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Optimize Your Prometheus Group Operations with Lean Manufacturing and SAP
Prometheus Group

Improving Operational Efficiency Through Lean Manufacturing with Prometheus Group and SAP Solutions

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Overview Did you know that your maintenance organization could be wasting nearly 25 percent of its available labor1? Moreover, it is estimated that up to 60 percent of wasted labor results from activities that add no value to the overall plant performance, according to the Reliability Institute. In todays economic climate, waste is not an option, which is why many organizations are adopting lean manufacturing principles. In its simplest terms, lean manufacturing eliminates waste and identifies processes for optimizing manufacturing operations. This paper will cover key principles of lean manufacturing and how Prometheus Groups solutions support lean initiatives. By leveraging SAP tools and methodologies, in tandem with Prometheus Groups lean manufacturing solutions, your organization can increase the visibility of manufacturing operations and improve the efficiency of your manufacturing output. Lean Manufacturing Challenges The biggest hurdle to getting started with lean manufacturing is identifying the various types of waste and non-value-added activities within your organization. Waste is anything that doesnt add value, such as outdated processes or carrying excess inventories (parts, materials, or equipment). Reactive work and underutilized labor are also examples of waste, such as when an employee has 20 minutes of work and then 15 minutes of downtime waiting for the equipment to be available. Consider the following time-wasting scenarios: Under-production performing plant maintenance (PM) activities too often or not having maintenance synchronized with production negatively impacts equipment uptime. When a component or part has to be reprocessed, usually for quality issues, the job is getting done twice from both a time and a parts/ materials perspective. Waiting lacking the proper processes and workflows for optimized planning and scheduling. Its a waste of time and money when a part, component, or permit is not ready or available for a job. Transportation having crafts travel to get necessary tools or materials that should be at the work site or, similarly, delivering an unfinished product from Point A to Point B. The employee cannot work on (add value to) a product without the proper tools or materials in hand, and an unfinished product does not gain any value while it is in transit. Another example: If an employee has to walk across the production floor to pick up a printout of a work order and then walk back to the work bench, no value is being added by the additional travel. Strive to keep travel time to less than 15 percent per day. Process lacking a proper maintenance plan or having low wrench time
1. Reliability Institute: http://www.reliability.com/industry/articles/article103_guest.pdf Optimize Your Operations with Lean Manufacturing and SAP: 2

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efficiency. Maintenance plans that have been in place for a while may include redundancies that are using up valuable time. Every business is different, but the typical average for actual work wrench time performance is between 25 and 35 percent, with top companies performing in the 50 to 60 percent range. Consider a technician throughout an average day. In an 8-hour shift, this equals 2.4 hours of wrench time and 5.6 hours spent on indirect activities (figure 1). Inventory lacking visibility into stock across multiple locations, having secret material stashes, and carrying obsolete inventory stock. A lot of inventory on hand or hidden away means money spent with no return on investment and potentially a higher inventory tax. Also, you lose money when the items become obsolete and cant be returned or used. Motion performing tasks that arent required or dont add to the production value. If you can get 500 employees to reduce avoidable motion (unnecessary movement) by a minute a day, it translates to 8.3 man hours a day. Defects repeatedly doing repair work on the same equipment. The time an employee uses to correct errors is time not being spent on new work. By identifying your companys manufacturing weaknesses youre then able to make the necessary corrections.

Figure 1

Benefits of Lean Manufacturing Lean manufacturing focuses on improving worthwhile activities by showing you how to identify inefficient processes and streamline workflow to remove high-speed and high-stress periods.

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The most common first step for implementing lean manufacturing in any organization is to evaluate the process using 5S, which uses these five basic principles: Sort dividing parts and processes into necessary, useless, and out-dated categories, and then addressing each part and process as needed. Set putting tools in the right place. For example, storing the tools used most often in a place closest to where they are used, and putting the tools back where they belong after use. Also, making improvements to the MRO storeroom, such as organizing and labeling everything. Shiny cleaning everything, keeping maintenance areas free of clutter, and making this the standard optimal working condition. Standardize creating an ongoing and regular policy of keeping the facility clean and working optimally on a daily basis. Sustain ingraining the four principles listed above into the organizations culture and the mindset of all employees. When lean manufacturing is implemented correctly, it can help you improve efficiency on the factory floor by enabling you to maximize existing equipment and personnel resources to their fullest. For example, by scheduling production instead of building inventory, you can focus on smaller batch sizes, which can reduce equipment costs and maintenance cycles. Improved manufacturing processes can lead to streamlined work flow that has operations moving smoothly from one step to the next and maximizing productivity. Using lean manufacturing processes through a comprehensive solution that works inside SAP can reduce effort and save time. One of the most effective ways to improve plant maintenance operations is a wellexecuted planning and scheduling process in SAP, which provides production visibility to all personnel involved in the process. Developing a focused improvement plan may include: Improving the Bill of Material (BOM) quality Providing visibility and coordination with production so that lockout/tagout (LOTO) is reduced Improving the communication of assignments to craft personnel Ensuring materials are available Ensuring tools are available Printing work package instructions and making them readily available Prometheus Group Solutions Prometheus Group solutions are lean in nature because the tools work inside SAP, which means there is no need to purchase or maintain additional hardware or

When lean manufacturing is implemented correctly, it can help you improve efficiency on the factory floor by enabling you to maximize existing equipment and personnel resources to their fullest.

