Irish cream liqueur Baileys is enjoyed by some 50 million people across 135 countries. The 25 acre site in Dublin, which Baileys has occupied since 1982, has six purpose-built production lines and three processing plants. With 17 flavours of the Irish cream liqueur being manufactured, many changeovers are necessary.

 

Brammer Ireland became involved in maintenance operations at the site in 2010. Chris Byrne, engineering maintenance manager for Diageo Baileys, says that prior to Brammer coming on board the site operated a reactive maintenance model: “We had thousands of different suppliers and were using everyone and anyone. We had no visibility and must have been an absolute nightmare from the point of view of the procurement strategy team when they were trying to bring some cost control to the maintenance process. We were very much reactive, particularly with regard to spare parts. A guy would go to the store and if the part was not in stock, someone would have to go and fetch it.”

Sustainability

Once the tender came around and Brammer won the contract, a blueprint was forged. Byrne explains: “Brammer do the basics very well. I know that doesn’t sound very much, but without doing the basics well you don’t have the foundation for sustainable improvement, and everything we do is about the journey to achieve world class.

 

“For example, the craft engineer guys come up against a lot of problems on a day-to day-basis. Often, in the past, their way of tackling problems was to keep replacing a failing part with the same part. They had no access to innovation, no access to a better solution.

 

“Brammer provided an expert on site once a month to talk to the guys. They would bring in the supplier – the guy with the expertise – to talk to the craft guy, to educate him and give him the opportunity to do not just a quick fix, but to put in a sustainable solution to a problem. That for me was a huge step forward because in the past we would have got in the van and gone to fetch an identical part and it would have failed yet again.

 

“Brammer also set about creating a technical library of its success stories – good ideas that have worked at other sites from a wide range of companies. Another thing they brought was a catalogue. It may sound silly, but at least the guys could go through the various products and see what Brammer was about – their strengths and weaknesses, what they could provide and what they couldn’t. They could see the part number and go to our stores and start the order process on our SAP system.

 

“We had a high number of consumables – air-fittings, nuts, bolts, hacksaw blades – all the standard sort of things which we were able to take away from the storeman and put into our craft areas and vendor-manage them on a monthly basis.

 

“As the relationship evolved, Brammer got to know a lot more about our requirements and this is where the unbadging of parts came in. They said ‘we know you like going to the OEM and getting the OEM equivalent part, but it’s made over here and we can get it for you at half the price’. That brought the opportunity for a lot of cost saving.”

Transition

It was accepted that there would be a transition period during which Baileys would navigate away from some of its old suppliers to try to get to a single source supplier – Brammer – as the catalyst for every maintenance part that comes on site.

 

A monthly report gives Chris Byrne details of what is purchased from Brammer and shows additional parts purchased through the SAP system. It has enabled Byrne to see how much he would have saved if those other parts had been bought from Brammer: “It was very much a gentle gesture which then allowed me to chat with my stores’ man about why we went to certain suppliers. Eventually the process evolved and the Brammer brand name grew.”

 

While the benefits of using a dedicated MRO supplier soon became clear to Byrne, he initially encountered some antipathy about moving away from suppliers who had been used, in some cases, for 20 years: “Everyone knew Brammer was going to be the stores supplier, but they didn’t know what the company was going to be bringing to the table. They didn’t know the potential output in 12 months time, but they knew we were going to switch off some of the suppliers with whom they had relationships and that’s always difficult. There’s a bond there.

 

“You could say the recession helped. It allowed us to focus on cost and no one was immune. Until then, I don’t think the guys realised how much they were spending on maintaining some of the equipment.”

 

Byrne says that in just four to five months there was no further push back: “It’s amazing how quickly people move on, but it took a lot of hard work on both sides. It took six months to get all the fundamentals in place and for people to see Brammer as the supplier of choice. It took 12 months for Brammer to fully understand our requirements and for us to know all Brammer’s strengths and all the areas where they could help us.”

 

Byrne says that the biggest problem in the first six months was ensuring that Brammer fully understood Baileys’ MRO needs. Previously, if he wanted a particular product he would get on the  phone and get that product in a couple of hours. In the early days with Brammer it could take two days. Brammer  subsequently agreed to increase its shippings from the UK and Byrne had the option of saying whether or not a part was urgent. If it was urgent, Brammer would ensure that it was couriered to site.

Benefits

Byrne says that at the end of the first year Baileys’ cost saving on MRO products was about 16%. However, he is keen to emphasise the additional benefits that Brammer’s expertise brings. He says: “There were definitely areas where we had issues in the plant and, with Brammer’s help, we changed to a different system – perhaps a different auger or a different bearing – which produced benefits from a downtime point of view and from a time-saving point of view as we removed an actual problem. That’s difficult to put a price on.

 

“Also, in terms of things like vibration analysis, a Brammer expert came on site to give the guys the equipment they needed, trained them, and is at the end of a phone if there is a problem. Yes, the MRO spend has gone down, but if I ask the guys themselves what they think are the key benefits, I’m sure they would say it’s more about what they get in terms of support than about the cost savings.”

Journey

It was always the site’s plan to move to proactive maintenance. Byrne continues: “All sites are on journeys and the engineering maintenance department is moving towards world class. However the engineering stores wasn’t seen as important until the company analysed what it could achieve across a number of areas – PM protection, overhaul protection, breakdown protection. You can never have an engineering stores that will have all the parts needed, otherwise you would need something the size of a football field, but now all production-critical parts are held in the stores so we have the right parts in stock and the stores system has an automatic re-order. There’s a lot more order to it.

 

“Cash flow has reduced by 20% in terms of cash tied up in MRO products and dead stock has ben removed – a lot of it identified by Brammer.”

 

Byrne explains the different stages on his department’s journey to world class – out of control, reactive, control, innovation and world class: “When Brammer got involved we’d just got out of reactive and into control. Innovation is where we are now and world class is where we’ll be hopefully with the asset care programme within the next 18 months.

 

“During the last three years we’ve focused more on OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness). It used to be in the low 40s, now it’s just below 60, and 70 is the target to be world class. It needs to be in the 60s by next year, but it’s going to be a challenge because of the changeovers we’ve had (a new bottle design for Baileys has meant changes to production and investment in new machinery).”

 

Byrne says that if he were asked to sum up in three words the benefits derived from having Brammer on-board, he would say cost, innovation and support, and that cost alone certainly does not make up the whole picture: “If I was retendering, would I go back with Brammer? Yes, they’ve definitely moved us forward on the journey.”