A new lean production experience
The Metafrax team won silver in the final round of the lean production championship among enterprises of the Russian chemical complex.
The competition took place on October 23rd in Moscow as part of the program of "Chemistry-2024" - the 27th international exhibition of chemical industry and science. The final round was held in the format of a business game, which was organised by the Development Center of the production system of the chemical complex.
During the business game, the teams played a "lean quiz" by answering questions about lean technologies, thought through an error prevention system and found the root cause of the deviation, formulated the problem and proposed preventive actions, named as many lean production terms as possible and defined them, organised an effective production model using lean production tools, and identified the efficiency of the equipment changeover process.
According to the competition results, the Metafrx Chemicals team took second place. With a minimal advantage, the first place was awarded to the team of Bashkir Soda Company JSC (BSC) - an enterprise, which is also part of the Roschem holding.
- We enjoyed the event. We got to know our colleagues from BSC, gained new experience in lean production and showed our teamwork, - Oksana Panchenkova, Head of the Operational Efficiency Department at Metafrax Chemicals JSC, shared her impressions. - It's interesting to compete when there are high-level teams as the competition. Although the lean production tools are the same, here they were presented in an unusual format. The time just flew by.
Moreover, at the "Chemistry-2024" exhibition, representatives of Metafrax took part in a round table discussion dedicated to the development of lean production, where they discussed the issues of engineering documentation creation, resource conservation and optimisation of technological processes as well as modern chromatographs for petrochemical industry and stability criteria of chemical and process systems.
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Metafrax gained the first experience in lean production in 2019, when the company joined the implementation of the activities of the "Labour Productivity" national project. The practices developed at that time formed the basis for the company's next project to implement a lean production system, which started in 2023. A methodological framework and an organisational structure for project management have been created, regulatory documentation has been developed, a constant aggregation of proposals for improvements has been organised and a mechanism for their implementation has been tried and tested.