Cargill provides food, agricultural, financial and industrial products and services to the whole world. The company has 150,000 employees worldwide. The Starches, Sweeteners & Texturizers division has several production sites in Europe. They produce gluten, glucoses and bioethanol, the main raw materials of which are wheat and maize.


The task
A maintenance improvement project was carried out at 8 production locations in Europe with the main aim of improving the efficiency of the maintenance departments. One of the elements was increasing wrench time. The starting point was the process descriptions and best practices already available at Cargill.

The approach
The GAME was used as the kick-off event: all maintenance, production and plant managers came together to play this interactive maintenance management simulation in teams and to get ready for change. An assessment was then carried out on all sites in order to draw up a site-specific improvement programme. Both production and maintenance were involved. The necessary changes were driven by the so-called champions, each of whom took on part of the workflow. These champions were in turn supported by the Mainnovation change agents.

The project was characterised by a hard and a soft side. Performance management was used to provide insight into the necessary improvements and to achieve them. In addition, softer elements were added from Mainnovation’s change approach, such as the change readiness assessment, skill-will analysis and stakeholder analysis. Where necessary, people were coached in order to bring about the necessary behavioural change. Main focus was sustainable change.

Mainnovation’s added value
Thanks to the in-depth practical maintenance expertise of the Mainnovation change agents and their experience with performance management and change management, the locations managed to make the necessary improvement steps. The daily coordination with production was improved, mechanics are now deployed more efficiently thanks to the improved work preparation and planning. The feedback loop from the implementation has also led to considerable improvements. All in all, many losses in the execution have been removed and the overall efficiency has certainly been increased by 10-20%.

Thanks to the in-depth practical maintenance expertise of the Mainnovation change agents and their experience with performance management and change management, the locations managed to make the necessary improvement steps.

 

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