The Belfast production team behind Baileys Original Irish Cream, the world famous liqueur which blends whiskey with cream, has increased its overall line efficiency rating from 53 percent to 69 percent.
The increase in efficiency has been achieved with the aid of relevant modules from Krones’ MES software package.
The Baileys Global Supply production facility in Belfast is part of the Diageo Group, the world’s leading supplier of premium brands. Diageo utilises all possible options for upgrading line efficiency.
“As part of our goal to become a world class operation we are always looking to achieve best practice in efficiency, it’s essential to identify the scope for optimisation within our lines,” is how engineering manager Manus Rogan explains the approach.
The starting point for Diageo’s optimisation initiatives was the need to compare the key ratios for all 80 production facilities worldwide.
Krones is represented at the production plant in Belfast with a complete line delivered in 2002/2003.
Rated at 24,000 bph, the line features an Isofill VV CIP vacuum filler with 108 filling valves and a Variojet rinser, plus Checkmat inspection units, a Taxomatic labeller for tax strips, together with packaging and cartoning machinery and palletiser and depalletiser.
The scope of delivery incorporated an LDS package – the Krones Line Documentation System, which records production data at all relevant points along the line.
To meet the stipulated requirement for group-wide efficiency depiction, the LDS integrated in Belfast – like all the available documentation systems at other facilities – was tested as part of a line diagnostic process instigated by Diageo and proved highly valuable.
“With this outcome, we were able to give Krones the green light for upgrading the LDS system so as to ensure that the group-wide efficiency measures can be determined, analysed and compared. In an internal workshop, involving the production facilities’ senior managers, we had already firmed up the detailed requirements and statements regarding the ratios concerned, so that the new analytical tools were 100 percent matched to the methods of calculation used across DiageoGlobal Supply,” says Mr Rogan.
“We wanted to get more precise information on downtimes and be able to compare between different shifts. We needed to differentiate between technically and organisationally generated downtime so as to pinpoint the time-stealers more effectively. We were particularly keen to ensure that the staff working on the line could quickly and accurately tag and identify on the system the cause of a stoppage from predefined malfunction lists.”
A classic task for the OEE module from the Krones MES software package, with all the analytical tools, is identifying the causes of any malfunctions using the data from the LDS, the software breaks down the standstill times by the criteria laid down by Diageo.
Detailed particulars of the organisationally derived downtimes, are now specified with significantly enhanced accuracy. They are supplemented by information on downtimes with technical causes.
Using the selection menu for identifying the time-stealers enables staff to identify from 10 possible causes of a malfunction using fast clicks on a PC directly at the filler. These are complemented by “free-text” areas, which permit additional descriptions of malfunction sources. This involvement of staff ensures a superlative quality of data.
“In team meetings, we now compare the target times with the actual ones. This gives us daily and weekly assessments of the line’s performance, which not only offers an option for prioritising maintenance work in a weekly maintenance plan, but also helps us to continuously improve the efficacy of our operations,” says Mr Rogan.
Since the ratio-based line monitoring system was upgraded, featuring Krones’ OEE tool, line efficiency has been upped by 16 percent within two years.
“We’re very pleased that we’ve made such substantial progress using this software along with the actions derived from it. In Diageo’s internal performance awards for 2010, Baileys won the ‘Diageo Plant of the Year Award’,” says Mr Rogan.
“There are still lots of opportunities we can tap into when it comes to line efficiency. We shall be rigorously pursuing this, and the data LDS provides is key to unlocking these,” he says.
The IT development people at Krones have now synergised all the tools used for determining and monitoring line effectiveness in a single compact software product.
The Line Performance Analyser (LPA) incorporates classic OEE evaluation with analyses of key statistics, and additionally provides order and shift referencing.
The LPA can be introduced as a stand-alone version or integrated into an existing LDS.
