FDBusiness.com

Following Premier Foods re-organisation in 2007, a new central Manufacturing Improvement team headed by Bob King, Group Head of Operational Excellence, embarked on a mission to ensure a systematic process (the ‘Premier ATTACK’ process) for Business and OEE improvement across the company. In 2010, in order to support this ‘Premier ATTACK’ process, the group launched a group-wide technical and training project to roll-out the latest version of the Idhammar OEE System to all divisions. Bob King comments: “Idhammar’s OEE System is a powerful solution that plays an important role in supporting the world-class manufacturing required by Premier Foods.”

Delivering on the promise of OEE is no easy task, but Graham Paterson, Group Manufacturing Excellence Manager at Premier Foods insists that improving OEE is ‘always the right thing to do’. It takes a focused approach, the backing of senior management, the dedication of cross-functional staff and the right combination of technology and best practices to unleash the full potential of your manufacturing operation. Graham Paterson, adds: “Focussing on improving OEE is always the right thing to do as far as we’re concerned. Accurately analysing our losses and quantifying improvement opportunities using the Idhammar OEE System enables us to prioritise the loss management strategy at each site. We use the OEE reports to guide our Improvement Agenda – and we can share our progress with the whole group. The benefits of OEE improvement using the Idhammar OEE system actually support all strategic imperatives. An effective plant is a safe plant – and the OEE system is designed to engage people throughout the manufacturing function.”

Alan France, Idhammars’ Operations Director and Account Manager for Premier Foods, comments on the successful roll-out of the project and ongoing relationship with Premier Foods: “Idhammar aims to partner customers for the long haul. We’ve been working with Premier Foods since 1998, working closely with the sites to ensure the system gives them what they need and evolves with the changing needs of the business. This kind of partnership relationship is of great benefit to our customers and helps us with the continual development of our market-leading OEE system.”

Graham Paterson, explains in a little more detail: “We’ve worked closely with the whole UK Idhammar team during the roll out of the latest version of the system to the sites – from training staff to the technical developers. Idhammar has been keen to help us get what we need from the system, and has also developed the features that we want – like the OLE reports”

Benefits of OEE Gains at Premier Foods

Using the Idhammar OEE System, Premier Foods has been able to quantify:

* Capacity Release – time-savings on each line enabling more sales volumes

* Labour Productivity- better running speeds producing same volumes faster

* Waste Reduction – less line waste through by improving reliability

* Energy Savings – producing volumes faster requiring less operating energy

* Lower cost per unit – making the product more profitable.

These sustainable gains help Premier Foods to establish and grow a significant competitive advantage.

Premier Foods is the UK’s largest food producer, with over 60UKandIrelandsites, around 15 thousand employees, and a £2.7 billion turnover. A staggering 99.4% of British households bought a Premier Foods brand last year, and an estimated 47.2 million consumers have eaten at least one such product within the last fortnight.

Idhammar Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) System

The market-leading Idhammar OEE System provides the foundation to measure, monitor and improve your Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), enabling you to discover previously hidden losses, cost justify improvements and monitor their impact on the bottom line. The Idhammar OEE System extends the use of OEE as a simple measure of effectiveness, to a vital management and decision support tool. From single to multiple production lines, and from one to a number of plants in a group-wide structure, the Idhammar OEE System is all you need to exploit the full power of OEE and achieve world-class lean operations.

For more information on CMMS and OEE Systems visit:  www.idhammarsystems.com.