Concern

Excessive breakdowns on a transfer line led to month on month failure of efficiency targets with out of hours working required to maintain volume.

Objective

Our objective was to categorise and identify the nature of the breakdowns, determine countermeasures and install permanent repairs and develop a preventative maintenance program to ensure future success.

Method
Repetitive breakdowns are a drain on time and resources. Route cause analysis of transfer faults on the first section of a transfer line revealed not one, but five separate causes of mis-transfer. The resultant damage equated to 20% of the monthly downtime on a key facility. The implementation of permanent repairs and routine maintenance checks released what was effectively a bottle neck and led to a direct increase in OEE.
Collisions and mis-transfers in a transfer line had always been associated with component casting variation. By analysing the nature and position of the mis-transfers it became apparent that this assumption was false. Localised pockets of higher instances of mis-transfer were discovered within the Best Breitling Watches historical data kept by the maintenance department. Further investigations centred on these areas of the transfer system highlighted the route causes of each pocket of failure. Maintenance procedures and alignment checks were put into place eliminating any future occurrences thereby raising output efficiency and removing costly repairs to machinery.