Product category:
Bearings, lubrication, oil and filters
News Release from: Castrol UK | Subject: Total fluid management
Edited by the Processingtalk Editorial
Team on 05 February 2004
Total fluid management for Turner
Powertrain
Castrol has provided a Total Fluid Management programme for this busy manufacturing unit for the past three years and has recently signed a further three-year contract
Castrol provides total fluid management for Turner Powertrain - except for coffee! Turner Powertrain Systems can trace its history back to 1875 and has, over the years been involved in the manufacture of many products, including tractors, winches and generators Today the company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Caterpillar Incorporated and is involved in the manufacture of hydrodynamic transmission units (gearboxes) for 60 to 130 hp off-road applications, mainly in the building and agricultural industries
This article was originally published on Processingtalk on 22 Oct 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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Although a subsidiary of Caterpillar, Turner Powertrain also supplies transmissions to other customers, including: Manitou, New Holland, Terex and John Deere.
The Wolverhampton based company has two main sections.
One machines gears and shafts, mainly in SAE 8620H steel, the other assembles the transmissions.
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The company's facilities are housed in three units of 30,000 square feet each and a recently completed 18,000 sq feet extension.
Turner Powertrain employs 320 people and has two hundred machine tools producing 35,000 complete transmissions per annum plus component parts for other transmissions.
Castrol has provided a Total Fluid Management programme for this busy manufacturing unit for the past three years and has recently signed a further three-year contract.
The man responsible for managing the contract is Bob Holt, the Facilities Manager, who took over the responsibilities of individual area managers six years ago.
Taking up the story Holt says: "We had been using another lubricant supplier who operated a partial fluid management service providing stock control for the site and sending someone in one day-a-week to do random sampling.
"One of my tasks as was to look at the company's core competencies to see how we could achieve efficiency and productivity improvements.
Early on, we decided that putting oil into machines was something we didn't want to do, so Total Fluid Management (TFM) was one of the first outsourcing opportunities we investigated, and has been the most successful".
To ensure a really thorough review a team was put together that included representatives from each machine shop and the purchasing department.
Six lubrication suppliers were invited to make presentations to the Turner Powertrain team, and then each company sent in their people to do an initial site survey.
It was at this stage that Castrol made quite an impression, "They sent in a really strong team and literally had people crawling under machines and measuring sump capacities, whilst some of the other companies just asked us how much oil we used in a year!" says Holt.
Three of the companies were shortlisted and each was asked to suggest a 'flagship' TFM site that the team could visit.
Castrol nominated the Land Rover site in Solihull and it was this visit, says Holt, that really swayed the team.
"Castrol had everything under control" he says: "All the concentration and pH levels for the machines were clearly visible, the stores were well organised and very, very tidy and there was a professional air about the whole operation".
He concedes that the other two short-listed companies may have been doing the same but weren't able to demonstrate that they were.
The whole review process took about six months and the decision to appoint Castrol three years ago was a unanimous one.
The contract, which has recently been extended for a further three years, was measured against Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that targeted efficiencies and cost savings of 3% per annum in specific operations within the workshops.
Explains Holt: "We monitored tool life first because it was an area where we suspected we could make substantial savings.
We were proved right - in the first year alone Castrol saved us GBP47,000! "They also saved GBP20,000 on oil filters by identifying areas of the site where we were spending money we didn't need to.
When it was pointed out to us it was obvious we were overspending, but it took a fresh look from Castrol to stop us throwing money away!".
Another Castrol suggestion currently being implemented is a review of the layout of the three workshops to simplify machine maintenance and provide more efficient recycling of the metalworking fluids.
From September 2003 all grinding machines have been moved to one location, at which stage Castrol located the economiser in the centre of the area and hard piped it directly to the machines.
Turner Powertrain installed the pipework and Castrol set up the system and manages it.
All fluid is now reconditioned and returned directly to the machines, which eliminates the need for machine sumps, and emptying and cleaning.
Castrol has also taken control of external waste management, with Turner Powertrain personnel now responsible for delivering waste material to the outside of each building and Castrol collecting it and transferring it to the appropriate skips ready for collection and disposal.
Says Holt: "In the three years that Castrol has been running waste management they have absorbed all the land fill taxes we would have been paying".
The Castrol team - a team leader, two fluid technicians and a contract manager - also operates a computerised schedule that ensures every single machine tool is visited at least once a day.
Concentrations and sump volumes are checked daily, pH levels every week and Bob Holt receives the KPI charts as confirmation.
The computer also schedules machine cleaning and the team has taken responsibility for cleaning the wash and paint plants.
Commenting on fluid management Holt reports that consumption is better controlled now than it's ever been.
"It is monitored on a weekly basis.
Castrol has introduced the economiser to recycle the cutting fluids and a centrifuge for neat oils, both of which have reduced the volumes we use because we are no longer throwing oils away".
He estimates that savings in the first year were around GBP70,000.
The Castrol oils used include RX10 lubrication oil for testing gearboxes, Alusol XTH neat oil for grinding, plus hydraulic oils.
Virtually every fluid used on the site, including general lubricants, is now a Castrol product the only exceptions being those requested by customers for specific testing which, while they are not Castrol products are still sourced and supplied by Castrol.
Summing up, Bob Holt says the biggest compliment he can pay the Castrol team is that everything runs so smoothly he doesn't know they are there most of the time.
"It has been a so successful from day one that my Operations Director joked that we should ask Castrol if Total Fluid Management could be extended to include coffee!" he adds.
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