Akzo Nobel Surface Chemistry Mons:

maintenance fine-tuned to face future demand

Akzo Nobel’s site in Mons (Belgium) has the largest production capacity for nitriles and amines in Europe. The strong competition in this mature market prompted the SBU Surfactants Europe to call in ARV Group for help in streamlining its maintenance organization, with an eye to increasing production volumes. An additional target was a 15% reduction in maintenance costs over a three-year period.

The improvement program agreed upon was intended to increase the availability and reliability of production units, develop a more responsive and more empowered maintenance organization, and to improve internal maintenance practices.

Balanced and realistic

After identifying and quantifying the potential areas for improvement, the key cooperation of maintenance people was ensured by effecting improvements on the work floor and setting up a balanced and realistic training program.

Key persons within maintenance were trained to introduce the TPM concept (with structural root cause analysis and problem-solving techniques), in order to reduce downtime in cooperation with other departments. The annual shutdown planning was optimized by determining and discussing with production the preventive needs well in advance, and by combining maintenance activities. An RCM program was also started to redesign the preventive maintenance plan.

Maintenance and production personnel went on to develop a vision attuned to stakeholders’ demands, resulting in a plan for a responsive maintenance organization, with responsibilities transferred to the appropriate level and in a balanced way.

Optimizing & streamlining

Meanwhile internal practices were improved by optimizing and streamlining work processes, by assigning the right number of mechanics to a job, improving the availability of the right spare parts and offering dedicated training aimed at first-time-right execution. Work orders could be handled better and more quickly thanks to an improved daily work planning, while better contracts and monitoring helped to enhance the organization’s grip on external cost levels.

Finally, structural management of the balance between maintenance efforts and equipment investments (along with the introduction of a new performance monitoring system) served to safeguard the total maintenance-cost level. Within the following three-year-period, Mons was able to meet its medium-term targets, with productivity improved by 20% thanks to more streamlined work processes, an average reduction in downtime of 35% for the two production units and greater clarity and (inter)departmental attunement of responsibilities.

Maintenance Manager (Mons): We knew where we needed to go with our maintenance organization, and ARV Group helped us get there. Through effective training, better planning and the effective and efficient distribution of tasks and responsibilities, we were able to achieve the improvements that helped make us ready for the future.