Maintenance Department Organization 4 Existing Situation 5
Recommendations 6
Attachments 8
I. Executive Summary
Over the past few months we have been working with the Reliability team of the Tate & Lyle Lafayette South Plant located off of US Highway 52 South. Individuals including Scott Myers, Dave Lister, Evan McManomy, and John Harden have assisted us in collecting necessary information and conducting thorough investigation of the overall maintenance policy and procedures. This report will include our findings, analysis, and recommendations for the maintenance department of the Tate & Lyle Lafayette South Plant.
II. Introduction/Background
Tate & Lyle was founded in 1921 when Henry Tate, known for sugar production, and Abrahms Lyle, famous for his golden syrup merged to create a sugar and syrup manufacturer in the UK. Today, Tate & Lyle is one of the largest producers of high fructose corn syrup and corn byproducts. Some of their recognized competitors include ADM and Cargill. Many locals in the Lafayette area know the plant as Staley’s, which was acquired by Tate & Lyle in 1988. The Lafayette South plant covers nearly 325 acres of land and has the capacity to grind over 600,000 bushels of corn a day. Their continuous flow process allows them to produce syrup and Krystar, a dry sugar product, twenty-four hours a day. Current production of the plant averages around one hundred outbound syrup trucks, thirty Krystar trucks, and thirty 28,000-gallon rail cars per day. The Lafayette South Plant is comprised of six different departments. The departments include the Refinery, Wet Mill, Lab, Engineering, Administration, and Maintenance. The department that we will be focusing on for this project will be the Maintenance Department.
III. Maintenance Department Organization
The organization of the maintenance department at the Tate & Lyle Lafayette South plant is a combination of both a centralized and decentralized system. With the strategy to drive bulk ingredients for sustained cash generation to fuel growth, the organization is well structured to optimize the efficiency of assets and significantly impact quality and productivity in order to increase profitability. This continued growth has transformed through a well-planned, proactive program that is integrated throughout the entire plant. There are around two hundred Tate & Lyle employees that run the entire plant. The maintenance department is comprised of forty people that fill out four internal divisions, including Mechanical, Electrical and Instrumentation, Stores, and Reliability. While local crews and operators within the various departments are in charge of basic and routine preventative maintenance operations, major equipment overall, that requires long-term planning and scheduling, is handled by the plant central maintenance manager. Due to the size of the equipment and the activity at hand, contract engineers and staffs are collective within the central maintenance department.
Tate & Lyle’s mechanical department covers the two sides of the plant, the wet mill side, which grinds the corn, and the refinery, which process the corn into syrup or Krystar. The wet mill maintenance is responsible for the mechanical maintenance activities in the wet mill side of the plant, and the same goes for the refinery mechanical department. They are located near the refinery and assist with any mechanical needs. The Electrical and Instrumentation division has the responsibility of repair and installation of the electrical components in the facility. The E & I shop employees are skilled workers who specialize in repairing and installing instrumentation like solenoids, valves, circuit breakers, relays, regulators and more. Tate & Lyle has an abundance of parts that need to be kept in inventory and readily available in case
