There's Gold in Them There Piles

摘要

Today, plant leadership is primarily focused on achieving higher availability, maintaining boiler performance and meeting environmental regulations. Material handling is lower on the priority list and positions are often staffed with new employees who have little or no plant experience. Plant managers rarely, if ever, visit the coal yard and leadership's primary request to material-handling supervisors is to avoid a forced outage. Existing operating practices should be challenged. Increased efficiency can be achieved with minimal capital expenditure. Where capital is needed, high paychecks can be achieved. Opportunities can be pursued across six areas: supply variability, system constraints, energy efficiency, automation, work practices and inventory management. As plant budgets receive increased scrutiny, leadership can find significant cost and margin opportunities by implementing material handling excellence. The authors' work highlights the need for cross-functional capabilities in identifying and delivering opportunities. A combination of process engineering, lean manufacturing, supply chain and financial analysis expertise is needed to identify attractive opportunities across the entire system.