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interfaces. Furthermore, because all data is inside SAP, updates are made in real time eliminating the need to duplicate work. Customers can achieve their return on investment (ROI) within one year. For example, customers can see the opportunity to increase wrench time 30 to 60 minutes per day per craftsperson with the tool2. This could amount to an annual recurring savings of $660,000 per year as a result of a 6 percent wrench time improvement. In particular, the Plant Maintenance (PM) Advanced solution takes SAP to the next level by providing greater visibility into planning and scheduling. This allows craftsmen to be scheduled at maximum capacity, improves communication among all teams, and cuts down on non-value-added activities. For example, OneSteel Steel & Recycling (Click here), was able to eliminate menial activities such as manually updating spreadsheets with multiple tools to schedule work. Once Prometheus Groups PM Advanced was implemented, users cited that the Work Order Mass Change functionality saved 20 minutes per work order, versus manually changing each order. PM Advanced frees up wasted time so that planners and schedulers can focus on managing commitment dates to production and reducing reactive time, build accurate BOMs to better manage inventory, and implement effective programs to improve wrench time. Given that excess inventory can be a huge roadblock for having lean operations, it is crucial that your organization has better visibility of in-house inventory across plants. This enables users to reallocate materials and tools from past work orders to future work orders. The Material Shopping Cart feature of PM Advanced streamlines the work order component ordering process in SAP by allowing users to retrieve SAP material master numbers through an advanced multi-word, any-order search. The benefits of this feature are significant, including allowing users to search long text to find parts required for a repair, limiting the occurrence of free text input. And with all departments using the same real-time tool, users can quickly and easily schedule jobs and coordinate with production to minimize downtime. With efficient coordination of available materials, tools, and resources, an organization can improve workflow and save time and money. For example, Company A was able to improve its initial situation of 30 percent reactive maintenance to 24 percent, as well as reduce free text spending to 10 percent by using the Material Shopping Cart. This helped Company A realize a total savings in MRO of $691,2002. Even the seemingly basic task of printing can present challenges for lean manufacturing. Ballance Agri-Nutrients Ltd (Click here) implemented the PM Advanced solution for printing and discovered how it simplified SAP planning and scheduling, as well as eliminated duplicate planning work. By using Prometheus Print Manager, just one part of PM Advanced, the company expected to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in just one year. The company now plans and schedules better than it had in the past all inside SAP.
2. Please note that individual company results may vary based on individual processes and practices Optimize Your Operations with Lean Manufacturing and SAP: 5

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Prometheus Groups software tools can reduce the time you spend on planning and scheduling, provide visibility throughout your processes across all functions, and improve the quality of the processes. These improvements can promote higher user adoption and usage of SAP. With the utilization of SAP and increased monitoring and review of processes, data quality also improves. Overall, the application and its benefits enable safer and more efficient work execution and a cost savings for your business. Conclusion Your organization might have run lean in the beginning when it was small and had the right-sized equipment and a production stream that was able to address value-added activities. But, then as it grew, waste might have entered in the forms of overwhelmed work areas, unexpected equipment downtime, and start and stop projects that resulted in excess inventory. Inefficient maintenance practices are costly to your factory and unscheduled breakdowns negatively affect your companys bottom line. It is worthwhile to investigate what lean manufacturing can do for your organization to improve your ROI. Companies need effective lean manufacturing to be, and remain, competitive. Lean manufacturing requires reliable machinery, as well as a large percentage of employees committed to learning, implementing, and maintaining an environment that minimizes waste and removes inefficiency. Take advantage of improving your operational processes and workflows, as well as increase company profitability, by using SAP and Prometheus Group solutions to get back to a lean culture.

About Prometheus Group Prometheus Group is an enterprise application software company specializing in improving the usability and user adoption of SAP plant maintenance. Developed jointly with end users, our software enhances the customer experience with intuitive functionality, graphical visualization, and simple processes. Our certified solutions live inside of SAP and enable companies to increase productivity, reduce costs and improve reporting. For more information, visit www.prometheusgroup.com.
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