UnilinGuarantee availability of new production line with the right spare parts

The task

A new melamine line has been commissioned at Unilin Panels’ head office in Oostrozebeke. Melamine creates a durable, scratch-resistant and colorfast finishing layer. To guarantee the technical availability of this line, at acceptable costs, Unilin strives for the optimal maintenance plan for this installation, including determining the right spare parts.

The approach

The total installation, the entire machine line, is divided into sub-assets. For example transport systems, pressing parts and transit stations. These sub-assets were analysed via a criticality ranking to get a better idea of which sub-assets should be treated first. Subsequently, details could be viewed per sub-asset.
Mainnovation was called in to provide Reliability Engineering Support in building up the most optimal maintenance plan. First of all, pictures were taken of the partial assets. These pictures were linked to the machine drawings and served as a reference point/clarification of the drawings. The sub-assets were then split into components. After this, together with a technical expert from Unilin, an insight was made into which parts would become non-stock or stock items, as well as which maintenance tasks could be linked to these parts. It turned out that the technical knowledge of those involved were complementary.
After step 1 and 2 had been completed, the work delivered was discussed with Unilin’s team of specialists in order to get everyone on the same page and to implement adjustments in the field of preventive maintenance or spare parts management.
As a final step, the functional locations (the FLOCs) were filled in for all components in order to know to which group they belong, so that this can be easily found in the SAP tree structure. This was then also taken up for the less critical sub-assets.

Added value Mainnovation

The new melamine line is an important asset for Unilin. It was a great challenge to define all spare parts (including their min/max stock) and preventive maintenance. Mainnovation conducted a criticality study to determine which sub-assets are important. This helps to execute the project in parts and to give the most critical part-assets the highest priority. To achieve the desired result the RE Roadmap was used. By defining the right spares and the required preventive maintenance, based on this criticality study, downtimes are avoided and high costs prevented.