A lifecycle approach to maintenance at world leading automotive supplier in Shanghai
Shanghai Sogefi Auto Parts Co., Ltd
Sogefi (www.sogefi.it), an Italian Group, is a worldwide leader in the automotive parts industry, specializing in flexible suspensions components and filtration systems. Sogefi is a partner to the world’s most important car manufacturers. The Company has a global presence: 46 plants, in 16 countries, across 5 continents.
Shanghai Sogefi Auto Parts Co., Ltd was established in Shanghai Pudong District in 2007 with a total investment of 150 million RMB. The plants manufacture filtration systems and suspension components for automakers.
An early partnership, starting from the construction stage
Collaboration between Sogefi and Siveco dates back to 2008, when Siveco was appointed to coordinate technical data and related documentation for the new stabilizer bars production line.
A Siveco maintenance expert was embedded in the construction project management team, in an owner’s engineer role. His primary responsibility was to ensure tight coordination and good communication between general contractor (also in charge of the utilities), production line engineering team and machine suppliers. Siveco’s specific focus was on the correct sizing and setup of the utilities, as well as maintenance preparation.
As part of this engineering project, technical data, drawings and other documentation were collected from the various construction contractors (civil works and utilities) and equipment suppliers, so as to establish the necessary documentation for the future maintenance team.
Organizing maintenance on paper, limited but encouraging results
In 2009, after production ramp-up, the Siveco teams came back on site to support Sogefi in the setup of a modern maintenance organization. The company’s management favored a very progressive approach, starting first with a paper- and Excel-based system that could later be upgraded into a full CMMS solution.
The improvement project started with a maintenance audit, during which the current maintenance performance and activities were assessed based on international benchmarks. The outcome of the audit was a clear prioritized actions plan, which, after approval by Sogefi’s management, paved the way for the successful execution of improvement initiatives.
Siveco specialists coached the plant technical teams on maintenance engineering principles identified as important during the audit. Monthly “Best Practices” workshops were held, each of them targeting a specific topic (equipment structures, root cause analysis, KPIs, etc.).
Each workshop featured an introductory training session, the provision of paper-based or Excel-based format or tools, a case study and onsite practice as part of the plant’s daily operation.
The following standards were used: EN 13460 – Maintenance – Documentation for maintenance, IEC 81346 – Industrial systems, installations and equipment and industrial products – Structuring principles and reference designations and ISO 14224 – Collection and exchange of reliability and maintenance data for equipment.
The project lasted from April to August 2009 and was concluded by a thorough evaluation and additional recommendations.
Evaluation report abstract, showing clear scorecards and management actions
The main recommendation of this report was for Sogefi to use a CMMS to further enforce the new practices into the plant’s daily routine, in a self-sustainable manner, with a focus on preventive maintenance. Indeed, based on Siveco’s experience, most of the improvements already achieved were bound to vanish as people change and bad habits come back.
Long-term improvement, thanks to the CMMS
In 2011, Sogefi and Siveco agreed on an original way to implement the CMMS, using additional resources from Shanghai University’s Sino-French School of Technology. As part of Siveco’s academic outreach program, engineering students were trained on the CMMS, COSWIN and ready to involve in industrial projects. A three-party project team was setup, with Siveco responsible for project delivery (including providing industry expertise and managing the students’ team) and the students involved in resource-intensive activities such as system configuration and data collection.
COSWIN was implemented covering equipment management and fault reporting as first steps. As a result of the initial projects, the existing equipment structure only required an update before being uploaded into the database, while the work processes in the CMMS were the same the Sogefi maintenance team was already used to. In November 2011, Sogefi started to use the CMMS to manage all the plant assets (1,000 pieces of equipment). The Siveco team provided onsite “babysitting” support to ensure a smooth startup.
COSWIN screenshots
The first operational audit conducted by Siveco, one month after CMMS start-up, showed over 150 fault reports (and follow-up work orders) in the database, reflecting a good utilization of the system, commensurate with activities in the plant.
Benefits obtained
According to Emilien Delecluse, Equipment & Maintenance Manager:
“As our production capacity grows and new product lines are being added, maintenance has become more critical. The Siveco project has clearly helped us gain control of maintenance performance: reports from the CMMS are quickly put into practical use to analyze problems and to make improvement decisions.”
Wu Yongqing, Technical Maintenance Manager, adds:
“Technicians are confident with COSWIN, thanks to the user-friendly screens and support from SIVECO’s maintenance experts. This ensures we get accurate technical feedback and failures are now systemically analyzed, leading to improvement in our preventive maintenance plan. We all learn a lot from this project.”
