Stake Holder Challenge

A leading manufacturing company was faced with the challenge of maintaining a battery of 6 Kirloskar compressors that are in continuous operation and are vital for operating their pneumatic machinery. They approached us for an end-to end solution. 

Our Solution

BASE WORK

Our belief of "Perfection in every Venture" was the starting point of our solution to the stake holder. The problem being one that required a system study and evaluation report, we invested in almost 240 man-hours, to prepare a report for the top management team. Our initial studies showed that these compressors were operating at only 60% efficiency and as a result the power drawn to operate these giant compressors was more than the design specifications. Also due to poor internal maintenance practices there were large amounts of non-scheduled overhauls, resulting in increased operating costs and lower utilization of installed capital equipments. We committed to the stake holder that

• "Our" Engineers will be stationed round the clock at site and will be in-charge of the complete Operational and Maintenance related activities of "their" compressors

• Every machine covered under the contract, will be maintained at above 90% efficiency

• 100 % guaranteed up-time of the machines by our periodic maintenance procedures

• Necessary modifications in the drive system, intercooler and aftercooler of the compressor, piping etc will be carried out by our system experts, for energy saving

This immediately resulted in us bagging the contract in 2004.

SYSTEMATIC APPROACH

We adopted the "5 S- KAIZAN" method to solve the problem. 

• First all unwanted clutter in the Compressor room were eliminated. (SORT- SEIRI) 
• The entire compressor room was given a complete makeover, in terms if new floor colour, equipment colour, piping colour etc, to clearly differentiate the different parts of the pneumatic system. Designated areas for waste disposal, tools storage, and consumables storage were assigned. (SET IN ORDER - SEITON)
• Standard procedures for periodic systems check-up were articulated and required preventive maintenance mechanisms were put into place. Our trained engineers follow our stringent procedures round the clock to ensure highest efficiency of the machinery.
  (STANDARDISE- SEIKETSU)
• Our engineers continue to keep the area clean at all times.
  (SHINE- SEISO)
• By far the most difficult of the procedures is to sustain the maintenance practices. To ensure this we have a Senior Engineer posted at-site who ensures that his team constantly delivers what is expected of them.
  (SUSTAIN- SHITSUKE)

Our Score Card

At the End of the First year of our contract

• We have 14 trained engineers, plus a senior engineer to oversee the operations who are available at site 24x7 
• All 6 machines were under operation prior to our initiatives; now only 3 machines are operated even during the Peak time demand of system air showing that the efficiency of the individual machines has increased substantially.
• There was an energy saving of approximately Rs 35,00,000 annually. This was primarily due to the reduction in air Pipe line Leakage, Drive Modifications at the compressor-motor interface and three step electro pneumatic capacity control systems implementation for increase in efficiency of the compressors 
• We ensured that during this tenure, there were Absolutely Zero break downs and the machines were available for usage round the clock
• The indirect savings in terms of reduction in maintenance and operational staff that were initially in their full-time payroll.

"This was not the End; rather this was just the Beginning……of a long standing partnership" 

Seeing our performance, we have similar operational and maintenance contracts with various corporate stake holders.