BARCODING & BACKLOG PRIORITIZATION

DEREK BARR – WEST FRASER MILLS

TOM PETERSON – ONTRACKS CONSULTING
 About West Fraser
• Founded in 1955
• Integrated forest products company
• Largest lumber producer in North America
• > 8000 Employees in USA & Canada
• Use Maximo at Pulp & MDF Facilities
 Introduction

Backlog Management Improvements

 Introduction

Problem

• Inconsistency in how backlog is managed

• Hard to understand importance or risk of work orders
• Underutilized RIME system in Maximo. Is this still important?
• Not sure what a prioritization system should be able to do for us
 Introduction

Value in Prioritization System

• Guards against loss of knowledge from turnover in OMC and planners.

• Planner can work semi-autonomously for work prioritization
• Rank all jobs in order of priority in an area or across the mill
• Harmonizes a risk-based strategy across the site and the company
 Current Maximo Layout
WF Maximo priority & fields
 Job Urgency
Original New
 New Maximo Work Request Screen
Original New
 Availability of new measures
All work order can be ordered by priority (JPN)
• By Area
• Across the mill

Each WO now has a risk number

• What is the current risk of the backlog
• Trend backlog risk
• Matrix distribution of risk
 Availability of new measures
Reason for Work Improvement
Pie Charts – Reason for Work
• % Breakdown work
• % PM work
• % Improvement work
• % Repair work based on inspections
Sub Pie Charts
• Work from Operator inspections
(Basic Care)
• Work from Vibration inspections
• Work from Shift mechanic inspections
 Availability of new measures

New Asset Health Measures

• % of equipment without something physically
wrong with it
• Uses Reason for Work Code “R”
• General reliability measure with the caveat
that you are doing all the right inspections.
• If trending up overall Asset Health improving
• If Asset Health is high and still having lots of
failures then we need to take a closer look at
our inspection programs.
 Background

Bar Coding Solution Overview

 Overview
• Bottle necks in storeroom process.
– Storeroom clerks spent too much time collecting and keying in paper
issue slips
• Maintenance Personnel had access to the storeroom.
– The maintenance users were already taking parts from stores and
(sometimes) signing out the parts
– Issue slips frequently missing info like WO to charge
 Opportunities

• Barcode All Inventory items.

• Utilize Barcode Scanner

Answer: Self Serve Kiosk

 Maintenance Process
• Each Work Order Printed with:
– Barcode
– List of Parts (with bin location)

• REQUIRES well planned work

orders and appropriate
scheduling.
Maintenance Process
Maintenance Process
Check Out Kiosk
 Check Out Kiosk
• Check Out Application
– Simplified version of Inventory Usage.
• Scan Work Order
• Add Lines for all parts.
 Check Out Kiosk
• Barcode Readers act as keyboard
input

• Each Part can be scanned to fill in

item number

• Users type Quantity

Storeroom Clerk Process

Print button on the

Inventory and Receiving
Apps!
Storeroom Clerk Process

Select the Items and

Quantity to be printed
Technical Overview
Technical Overview
 Technical Overview
• Formatting of the Label is done in
an Automation Script

• Special ‘format’ characters are

injected into payload message

• Message is sent through ftp

 Technical Overview

IP Address for Each Zebra Printer stored

 Zebra Printers

• The Zebra Printer in the Storeroom of

each mill.

• Fun Fact: When Slave Lake went live with

Maximo the entire inventory sticker set
was printed out go-live weekend.
 Questions?

• Backlog Management?

• Barcode Printers?