Career Episode One – Improvement of the production yield at Lafarge Couverture
Introduction
ET1.1 Lafarge is a French industrial company that specializing in building materials. The major divisions were: roofing, cement, construction aggregates and gypsum. Lafarge employed more than 60,000 people worldwide and I was fortunate to start my engineering career in the roofing division as a production engineer. The roofing division was sold to a private equity group (PAI partners) in 2007. I worked for Lafarge Roofing from October 2004 to June 2006. This career episode deals with my involvement in the yield’s improvement of line 2 (Loubert 2) in the largest manufacturing site of the roofing division out of 29 Rue du 8 Mai 945 in Roumazieres (16270),…show more content… I was part of the team to analyze data and figure out how to improve the yield. The organizational structure for the manufacturing site and the project at the time were as shown below:
ET1.3 After the initial meeting with the head of Production 2, 4, 5 at the time, I was sure of two things. Firstly, the goal of the project was to improve the yield of line 2 by at least 2 points. Secondly, I was in charge of the project. My first action was to map the entire manufacturing process flow for line 2 (cf. below). The yield was calculated between the points B and H with several conveyors involved in the process. The goal was to identify the main elements that were part of the yield calculations. This involved quantifying the inputs, throughputs, and outputs (I.e. input, throughput, and output.) I also used a camera not only to record the activities of the main equipment but also to assess the capability of the pressing and transfer parts. This required a statistical software named Minitab to assess the variability on the…show more content… A number that was actually closed to the official yield over the same period (69.9%). I was therefore confident regarding the accuracy and significance of my observations. As a result of my observations, I concluded that the project should focus on improving the drying and firing processes.
ET1.6 The main loss observed was broken products. It usually happened when the products were exposed to either a mechanical or thermic shocks. I had a meeting with the technical team and the maintenance department to make sure that the main machines were fully functioning and regularly inspected. Following the meeting, 20 temperature and humidity sensors were replaced. I requested that the inspection was done on quarterly basis rather that annual basis. Temperature and humidity were key process indicators to successfully run the production line. In parallel, I went back to look at the specifications of the dryer and kiln. While analyzing the drying and firing curves, I noticed a significant variability (over 5% on the slope of the ramp up) for the same product. Furthermore, the humidity of the products before drying varied between 10 and 20 percent (while 18% of humidity was the maximum acceptable by the dryer). 20% of the products on average went to the dryer with a level of humidity too
