A new approach to maintenance

With an average production output increase of about 30% per year Sapa Heat Transfer's Shanghai facility needed to plan and develop a strategy to accommodate this fine business performance for the long term. Being the only company in the world with rolling mills that deliver aluminium strips for brazed heat exchangers, this was imperative to maintain its leading position in the market.
It is estimated that 60% of all cars in Europe have radiators originating from Sapa aluminium strip, and of course many cars in North America and Asia Pacific region are also equipped with Sapa material. In addition, in recent years Sapa has been increasingly active in HVAC&R (heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration) and power industry applications for heat transfer material.
In terms of a basic approach, adding more capacity was perhaps the easiest part to agree upon and was decided and executed, doubling the previous production capacity. But a more complex part, and one that had additional benefits, was to optimise the reliability and availability of the entire production facilities; both existing and those to be added. This would contribute to the ability to deliver increased output but it would also deliver considerable maintenance cost savings to the bottom line. However, it would involve an approach to maintenance efficiency that would also require its own new strategy, development, introduction and execution.

Moving to more advanced, modern data tracking

The first move away from the previous system was to select and install a computerised maintenance management system (CMMS). This would replace the paper and spreadsheet systems, where data logging and retrieval was relatively slow, and data updating, preparing statistics and sharing this information was becoming more time consuming and inefficient.
Being well aware that the success of any CMMS depended on it being selected and tailored to 'fit' the manufacturing and maintenance reality of Sapa's factory, Wang Yeuming, Sapa Maintenance Manager, asked SKF for assistance. The 'fitting' of a CMMS to Sapa's situation could only be done by experienced professionals in the maintenance and reliability business. SKF was well known to Sapa's maintenance staff from previous cooperation on engineering and maintenance issues, and SKF's application of its high-end Integrated Maintenance Services (IMS) was known to be successful in many industries, in different countries around the world, including China.
During initial discussions with SKF on the future direction of maintenance at Sapa, Wang received recommendations from SKF on which CMMS system suited them best. "Although not expected at such an early stage of discussions, their suggestion was backed up with solid reasoning that convinced us that they new our manufacturing needs and the CMMS solutions on the market place. So I felt comfortable going with their suggestion and, I must say, it turned out to be perfect" , said Wang.
"Since acquiring the CMMS, SKF have helped us to identify, tag and upload all necessary assets in the system and have trained our people in the process. Although this is a very difficult job to complete while you are still managing the daily maintenance needs, my team and SKF did exceptionally well to complete the implementation within 4 months. Of course training and support continued with our people to ensure that they switched to using the CMMS on a continuous basis. It is well known that sometimes, with the pressure of normal operation, increasing demand and daily maintenance reviews and actions, it can seem easier to use 'old' well-known methodologies than newer, less-familiar ones. It was important that we stayed on-track to use the new system, and I am happy to say that we met that goal too!"

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