"St. Marys Paper Ltd.: Customer Profile"

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"CHAMPS solutions are based on the expertise in the processes that drive our customers’ operations, resulting in a customer base from varied industries, government, and educational institutes."
Source : CHAMPS Inc.

Resources Related to St. Marys Paper Ltd.: Customer Profile:

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St. Marys Paper Ltd.: Customer Profile

Maintenance at St. Marys Paper Ltd. Means World Class Performance, Efficient Work Processes and an Improving Safety Record

St. Marys Paper Ltd., located along the banks of the St. Mary’s River, at the hub of the Great Lakes, produces over 200,000 tons of supercalendered paper per year. The product, a high grade, uncoated paper, is most commonly used in advertising inserts, catalogues and magazines.

Construction of the original mill, driven by an American entrepreneur, Francis H. Clergue, was completed in 1896. The facility began as the Sault Ste. Marie Pulp and Sulphite Company, the first mill in North America to produce dried pulp. Today, it is privately owned, partially by the employees, making it somewhat unique in the paper industry in that every employee has a personal stake in the success of the company. Workers pride themselves in their commitment to quality and service and their efforts have paid off with receipt of several supplier awards from major corporations.

Maintaining the Assets

As competitive pressures increased and technology continued to advance, St. Marys found themselves behind the technology curve. The company had no automated methods to maintain their critical production assets which totaled over $500 million.

Up until 1989, the approach to maintenance at St. Marys was completely manual. High value equipment assets such as grinders, slashers, debarkers, paper machines, screens, refiners, and supercalenders required the highest level efficiency output and uptime. St. Marys recognized that a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) was necessary for planned maintenance and reduction of downtime.

With the goal in mind of finding a CMMS to help reduce costs and improve efficiencies, St. Marys began their search. Initially, the search for a system required interfacing with the company’s financials system which at that time was VAX-based. Of the vendors evaluated, CHAMPS was determined to be the best fit. After a successful implementation, St. Marys had a system in place to help reduce downtime and standardize maintenance processes.

Technology-Driven Maintenance

In this age of continuous change, however, St. Marys was faced with further maintenance requirements. Maintenance technology advanced as well, with the advent of Client/Server (CS) applications with graphical interfaces and greater flexibility than previously possible. Having updated their financial system to C/S it was time for St. Marys to do the same for their maintenance department.

In 1998, St. Marys decided to investigate potential vendors for the maintenance system upgrade initiative. After a review of several vendors, the mill once again turned to CHAMPS. “We felt they brought a lot to the table including a solid reputation, extensive experience and an attractive data migration plan that fit our needs,” stated Brian Delvecchio, Information Systems Superintendent for St. Marys Paper. “The ability to access the system remotely was another factor in our decision process. And, we already knew the company and support staff on a first name basis so familiarity certainly influenced our decision.”

Another factor influencing the decision was the maintenance system’s ability to interface with St. Mary’s financials application, EmpowerFinancials. To address this situation, a cost-effective interface was mapped out between the maintenance and the financial systems to the mill’s satisfaction.

Prior to implementation of the upgraded version of the maintenance system, St. Marys dedicated a core group to develop mill-specific user manuals and procedures based on job functions. The core group delivered the training to all users just prior to implementation. This same approach has been used to address training needs of new hires and for those personnel requiring refresher courses.

The remote access capability of the maintenance system has been a tremendous benefit for planners and supervisors. These users are able to connect from anywhere over the Internet and run the application from their virtual desktop provided by a Citrix Metaframe server. Having this connectivity enables them to prepare for the upcoming day by planning and scheduling their work orders from home on the previous evening if they choose. This remote connectivity also enables St. Marys to efficiently address support issues. Rather than going through the attempts of describing a particular issue, St. Marys is able to access the maintenance system support desk which is immediately able to shadow the administrator to quickly resolve issues. This enables both St. Marys and the maintenance system vendor to view the same user session and know exactly what needs to be done.

Systematic Work Process Approach

From a maintenance perspective, CHAMPS has helped St. Marys become more systematic in the way they approach work. Rather than ‘shooting from the hip’, the system helps personnel to think through a solution. As a result, workers have come to understand the importance and the reasoning for improved spare parts control, maintenance cost control, and work order planning.

