Maintenance Excellence | Maintenance Strategy | Improve OEE | Pharmaceutical Industry

Achieve Maintenance Excellence

Goal N°1: Solving organizational challenges
1. Improving communication
2. Time and priority management

Goal N°2: Decrease downtime and improve production lines availability (OEE)
1. Establish exchange of knowledge and standardization of maintenance interventions
2. Optimize interventions performing Root Cause Analysis and providing expert feedback
3. Deliver high quality results that minimizes the need for correction
4. Organize around priorities: communicate supply objectives to the maintenance team, be ready during batch changes or major cleanings

Goal N°3: Execution of preventive maintenance as a part of achieving overall maintenance excellence and enabling continuous improvement

1. Obtaining the needed spare part’s first quotation
2. Modification and final validation of the SP lists
3. Place the purchase orders
4. Planning the extra maintenance actions based on events during production
5. Spare parts reception, printing of preventive plans, prepare Gantt chart (resources/actions/time)
6. Maintenance execution
7. Overhaul report

Our results: Overall results of achieving maintenance excellence

The context:

Our client is a privately owned global pharmaceutical company, specializing in Women’s and Men’s Health and is manufacturing and developing drugs for the treatment of gynaecological, fertility, and obstetrical conditions as well as androgen deficiencies.

The client is a world leader in novel therapies for gynaecology and andrology, pioneer in transdermal gels. It has developed several natural hormone-based therapies over the years.

The client aims to improve technical performance for each line because of the current soar in demand and the pressure from the supply chain to be more efficient, and hence, more competitive and attain customer satisfaction.

The client has 6 productions lines (Tube-bottle-stick) and the aim is to reach

Otofacto partnered with the client to provide expert advisory and consulting service to investigate the sources of failure within the maintenance department and to provide assistance to the maintenance team via both soft and hard skills. This will help the client in achieving maintenance excellence. Furthermore, the plan to develop preventive maintenance at the production lines in the future was also solidified through us.

The challenges of our client:

• Organizational issues resulting in planification, communication, and autonomy difficulties.
  These issues directly translated into technical difficulties, namely:  
  1) Staff unaware of the priority line/issue.
  2) Lack of autonomous operation.
  3) Lack of helicopter-view towards the problems.

• Availability and technical performance issues at the lines resulting in high downtimes.

• Lack of technical documents, for example. electrical/mechanical plans, causing longer repair time (trouble finding the right part, the right reference etc.)

• Lack of standardization causing a lot of deviation, & different modifications, causing confusion and waste of time thereby increasing inefficiency.

• No preventive maintenance made for the machines already installed. Preventive maintenance requires knowledge of the technician, planification, and spare parts.

Our approach towards achieving maintenance excellence

Goal N°1: Solving organizational challenges 

To achieve the first goal, we implemented the following actions:
1. Improving Communication
2. Time & Priority Management

1. Improving Communication

We addressed the communicational challenges and proposed appropriate solutions.

Purpose

To increase overview of what was happening and find a factor of motivation as a result of improved involvement within the team.

Our implementation

A regular stand-up meeting was set up where the team of technicians at the client was provided up-to-date and right information. This included the issues, developments and tasks concluded by others, KPI status, etc.

Why we implemented this solution

The technicians can better manage the brainstorming and feedback session leading to better outputs as a result of getting the right feedback at the right time.

The results

The overall training level of the technicians increased up to 80% (25% initially). This made the technicians more familiar with the GMP procedures and standards, such as the rules of quality of management, security rules, developing work permit, rules for confined space and for ATEX areas. This was a crucial step towards achieving maintenance excellence.

In addition, the boost in the visual management (pictures and description of technical problems, showing KPIs and actions), allowed the technicians to visualize exactly:

• Where they are standing
• What had been done in the past
• What is the objective
• What must be done today.

2. Time and Priority Management

Our implementation

We prioritized tasks for each member of the team, mentioned the bottlenecks and critical points based on the outputs of the last shift’s production report of the technicians, and then we developed a day-to-day plan of what the technician needed to focus on during his shift.

Why we implemented this solution

In this manner, specific problems were dealt with by expert technicians. It prevented technicians from becoming responsible of something else.

For example, if the report mentioned problems with labelling machine, a specific technician with that expertise was tasked to perform a Root Cause Analysis (RCA). Based on the management decision, we can implement intervention solutions (corrective or preventive).

The results

Through this approach the workflow was smoother. Less friction occurred overall.

Team collaboration

In order to increase productivity, motivation and to focus on a shared goal, we instored a collaborative work environment, brainstormed around ideas, shared knowledge and expertise, and gave and received feedback. 

Goal N°2: Decrease downtime and improve production lines availability (OEE)

To achieve the second goal, we performed the following actions:
1. Establish the exchange of knowledge and standardization of maintenance interventions.
2. Optimizing interventions performing Root Cause Analysis and providing expert feedback
3. Deliver high quality results that minimizes the need for correction.
4. Organize around priorities: communicate supply objectives to the maintenance team, be ready during batch changes or major cleanings.

