APM Boiler U.S. Sets Strategies that Lead to Success
During the Lean Week that occurred globally back in January, teams joined in activities to identify and improve current standard work procedures. APM participated in approximately five kaizens that week to create improvement in efficiency within the standards in place. The teams kept safety at the forefront with every lean initiative they sought while retaining the quality of work performance. To allow for greater productivity and cost savings, team members encouraged each other to think outside of the box.
One team focused on improving the execution plan for a scheduled Spring outage that recently occurred at NRG Sunrise. This team included participation from GE Engineering, FieldCore’s outage planning crew, APM’s lean planning experts, and APM’s skilled Boiler craft. These collaborative efforts proved to be a large success in the outage involving two units that required removal and replacement of desuperheaters.
During execution, Superintendent Mike Bush, FieldCore Construction Manager Drew Michalov, FieldCore Outage Manager David Nadeau, and teams, implemented the lean initiatives they identified during Lean Week activities. Some tasks on this efficient work plan included fabricating components, shipping them to site prior to the outage, temporarily relocating sections of fuel and air lines to allow room for movement, early Lock Out Tag Out on equipment, and much more, to make for a smooth outage.
The team kept close communication and regrouped daily to ensure they were remaining aligned with set actions. To properly manage COVID navigation, circus-style tents were pitched at the site to allow an adequate amount of social distancing space while taking breaks.
To track their progress throughout the job execution, the team established multiple benchmarks to hit in cost and manhours. Utilizing RMD welding procedures, in contrast to GTA-SMAW, produced a cost savings of over $200K. Teams also installed a monorail rail system to improve speed and safety, resulting in over $50K in cost savings at the site. It is estimated that these continuous improvement initiatives amongst others resulted a savings of over $443K, a 32% improvement. As a result of the positive impact from the initiatives, two new playbook pages were created by the team for inclusion in GE’s global productivity playbook.
The scope of work lengthened as Boiler was awarded additional work on site. The refreshed and refined processes allowed Boiler to complete the scope and the added tasks on schedule.
“I just wanted to reiterate one point - Without the hard work and dedication of the site supervision and craft, this wouldn’t have been possible. I greatly appreciate the level of effort that everyone put in and I am proud of our team,” commented FieldCore Service Manager, James “Jimmy” Robbins.
Congratulations to APM Boiler U.S., FieldCore, and GE on success at NRG Sunrise where they were able to establish their new and improved standardized work processes!
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