For users, the maintenance system has become a daily tool for improving work processes. It is the primary application used by the purchasing, stores and accounts payable departments. All workers at the mill use it as their spare parts inventory catalogue. Managers and superintendents use it to view up to the minute committed maintenance costs, approve (or deny) purchase requisitions and review work orders (particularly safety related work orders). Production supervisors enter and review work orders during the course of their shift and safety stewards use it to enter work orders related to issues they may discover during their safety audits.

Emphasis on predictive and preventive maintenance has played a critical role in improving maintenance efficiency. The CMMS is integral to these improvements in that its preventive maintenance module automatically generates work orders on timebased intervals. These work orders have associated with them user pre-configured attachments such as checklists and CAD drawings which print along with the work order step.

Repair day planning and execution is another critical function of the maintenance department. The PM module is used extensively in this respect for generating work orders associated with these repair days. Prior to scheduled repair days all work orders, both auto-generated or manually entered and tagged as requiring machine downtime, are extracted from the CMMS into Microsoft Project where they can be further prioritized and reviewed for potential resource conflicts. Repair day schedule compliance has improved markedly since this structured approach was implemented.

For materials management, the maintenance application has given St. Marys the opportunity to close their stores which allowed for much tighter control of inventoried items. Spare parts costs have also been addressed through reports that analyzed patterns of stores issues, identifying possible waste, and allocated costs to the appropriate departments. Stores issues are incorporated into St. Mary’s primary maintenance costs reports which are available online and deliver the status of maintenance costs versus budget on an up to the minute basis for management review.

Additionally, stores issues reports have been created on all parts that have not been issued in the last five years. The resulting report was broken down by department and forwarded to the appropriate department planners. The planners have used this as a tool to remove unnecessary parts from stores.

Addressing Critical Safety Issues

St. Marys remains pleased with the maintenance system’s continued support and the results that they have experienced. Senior management has certainly embraced the system as the Mill Manager reviews all purchase requisitions on a daily basis to keep abreast of not only financial aspects of his operation, but also safety. “We have improved our safety record by 20% year over year. A lot of that can be attributed to the maintenance system.” Delvecchio says. By means of a safety work order they are able to discern which work is a priority and react accordingly. Without the organization the maintenance system provides, the slower reaction time to such critical issues could prove costly or even disastrous.

Achieving World Class Performance

Not only has the maintenance system provided a means for addressing important safety issues, but the system has helped St. Marys progress toward world class maintenance standards. At the heart of St. Marys production are three major, critical production assets in the form of paper machines. For these machines, a percentage of maintenance downtime is budgeted against the machine availability. World class standards indicate that these type machines should have about 2.5% and 4.5% budgeted downtime according to equipment type. With the disciplined maintenance process provided by CHAMPS, each machine performed ahead of world class standards by better than one percentage point of actual downtime. The resulting downtime reduction made a positive impact toward production goals.

The world class performance standards are not new to St. Marys. The mill has consistently been able to perform ahead of world class standards with a proactive approach by finding potential problems before they occur through preventive maintenance, ensuring that spare parts are available, and improving planning for downtime work thus reducing the time to complete. Before CHAMPS was in place, downtime always exceeded the budgeted allocation in time and cost. Not only did it take longer to complete planned work, but equipment broke down more frequently from lack of preventive maintenance. CHAMPS became a welcome tool for change and helped set new standards in operational efficiencies.

Many would agree that success with respect to maintenance is measured in beating budgeted downtime and budgeted maintenance costs. Success with respect to a CMMS can be measured in terms of its acceptance among users. Maintenance systems in many installations are used exclusively by their maintenance departments and have trouble gaining a foothold elsewhere. At St. Marys, CHAMPS is accepted and in use to some degree by literally all departments. St. Marys considers that success.

About CHAMPS

“Since 1976, CHAMPS maintenance management software solutions have enabled large enterprises to optimize the life cycles of their capital assets with functionality specifically for preventive maintenance, fleet and facilities management.”

CHAMPS delivers quality asset management, improved productivity and efficient operations that result in substantial reductions in maintenance costs.

Value Distinctions

At CHAMPS, we:

• Personalize customer relationships that have lasted multiple decades
• Optimize critical plant and facility assets including work force, equipment, facilities, vehicles, tools and spare parts
• Deliver quality asset management, improved productivity and efficient operations that result in substantial maintenance cost reductions
• Provide an accelerated implementation methodology that is a turn-key, team-based and cost-efficient approach
• Deliver scalable and flexible maintenance solutions designed to manage work, enhance reliability, optimize parts inventory and regulatory compliance, reduce maintenance costs and increase operational efficiencies