Marlux

Marlux Tessenderlo is part of the international organisation CRH. CRH is a listed company where around 70,000 employees in 35 countries work together towards a turnover of more than €17 billion. Within the Landscaping division, Marlux Tessenderlo is the largest of four sites in Belgium. As part of performance improvement, we drew up a plan to optimise our production, maintenance and logistics on the basis of OEE figures. Since, in addition to the technical improvements, a considerable improvement was also possible in the organisation, we chose Vocum as an external partner to achieve our goal. One of the decisive arguments for us was their guarantee on savings and on safeguarding the system put in place. At the start of the collaboration with Vocum, 96.4 FTEs were active in production, maintenance and logistics.

During an analysis, Vocum established that a potential saving of €1,009,712 was possible within the scope above. This corresponds to a productivity improvement of more than 20%.

Thanks to a number of structural and far-reaching changes, the project team quickly achieved results. We have summarised the most important ones.

• The organisational structure was adjusted with the aim of achieving better management on the floor. In practice, three team leaders were placed between the head of production and the operators on the various lines. In other words, they are responsible for the entire production during their shift (three production lines). As a result, one person is always present and keeps an overview.
• The various checklists used in production were simplified or eliminated. The remaining checklists are simpler and are therefore actually used.
• To obtain the best possible flow of information from the floor to the production manager, a shift report was implemented that is discussed at every shift handover.
• By combining various activities, the effective number of people on the line was reduced for some products.
• For the logistics department, staff planning was developed based on realistic standards and forecast workload. For production too, the number of people needed is determined depending on the product to be made. These plans are discussed weekly. When there are too many people, temporary workers are sent home or economic unemployment is applied, both on a daily basis. As a result, supervisors plan staff in a very cost-conscious way, which directly affects productivity.
• A change in mentality was brought about with regard to peripheral activities. When people temporarily have no work due to line breakdowns, the team leaders put them on useful tasks instead of ‘sweeping the floor’.
• Daily planning was implemented in the maintenance department to enable better transparency and follow-up of maintenance tasks.
• Managers were trained, both in the classroom and on the job, in managing people and in ‘management by objectives’. This enables them to manage, follow up and proactively guide their people better.
• Due to increased output and the need to maintain the machines when they are at a standstill, production now runs only four days instead of five. On this fifth day, technical maintenance is carried out on the machines. The production staff are at home on this fifth day, while the technicians are all present on Friday but have a different day off during the week. This way of working has certainly also contributed to the savings achieved.