LEARNING LAUNCH FOR CREATING BASIC EQUIPMENT STANDARDS

Challenge:

I work in a pharmaceutical company which manufactures sterile injectable vials. In this environment  during packing of vials if any stoppage of line happens which is combination of machines in series to  do different activities then whole batch has to be rejected. This is because if stoppage happens then  human/operator has to intervene which could result in breach of sterility requirement.

So to avoid this problem there was a need of creating basic maintenance standards which can be  executed by the operator themselves rather than engineering maintenance team. But when I  approached operators and told about the idea, their reply was disappointing like “we have never  done any maintenance activities related to to this line by ourselves and also we don’t have time to  do extra activities”

Selection:

Then I decided to do a learning launch on the tentative basic and simple maintenance standard for  one of the equipment in the line to check operator’s excitement & acceptance level to the same & as  solution to the stoppage of line during vials batch production. For this I took the reference of the 3rd  video named ‘Learning launch tool’ of  4th week of the course design thinking for innovation.

Application:

At first I identified the critical check points and activities for continuous running of the line from  instructions and maintenance manual. Then to identify what wows & works for the users I have  interviewed 3 operators out of 6 operators different equipment’s of the line each for 15 minutes to  get to know about their pain and their interest which they would like . I have chosen a short period  of time to ensure that even if I fail, I fail cheap as I have not used much of the scare resource i.e.  time of both operators and myself. The outcome of this was they would like to do any specific and  less time consuming activities which will address their pain of blame for rejection of batch.

So based on this I have prepared a checklist of to do activities for one machine named filling  machine which fills medicine into vials.

When I first tested it with operators I realized that it should address the ambiguity during execution  & also do the task of supporting logistics(items needed for execution).

Based on this first launch and a smaller time experiment of 50 minutes I revised the checklist of  filling machine with more specificity like dividing each task of checklist into one of the 5 categories 1)  cleaning 2) adjustment 3) tightening 4) lubrication and 5)Inspection with the required tool & support  from housekeeping team in arranging the required logistic tools for the team and defining place and  quantity for each of these.

Based on this when I did the second launch the operators were more positive as it has taken only 19  minutes to execute & told me that they would love doing this.

Insight:

From this learning launch experience I learned and actually witnessed the power of testing idea with  users/customers and refining them for the success of offering. When I crated the second learning  launch I came to know that specific tasks like adjustment, tightening, lubrication etc has cleared the  ambiguity and unknown work pressure from the mind of operators & has given me insight for  preparing same kind of checklist standards right first time for all of the other 5 equipment’s of the  vial line.

