November 4, 2009
Comprehensive restructuring of material management at all mining and production facilities of the potash and rock salt locations. The objective is to achieve even higher efficiency and transparency. This will require active support by all employees. In an interview, Uwe Lindloff, Director General Production of K+S KALI GmbH, and Peter Euler, Director of the Werra Works provide an explanation of the procedure.
Lindloff: Basically, we’ve got to accept: to K+S, increasing efficiency is an ongoing task. And this not only refers to the immediate production processes, but also to all downstream and upstream segments. That’s why sooner or later, we’ll put everything on the test bench. Since last autumn, we have strongly focussed on our maintenance organisation. We want to find out whether there are options for raising efficacy at our works’ servicing, maintenance and repair sectors. We are supported by an external management consultancy, which as an example has already analysed the respective processes at the Zielitz, Werra and Sigmundshall works.
Euler: There’s still potential for improvements. Materials management was identified as a primary field of action, at the mining facilities as well as at the factories. This was illustrated by inspections below and above ground, survey of internal records, workshops, as well as interviews with our engineers, technicians, foremen and workers. One of the processes investigated was trouble-shooting, the implementation of large-scale repairs, the organisation of regular maintenance schedules and the resulting availability of machines and plants.
A look into the central warehouse at the Works Werra in Philippsthal, Germany (Photo: K+S)
Euler: Well, we certainly don’t need to hide our light under a bushel! The inspections drew attention to our employees’ high level of expertise and excellent quality of work. But still, there were also a few deficits. For example, identification processes for spare parts are not always as efficient as they could be. Not all parts are included in our storage management system, e.g. they may be ordered as so-called “direct material”, and are directly delivered to the ordering party. It is therefore sometimes quite difficult to overlook what exactly is available as a reserve part, and may not even need to be ordered. Often special IT-knowledge is required, in order to exactly locate the required materials in the system; sometimes access to the system is not available. So, between Technology, Purchasing and Material Management, this may result in delays and in a certain friction, which can decisively impede operational processes.
Lindloff: Our primary objective is to speed up the provision of required (spare) parts. In order to achieve this, we need to enable each and every maintenance staffer to identify and to locate the required part with just a few clicks. And of course, this necessitates that all materials have been entered on an appropriate IT-platform. Additionally, we want to start spare parts provision via maintenance –DP, which could serve to simplify administrative expenditure, particularly for Purchasing and Accounting. In order to minimise duplicate administrative work, we will need cross-departmental DP-application. Another target is cross-works storage management, in order to minimise capital commitment.
Lindloff: We will need to fundamentally change our material management. Put simply, we need a new DP-system, allowing every worker to locate and retrieve a missing part without any difficulty. The challenge is presented by the fact that we will need to develop and set up this system. In the entire industry, there is no solution that we can simply adopt, or which we could use as an orientation. So, we need to rely on employees, who are involved in the current change process. Together we will have to find a way to get sufficient numbers of the required article to the place where they are needed – and to get them there fast!
Euler: The assignment has been stated – and already there has been a lot of positive feedback from management teams and the works councils. Now we have to conceive and design. We have set up project teams, which are composed in such a way as to similarly include material managers, technicians and IT-experts. By the end of this year, we want to have a complete survey of the current situation in Material Management; implementation is expected for 2010. But what is already clear: For the new material management system, employee expertise will be even more strongly bundled in the sector Procurement and Maintenance. Without any doubt, this approach offers great potential for significantly increasing efficiency of structures and processes.
