Case Studies - Robinsons

“We are getting better performance out of 15 year old equipment than we did when we first bought it.”

Robinsons was acquired by Britvic Soft Drinks in 1995. Employing approximately 250 people, this site is Robinsons’ manufacturing arm and responsible for all production. The brand holds a dominant market position; the eighth biggest brand in the groceries market, and the factory is a site of manufacturing excellence.

The progress toward world-class manufacturing began in 1990 when the company embarked on continuous improvement as a methodology and culture. By 1994, in association with MCP, an enormous

improvement had been achieved. In MCP’s view Robinsons now had engineering excellence and what it really needed was manufacturing excellence. As a consequence the company developed a new approach, which was operator-based rather than engineering-based. An operator was taken out of operations and appointed best practice coordinator, and the company explored the concept of making operations and maintenance owned by everybody. This has evolved into an almost holistic system where everybody working in the plant is involved in maintenance, has an input into how their equipment runs, and is continually reviewing the best practice for its operation.

There are several fundamental pillars to this strategy. Standards have been defined for the design, operations and maintenance of the plant. Any newly acquired machinery is designed and built to conform to those standards. For example, covers for drive guards need to be transparent so that operators can see the parts beneath without having to open the guard. Machinery is designed so that changeover can be performed by an operator not an engineer. Planned preventive maintenance has eliminated the need for overhaul, and is accomplished by keeping a computer-based history of all equipment, which includes age, run time, maintenance and breakdown records. Engineers use analysis from this program and monitor the condition of the machinery at the suggested times to define the amount of proactive maintenance needed to keep it running efficiently. Best practice has been defined by the operators themselves who have developed a manual for each piece of equipment, which is kept by the machine and is continually updated as conditions change. The manual contains all the information needed to operate the equipment: how to clean it, lubricate it, check it, change it over, etc. Finally, staff are trained in-house using outside resources.

The outcome of this has been to reduce engineering spending considerably and increase the performance and life span of equipment. “We are getting better performance out of 15 year old equipment than we did when we first bought it,” says Melvyn Slater, chief engineer at the site. Equipment efficiency has risen by 20% over the last eight years, and machinery that was traditionally discounted after seven to ten year period is still running flat everyday after 15 years.