Total fluid management programme pays dividends

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. 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.

The company's facilities are housed in three units of 30,000 square feet each and a recently completed 18,000ft2 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 shortlisted 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 GBP 47,000! 'They also saved GBP 20,000 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.