the maintenance department to input manufacturer service schedule recommendations from the owner’s manuals. Subsequently, it is simply a matter of printing out maintenance work orders and recording current service history.
“We are a little different than most pallet shops,” McConkey explained. “We have a lot of presses, we have robotics, and we have CNC machines. Every Monday morning, the facility maintenance man hits the print button, and he is given his PM (preventive maintenance) assignments for the week, such as to grease bearings, clean the dust collector, or whatever we put into the program.” PMs are set at weekly, bi-weekly, quarterly or annual intervals as required.
The Dallas facility also installed CWorks about two years ago, based on its success at the Peterborough operation. Given that the equipment at the Dallas plant is somewhat similar to Peterborough, McConkey stated that several of the PM schedules could be “cut and pasted” from Peterborough CWorks, saving the effort of inputting the same information. An additional bonus, CWorks is multilingual so that PMs can be printed in Spanish.
While CWorks can be used to track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as downtime, Nefab no longer uses it for that purpose. “We used to have downtime issues when we installed CWorks, but it is no longer the case,” McConkey said. “We stopped tracking it because we didn’t see the need.”
Regarding the stocking of parts, McConkey notes that much of the equipment is specialized machinery from Sweden, so there are certain things that Nefab needs to have available on site. He emphasized that it is not a large inventory, but if it is something that needed to come from Sweden, it could take up to three weeks to deliver. Because the Dallas plant has similar equipment, the two facilities can share spare parts if needed. Additionally, if a press did go down, for example, particular parts could also be produced at the other location and shipped from one plant to the other as needed.
“Nowadays,” McConkey noted, “most things are standardized in the way of and bearings. We can source
them locally.” A local sharpening service picks up blades and knives for servicing..
Operators are responsible for completing a daily checklist, which the maintenance department reviews. Operators do not get involved in maintenance duties beyond regular housekeeping, as well as minor oiling and blade changes.
In the area of predictive maintenance, McConkey explained that the company brings someone in every two years to analyze electrical panels and dust collector bearings with thermography. “It is an excellent tool,” he said, although he cautioned that it is an expensive one. “You can save money in the long run.”
Shur-way Group
Shur-way Group is a leading wood pallet and container producer, operating plants in Cambridge, Ayr, and Woodstock, Ontario. All of the facilities of this CWPCA and NWPCA member company are ISO 9001 certified, and as such follow documented ISO procedures, explained Shawn McKnight, plant manager of Shur-Way Industries in Ayr. As an outcome of its demanding ISO requirements, the company has instituted an ISO-compliant system for the documentation of maintenance processes and work records.
Each of the three Shur-way facilities has a large binder that spells out everything needed with respect to facility maintenance. The binder includes the maintenance requirements for the various assets at each site, including overhead doors and dock plates as well as saws, nailing tools, and other production equipment. The binder also includes records part inventory and reorder information for each machine. Maintenance employees update the binder with service history information and part usage. For example, McKnight said, when a belt needs to be replaced, the binder has the information as to whether one is available in the spare parts cabinet. If not, contact information for the supplier is also included, so that a new part can be ordered. The millwright then logs the job after the installation is complete.
Because Shur-way is a multi-site operation, it can replicate aspects of its maintenance system. “We integrated our maintenance forms and our PMs and all of our tracking through our ISO procedures, and that is identical in all three plants,” McKnight explained. “Even though we may not all have the same equipment, we all have the same documentation format because we are ISO certified.”
For the Shur-way group, the plant manager of each location is ultimately responsible for maintenance. The facilities share, however, a millwright who travels among all three locations. McKnight is quick to point out that the millwright is a jack of all trades, performing duties ranging from building cabinets to welding.
In addition to the shared millwright, each facility has a person assigned to do preventive maintenance such as scheduled greasing. Because Shur-way is a job shop rather than a continuous production operation, however, the running time for specific machinery can fluctuate. McKnight stresses that the number of running hours is taken into consideration in determining when a particular piece of equipment should be serviced to avoid over-greasing.
Operators perform a daily visual inspection and complete a checklist. If repair is needed, the operator will then enter it into the log for evaluation.
Regarding tracking maintenance costs, Shur-way utilizes detailed invoice information from the millwright as well as labor hour coding. For example, this might include forklift operator time for daily inspections.
In summary, both of these multi-facility operations have well-documented maintenance systems in place that would exceed customer requirements for documented maintenance processes and record keeping. Each of them benefits from the sharing of maintenance documentation and expertise among other company locations. Opinions are mixed regarding whether or not to use a CMMS software approach to managing maintenance. The responses in this story seem indicative of the industry in general in that some operations are moving toward CMMS programs while others are not.
PTM: Plastic Pallet Company Has Rigorous Preventive Maintenance and Beyond
As investment in manufacturing equipment increases, and the prevention of downtime becomes more critical, it follows that preventive maintenance programs will become more critical to success. PTM is an advanced plastic pallet manufacturer as well as a plastic recycler, based in Querétaro, Mexico. The company also produces other precision plastic parts, including automotive components and retail point of sale displays.
PTM’s mix of machinery includes plastic grinding and washing equipment, conveyors, robotics as well as plastic molding equipment. The company is highly invested in current and emerging approaches such as preventive, predictive and autonomous maintenance management. Only 20% of its maintenance budget is spent on corrective maintenance, while 80% goes towards preventive efforts. Here is its leading edge approach:
Preventive: PTM’s preventive maintenance involves monthly, quarterly, six-monthly and annual activities based on the recommendations of its machinery suppliers and complemented by the extensive experience the company has acquired over time.
Predictive: PTM’s predictive maintenance uses three basic techniques: oil analysis, vibration measurements and thermography. “This helps us to identify problems and defects in our machinery when they first occur, giving us sufficient time to plan and schedule repair activities,” the company explained. Such a program also lengthens the life span of equipment components.
Autonomous: The autonomous maintenance approach utilizes production employees to perform certain maintenance tasks. At PTM, operators are trained in Autonomous Maintenance (AM) to carry out inspection, lubrication and part-adjusting activities, which reduces non-programmed stoppages and keeps the machinery in good order.
Additionally, PTM’s maintenance department is being trained in another methodology, Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM2). According to the company, this approach will allow it to analyze its assets and thereby improve performance, reduce defects and protect the environment by enhancing reliability, safety, profitability and availability.
PTM is certified through a number of quality assurance programs, including ISO TS 16949 Automotive Quality, ISO 9001 Quality, ISO 14001 Environmental, Clean Industry, One Planet Living® and Socially Responsible Company.