1. Establish the exchange of knowledge and standardization of maintenance interventions

Our implementation

We promoted Gemba walks between technicians, updated maintenance instructions, and created new ones, if necessary, which validated and displayed machine parameters.

Why we implemented this solution

This enabled us to prevent problems before they occurred. The routine controls behind the Gemba walks (checks and controls) helped us predict symptoms and fails.

Results

This contributed directly in achieving maintenance excellence, which directly contributed to lower downtimes. Now, to solve the issues of the machines, shutdowns were not required anymore.

2. Optimizing interventions performing RCA and providing expert feedback

Our implementation

We implemented basic tools of diagnostic assistance (digitalized technical files, basic machine parameters) to detect the deviation, provide the necessary tools for the technicians, share the current spare part state (excel file for quick search).

Why we implemented the solution

In order for each technician to know how the problems have been solved before, it is crucial to collect the data and digitalize the information. Also, by establishing 6S within workshops we enabled warehouse visibility: we immediately knew which spare parts needed to be purchased and when.

Results

This all inevitably improved time efficiency by preventing time lost due to mismanagement such as looking for tools, figuring out spare parts etc.
Our client, indeed, lowered its mean time to repair (MTTR) thanks to the higher technicity of the members and the better equipment maintenance.

“Mean time to repair (MTTR), sometimes referred to as mean time to recovery, is a metric used to measure the average time it takes to repair a system or piece of equipment after it has failed.” – IBM

3. Deliver high quality results that minimize the need for correction.

Our implementation

We made a standard to maintain the quality and quantity of production, based on management’s factual decisions.

Purpose

– Avoid troubleshooting without placing curative actions.
– Tracing the deviations made from the origin.

Results

Solving the maintenance issues from scratch rather than making corrective actions, to maintain quality and quantity of production.

4. Organize around priorities: communicate supply objectives to the maintenance team, be ready during batch changes or major cleanings

Our implementation

We set up visual management in the maintenance board (KPI/planning/priorities) and actions for technicians to undertake. This helps them in their decision-making: they know, for example, which line to focus on according to the production plan.   

Why we implemented our solution

Technicians felt involved and informed, because they had a clear view on future objectives and what is expected from them daily (what is being produced today, tomorrow, …). 

Results

Technicians gain more autonomy and feel less reliant on the management.

Goal N°3: Execution of preventive maintenance as a part of achieving overall maintenance excellence and enabling continuous improvement

To achieve the third goal, we did the following actions:

Prepare spare part lists for overhauls

Our implementation

A supplier diagnostic visit and/or listing of spare parts based on the machine maintenance plans and the latest breakdowns.

1. Obtaining the needed spare part’s first quotation: Communicate the list to the supplier through the purchaser (in our case the SP storekeeper).
2. Modification and final validation of the SP lists: Modification made according to the budget and technical judgement for making the choice: After getting the quotations, we modified the lists and validated the need in relation to the allocated budget. Setting up the planning for preventive maintenance, that will be followed suit soon. 
3. Place the purchase orders: To validate the overhaul planning according to the reception deadlines.    
4. Planning the extra maintenance actions based on events during production: Extra maintenance out of the preventive maintenance plan, such as upgrades or optimizations.
   For example, for one of the last overhauls, an electrical part was changed after suspecting failure probability. Hence, we increased the uptime by 100% as it was changed before failure.
5. Spare parts reception, printing of preventive plans, prepare Gantt chart (resources/actions/time): Final step, to prepare the execution of the preventive maintenance: Make the DI (spare parts request) from the warehouse, prepare special tools so that action plans are clear and concise, therefore, no time was wasted in confusions. It was easier for the technicians to implement in this manner, because they are aware of the of the tools and action plan. 
6. Maintenance execution: We supervised the work, ensured the quality of the interventions, and provided managerial support to the team. If machines were not included in the preventive plans, the technicians can inform the consultant and it would be added.
7. Overhaul report: Common parts were replaced during the next planned overhaul, proposal for modification in the preventive plans (kaizen). Review of the overall implementation, to continuously adapt and improve as the time goes. (Effort towards attaining continuous improvement)

Overall results of achieving maintenance excellence

Thanks to our partnership the maintenance team’s work efficiency improved.

• The communication within the team became better allowing smoother flow of information.
• The team is able to predict technical issues and prepare predictive actions.
• Participation rate clearly improved
• Training of the technicians increased by 80% (25% initially).
• The team is familiar with the GMP procedures and standards.

The minimum required level of lines availability is reached (OEE), and we still aim to maintain this level and make it more stable.
Overall, improving OEE increased from 35% to 45%, which means an improvement in OEE by 10%.

In addition, spare part requests made by technicians became easier due to the documentation and the available spare part list. This prevented wasted time due to, for example, the search for the spare part and the need for stopping the machine.

Finally, the overall maintenance operations enhanced.
The maintenance department can now focus more on continuous improvement, instead of only resolving emergencies and breakdowns.

➡️ Read our other success story, where we helped one of our clients to develop framework for predictive maintenance as a next step of continuous improvement