The situation
Former site leadership proposed a $1.5M capex, approved by management, to solve what was not actually the problem.
Flagship site. 12-month mandate: improve or close. Filtration downtime was attributed to equipment inadequacy. The actual constraint was a detection-delay and single-housing architecture problem.
$5K
Intervention cost vs. $1.5M proposed
The outcome
$5.8M
5-yr avoided cost
1st
Company rankings, all categories
How it happened
- 100% elimination of filtration downtime via GUI-integrated alarm and backup housing deployment
- Redesigned PM routines and developed an in-house filtration modification
- OEE up 20%; efficiency up 38% to a company high of 125 gallons per man-hour
- Worst to first across all company rankings, eclipsing Johnstown, previously taken from 3rd to 1st under the same leadership approach
- OSHA recordables down 50% year over year; company-best 344 days without a lost-time accident
- Corporate divestiture decision reversed; the plant remains operational today
- Led SAP go-live and the Century luxury paint line scale-up
- 5 Why
- 8D
- Process mapping
- Control charts
- Spaghetti diagrams
- PFMEA