Ricoh UK Products (RPL) was established in 1983 as the first European production subsidiary of Ricoh Company, Japan. RPL now has four sites (three in the UK, one in The Netherlands) and employs more than 800 people, operating year-round up to 24h/day day, 7 days a week.

Production began at its Telford site in 1985, starting with photocopier drums. Today the product range includes multi-functional and production printers, as well as industrial products and associated supplies. The company also offers 3D engineering solutions, with Customer Experience and European Media Qualification Centres.

RPL had used CMMS systems for almost 20 years, but needed a browser-based application going forward. It went live with Agility in 2009, the aim being to reduce indirect labour, increase user numbers, simplify processes, and increase visualisation and reporting across the organisation.

Following implementation, RPL was able to reduce 2000h of indirect labour per year from maintenance processes. Maintenance engineers now access Agility using laptops, all reactive maintenance work order operations have been transferred to paperless systems, and knowledge capture and visualisation systems have been introduced.

More than 1200 reactive and 2000 planned work orders per month are generated by Agility to support the four sites. Agility is also used to control all non-production inventory items (about 9000 lines with 40,000+ movements per year), giving fully automated stock control and monitoring, which also generates orders for replenishment.

Agility runs at the Telford site and multi-site licensing is used concurrently across all four sites in Europe. Each site has its own visual asset structure, with details attached against site, building, area, and asset. This has allowed RPL to demonstrate full linkage between planned activities and compliance reporting, which satisfies audit teams.

The ability to interrogate an asset, check the planned work, the history of completed tasks with times and details, and view attached service reports or compliance certificates is fundamental to RPL compliance in areas such as LOLER, L8 Legionella, F-Gas, Emergency Lighting, and Fire Safety Systems.

Faster response

In 2014, RPL created Customer Experience Centres for 3D and industrial printing, and embarked on expansion of its core toner filling business. Calls come into a central work order centre, which maintenance engineers access using their laptops. This has improved maintenance response times by about 53% in five years.

At the start of 2016, strategic focus was given to improving OEE across all filling and assembly lines. Multidiscipline project teams used Agility to add and complete improvement activities on all assets. On demand standard visual reporting was introduced and, at 6.30 every morning, each stakeholder receives an e-mail overview of OEE performance on strategic lines, giving a snapshot of 24 hours production. This mail hyperlinks to production, downtime, and quality reports, with the production performance report linking directly to Agility to give visibility of any downtime. This reporting has improved overall business awareness, allowing more timely intervention at all management levels. The nett effect has been an overall OEE improvement across all lines between 5 and 35%.

During 2016, RPL’s strategy was to link the main technical compliance disciplines and prove this by third party audit. RPL undertook an integrated Safety Health & Environment approach and the BSC 5 star Integrated Audit. This audits and measures against ‘Best Practice’ rather than ‘Compliance to standard.’ RPL achieved a 97.45% score. Use of Agility was highlighted as a positive mechanism to achieving this result.

RPL then applied for and was awarded the BSC Sword and Globe of honour. The report stimulated an improvement program which has enhanced the sustainability of the business and the awards have recognised RPL within the wider Ricoh family, customers, and stakeholders.

Mark Anderson, RPL maintenance manager, comments: “The importance of Agility to RPL cannot be overstated. It is fully integrated into our business processes and is used at all levels across the business to manage and improve all aspects of the operation.”

Agility has been integrated into production data capture and monitoring systems in preparation for Industry 4.0. There are also plans to use Agility to help provide business insight and intelligence through powerful dashboards and KPIs.