How investing in engineers saved at least 1,211 hours in downtime over one year

A major UK FMCG manufacturing company, concerned about the amount of time lost due to electrical breakdowns on their machines, used data from their CMMS system to develop a multi-skilling training and mentoring programme and saved over 1000 hours of downtime.

The company operated a centralised electrical maintenance department so a significant amount of time was lost waiting for the maintenance electrician to react to breakdowns. The manufacturing process was cellular, with a mechanical engineer assigned to each cell.

The heads of engineering and production looked for opportunities to reduce the amount of downtime and decided to train their mechanical engineers in basic electrical tasks.

CMMS data supported the cost-saving programme

The team, using data collected from breakdown reports in the Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS), and in consultation with MCP, selected basic electrical tasks for their mechanical engineers that would:

Be of a suitable skill level for a cross-skilled engineer
Give the biggest wins for the business, for example prioritising tasks that would resolve the most frequent breakdowns

The tasks were split into core tasks and department-specific tasks with the long-term aim to allow the cross-skilled engineers to work across more than one department.

The Core Tasks:

Test/ remove/ refit AC motor
Fit/ replace plugs
Replace faulty cables/ terminate cables like for like after isolation
Reset inverter/ soft start unit
Identify/ investigate and reset overload unit and MCB
Test and replace a fuse
Replace panel indicator lamps after isolation
Work on like for like electrical sensors
Work on like for like pneumatic solenoid coil
Work on switches/ buttons like for like after isolation

Upskilling, engagement and on-site consolidation are critical to success

Off-job training alone cannot achieve results. On-the-job training is a crucial part of the development process and is more likely to produce long-term benefits for the multi-skilled engineers and for the company.

A team of around 6 maintenance electricians was identified from the team to undertake comprehensive coaching and assessing programme to mentor the cross–skilled engineers.

The mentoring programme proved to be dual purpose:

Engaging both the electricians and mechanical engineers
Giving both teams confidence in the level of skills being attained

The mechanical engineers attended the 4 part, MCP City & Guilds accredited, Mechanical to Electrical conversion course. They were then given two months to complete the onsite consolidation process working with their assigned mentor. The onsite consolidation process comprised of the mechanical engineers completing the selected tasks for their department in the required amount of time through actual jobs or controlled simulation. This was recorded in an onsite consolidation log book.

Once the tasks had been completed, the mechanical engineer was interviewed by the Company Electrical Engineer. On successful completion, a license was issued permitting the engineer to perform the agreed tasks, only in his department and unsupervised.

The requirement for checking confidence and skill levels on a regular basis was also recognised. So a re-authorisation date was set two years after a license had been granted. The re-authorisation process consisted of a structured interview and refresher training focusing on the core tasks, if required. This was initially to be performed by MCP with the mentors eventually taking on this task.

Using the data collected, using breakdown reports, over the initial one-year period a minimum of 1211.8 hours of downtime was saved through the utilisation of thirty-one cross-skilled engineers.

If you say that an hour of downtime costs the business £10,000 and you multiply the number of hours saved by that amount, you arrive at a saving of more than £12 million. This is a great return on investment.

See chart below: