"How I reduced down time
by 15%"
James Hardie Building Products have really
been making their Workmate system work for them in quite incredible
ways. Within a short space of time some interesting trends were
emerging and their Workmate program provided a simple and effective
way to identify and solve problems that had been on-going for
some time. Neil Staveley, James Hardie's Mechanical Maintenance
Manager selected Workmate because of its simplicity, ease of use
and flexibility.
Maintenance down time graph since installation
of Workmate Maintenance System
Workmate was first installed with a four
seat license in September 1997 but the system has been so successful
that an additional four seats have recently been purchased to
expand the use of the program. Here is what James Hardie Maintenance
Engineers have to say about Workmate. Workmate is Incredible!
An annual saving of $10,000 in maintenance costs is being made
and rejects for this part of the production line have been reduced
by 80%. The instance revolves around an ongoing problem that has
existed with the Trimline machine at James Hardie's Finishing
plant in Auckland. A recurring fault has been costing James Hardie
a minimum of $10,000 per year for more than 10 years. Within one
month of Workmate being installed, it was possible to analyse
and determine the real cause of this fault.
The savings have been astounding. The 'fix'
cost a total of $500 which includes parts and labour and means
that an annual saving of at least $10,000 in maintenance costs
is being made. Rejects for this part of the production line have
been reduced by 80% making an additional saving in lost production
time, rework and increased profitability.
Within one month of implementation Workmate
has been responsible for eliminating a problem that has been on-
going for more that 10 years.
On an average 10 man hours would be spent
per week simply fixing this one aspect of the machine. This has
now been reduced to virtually zero hours per week. The Trimline
machine has now been running faultlessly for 3 months as a direct
result of Workmate being an effective tool to identify this kind
of problem.
The Maintenance
Supervisor for the area Bruce Ranby has described Workmate as
"incredible" and "Within one month of implementation
Workmate has been responsible for eliminating a problem that has
been on-going for more that 10 years." The useability and
effectiveness of Workmate at a ground floor level has been instrumental
in making it possible to collect and analyse this information
in order to make these significant gains. This one saving alone
is estimated to have paid for the complete installation of the
Workmate system.
In addition to the resource of information
that has prompted the kind of improvements to one of James Hardie's
key departments and critical machines, some other dramatic results
have been achieved in overall plant performance as a result of
the implementation of Workmate. The Downtime Percentage chart
pictured tracks the last eighteen months worth of results based
on production time and downtime outages.
Neil Staveley James Hardie's Mechanical
Maintenance Manager has been recording this information since
November 1996 and the chart shows the dramatic turn of events
which has been made possible with the introduction of Workmate.
There is always more work to do to maintain a reliable downtime
rate and Neil is continuing to 'tweak' his system to stabilise
the downtime figures at or below the target value of 2.15% per
month.
These results clearly demonstrate the value
of Workmate and the results that can be obtained by implementing
a straight forward data collection and analysis procedure. The
pay-back period for Workmate has been only a few months due to
its useability and effectiveness in solving problems. Workmate
is owned and operated by the maintenance team and this is also
a contributing factor in Workmate's effectiveness as an integral
part of the maintenance team's daily routines.
