Continuous Improvement Programs
Status quo is equal to moving backward
Continuous improvement is an evolutionary journey—not just the current state—for situations, systems, and processes. Today’s organizations are awash with data, providing endless opportunities to build incremental efficiencies in many areas.
To maximize improvement opportunities, CI initiatives focus efforts around specific objectives in order to drive targeted improvements.
Inject clarity and speed while ensuring the right results are achieved
Doing nothing is not a viable option!
To thrive you must continuously improve and refine all aspects of your business. Success is found in identifying the best areas for improvement to maximize value creation with the limited resources you have available.
Prioritize what’s most important
Finding the most direct route to the best improvement opportunities yields greater results in an accelerated timeframe. Executing too many projects in an unfocused manner diminishes the potential for value.
Build and support analytic thinking skills
Understanding how to use data to support analytic problem solving and decision making enables employees to pursue improvements and identify potential risks and opportunities.
Without sustainability, performance will regress
After a period of time, people tend to revert back to the previous norm. Sustainability must be built into improvements so that change continues to be reinforced and measured going forward.
Case Studies Section
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$11M
saved in the first year
60%
improvement in on-time performance
50%
reduction in admin workload
Challenges
Kennecott Utah Copper operates the Bingham canyon mine concentrator plant, a smelter and a refinery. Ore from this mine is concentrated into slurry, piped to where the smelting process occurs, and then sent to the refinery. Efficient operation at the concentrator stage is critical to maintaining uptime of the smelter. Each year the concentrator plant is shut down a total of 36 times. This is necessary to maintain critical equipment while essential repairs and upgrades are completed. The issue at Bingham was that the length of downtime was causing a bottleneck in the overall process.
Read Case StudyResults
The shutdown process saved over $11 million in the first year of implementation. On-time performance improved by 60% and is tracking towards world-class results. key performance Indicators (KPls) for shutdown performance improved over all prior years. Team performance (on-scope, on-cost) improved by 60%. Shutdown administrative work load fell by over 50% allowing team members to focus on other areas such as reducing cost or generating more revenue. All Injury Frequency Rate (AIFR) improved, advancing a strong safety culture which is a core value of KUCC.
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47%
improvement in operational efficiency
30%
improvement in production rate
50%
reduction in change over time
Challenges
After a major capital investment at its biscuit factory at Papakura, Griffin’s needed to address several variables impacting overall conversion cost. The site was struggling with high waste, high downtime, and planning deficiencies; and overall workflow was not conducive to producing at the lowest possible conversion cost.
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For overall results, Operational Efficiency (OE), the measure of line performance relative to a theoretical maximum achievable throughput rate, was used to measure success. To achieve an OE of 100%, the line must run at its maximum theoretical throughput rate with zero plant downtime and product waste. At the conclusion of the Kepner-Tregoe engagement the plant achieved:
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€4.5M
decrease in spin-off costs
70%
non-conformity reduction in 3 years in specific departments
Challenges
Fokker wanted to increase their issue resolution maturity. This meant improving the quality and completeness of information about problems, accelerating root cause analysis and involving the right people at the right time.
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Success has been measured in a drastic reduction in non-conformities which is saving millions of euros yearly. A proactive culture has replaced the “fire-fighting” of reactive problem solving.