Total Productive Maintenance was introduced at PCP in late 2016 and since it’s successful introduction the business has seen significant improvements in the condition of the presses; contributed towards a 20% reduction in unplanned downtime.
During June and July last year teams took part in a number of workshops where they identified areas for improvement and agreed on best practices for reducing paper waste on their press.
Paper is one of the business’s biggest costs and reductions in paper waste can therefore result in significant cost savings.
By September 2017 we had seen a 30% reduction in paper waste compared to its average waste rate for 2016 and we have seen further improvements during the last 3 months of 2017.
Sustaining these improvements will result in cost savings and the exercise has further demonstrated the power of getting teams together that run the machine to solve a problem.
This year we will continue to further refine the programme on different presses and our ancillary equipment, with our main area of focus in stitching. We will look at reducing Make Ready times using an improvement technique known as Single Minute Exchange of Dies or SMED. The SMED technique identifies and eliminates time wasted looking for tools, parts and materials and generates ideas for streamlining tasks by modifying equipment.
Photo from left to right: Tomasz Dudzinski Deputy Team Leader Bindery, Wayne Wildridge Team Leader Bindery, Nick Ashen Team Leader Bindery and Sean Barratt – Stitching Technical Support Operator taken during the Knife Change SMED workshop.
