The Impact of the Planned Maintenance in Agave Production TPM

por Rafael Luquín | Dec 26, 2021 11:31:01 PM

TPM in the agave fields casa sauza

In the agave production process, success is reached when the equipment and every single tool are in proper conditions to work with. In the field area, Casa Sauza is implementing the TPM (Total Productive Management) methodology, which has been applied in the fabric and has changed our way of thinking and acting.

Equipment Maintenance Problems in the Fields

For more than 19 years working in the field area in Casa Sauza, I have faced to a big number of problems to improve the agave production. We had several issues concerning the equipment and machines we were using, long periods of technical repairs, not a single register document or files to keep track of our activities, and the personnel working for us didn't have any sense of belonging. Our workers showed low performances skills and a low technical knowledge about the equipment they were handling. We also had a lack of knowledge and information about our crops and procedures.

Planned Maintenance Goal

With the support of the TPM methodology, we are focusing right now to have zero accidents, zero damages, zero downtime, and zero quality faults, including the fact of reducing costs and improve our efficiency.

The Steps for the Planned Maintenance Implementation

To foster a better belonging sense in the personnel working in the fields, we performed a plant, equipment, and cost assignation and awareness campaign. We keep a constant training to apply the 5s A and be able to achieve the steps of the autonomous maintenance, relying on the planned maintenance and the other pillars of the TPM methodology.

Impact of the Planned Maintenance in the Field Equipment

The equipment operators have acquired new knowledge and skills in the operation and maintenance of agricultural, greasing, pneumatic, agricultural machinery calibration, etc...

They have developed a clinical eye to find mistakes in the agave cultivation and in the equipment. Additionally, they have elaborated cleaning, greasing and inspection standards to increase the life of these actives. With a damage register, we have found several issues that require a further training.

Planned Maintenance System

We have settled a Planned Maintenance System in which we are looking up to achieve 2 principal goals: to increment the general equipment efficiency (Overall Efficiency Equipment OEE) and reduce the maintenance costs.

To have a control of the maintenance information, we start from our "damages tree", where we have every zone in detail already marked with an improving tendency of 29% against the benchmark. We come from executing a 72% of the activities concerning the planned maintenance and today we are at a 25% by each planned maintenance and 75% of autonomous maintenance.

In order to be able to reduce the equipment damages, we have actions plans where we do our damage's analysis, identifying the type and cause of origin, using different methodologies such as the 12 steps, 6 Gen, and some others to fix the problem from its root. The compiled information feeds and improves our systems every day. The budget control is now contained in the SAP system at an equipment level, and from having 12 tractors not being able to work, now we have zero.

We know that using this methodology and all these tools will support us in the optimization and continuous improvement in Casa Sauza. Subscribe to this blog so you can keep reading more articles about this topic and the tequila production process.

Come and visit Casa Sauza so you can learn how the modernization of our production processes deliver the purest tequila that you will find in the market.

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