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| North American explosives manufacturer
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Context / Scope of project
Client recognized that performance improvement at their largest North American Ammonium Nitrate plant had been lagging in recent years. They were inspired by a recent engagement with Partners in Performance in a sister plant in Asia, and retained a team to conduct a diagnostic to determine the potential for improvements in profitability.
Client achieved:
Working together with the client team, we found:
- Opportunities to increase production in both the ammonia and acid plant by 2% by ensuring cross-crew adherence to best practice SOPs. Crew A was consistently outperforming other crews by 3%. This performance level could be achieved by other crews by emulating Crew A’s behaviours and by training supervisors in how to manage their crews for tight adherence to procedures. This opportunity was worth $6m per annum
- Opportunity to decrease unscheduled downtime by 20%. A more systematic PM program has the potential to dramatically reduce un-expected plant failure – reversing the current crash and fix mentality of the organization
- Many opportunities to support these output increases through improvements in the wiring of the business. Specifically we jointly agreed to :
- Install visual boards showing key input and output performance indicators
- Improve meeting effectiveness and efficiency with clearer agendas and meeting follow up
- Improve the sense of accountability with clear who/what/when for all actions at the end of each meeting
- Establish a clear process to manage continuous improvement.
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What we did:
Together with a client team, Partners in Performance undertook a seven-day diagnostic of operations and maintenance, identifying opportunities to improve. During this diagnostic we:
- Built a value driver tree that described the cost and volume drivers in the plant. We used this value driver tree to value the profit impact of improvements in operational drivers
- Evaluated opportunities to improve volume through the two key chemical processes, ammonia and acid production:
- - Reaction yield
- Cross-crew operating performance
- Causes of unscheduled downtime
- Evaluated maintenance procedures, identifying significant opportunity to increase the effectiveness of their preventative maintenance program
- Assessed the “wiring” of the organization, evaluating the management processes and systems.
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