2019Case16Mercury

63 L EAN C ONSTRUCTION I RELAND A NNUAL B OOK OF C ASES 2019 Group 2’s Key Observations of the Working Day • 14% of the time (2-hours 26-minutes) was spent moving at the start of shifts, breaks and mid-shifts between the sub- work area and the main work area to rework the maintenance panel, retrieve labels, and fabricate a spool in the sub-work area (1-hour 50-minutes). Moving around the spool in the work area under the floor and in the adjoining chase to measure/assess (22-minutes). Remainder of moving due to moving with tools, moving to stores, and BIM. • 10% of the time (1-hour 43-minutes) was spent reworking to remove the gauges and conduct fitting from the maintenance panel and refitting of the same incorrect order as well as the drilling two holes in the maintenance panel. This time also includes leaving the main work area to complete this in the other level. • 10% of the time was spent labelling the spools under the floor in the work area. Again, this factors in leaving the work area in order to retrieve labels and writing the specific lines from LSP to ID labels upon return to the work area. • 7% of the time (1-hour 8-minutes) was spent measuring. This time was spent checking and verifying HP pipes for the exact location and alignment, checking and verifying the work was completed and also measuring for the installation of the maintenance panel. • 8% of the time (45-minutes) was spent retrieving materials. This consisted of retrieving spools and ID selection from the rack (14-minutes). The remainder of time retravel materials was due to retrieving fittings, cushie clamps, clutters and facing tools. • 6% set up (1-hour) due to assisting the welder to set up purge lines from workplace level (47-minutes). The remainder was due to removing tape from spools (10- minutes). • VA time (13%) – HP SS Pipe installed & maintenance panel on the pillar. Recommendations • 10% rework on bought in items – need to investigate why gauges and fittings need to be altered on this and if all tool requirements are different. • Moving between different levels for labels and reworks – consider if the labels could be kitted for the crew and left in the pass-through to avoid having to leave the work area. The DO in Figure 2 illustrates a poor VA at 13%, and highlights the areas that were addressed throughout this case study. Group 2 will implement the process over the next period, and despite some early scepticism there is overall confidence that the process will result in a performance improvement. We are now intending to move the process to Group 3, and we intend to move the process to a new project that has just began using direct labour trades. It is imperative that Senior Management buy into the process before this happens and for it to be documented as a Supervision SOP. Once written formally as an SOP, it will make the process much easier to implement on future projects. The team involved learned and demonstrated their learnings from the project initiation to completion. We soon learned that if a productivity problem exists, it cannot be fixed by simply brainstorming and implementing the fix via “who shouts the loudest”. The DMAIC process proved to be effective in systematically working through any processes to improve the current situation. We also now have the learning of a kaizen approach and how we can implement this process with regard to any future challenges we may face. In the construction industry generally, and particularly during this case study, we have found that if we can remove the obstacles and waste to allow trades to have good cellular flow (trades often speak about having a “good run at the work”), productivity will see significant improvements. The fact that supervisors along with much of our trades had been introduced to Lean Construction through a Yellow Belt process was beneficial as they gained an understanding of what VA or NVA work actually was and why there was a need for Mercury to address it. Moving forward, we need to continue to utilise the tools and processes we have learned. The smaller and relatively simpler elements such as the 5S process is now embedded into our company-wide site procedures and will be of major benefit in the long-term. From a management point of view, we now have a process for evaluating, diagnosing, and improving those project productivity items that have a commercial impact on project success.