Tips on Minimizing Unplanned Downtime

Feb. 13, 2007

Christian von Olshausen, process engineer, packing, at Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals Germany, will be a featured speaker at the Packaging Automation Forum May 23 in Chicago. His presentation will focus on how controls and automation technologies, correctly implemented on today’s packaging lines, can minimize unplanned downtime by contributing greatly to Total Quality Management (TQM) and Total Productivity Management (TPM).

Decreasing unplanned downtime is a key strategic initiative at the Weiterstadt plant in Germany, where von Olshausen is based.

Training and technology implementation at the plant are both aimed at turning “reactive users” into “progressive operators.” And rather than accepting a plant environment where “run to failure” is the accepted norm, P&G seeks out ways of controlling machine performance throughout its lifetime so that whenever machine failure—which is, of course, inevitable at some point—does happen, it doesn’t do so in an unplanned way that will diminish P&G’s ability to send cases of top quality product out the door.

The Packaging Automation Forum is sponsored by Summit Publishing’s Packaging World and Automation World magazines. Held for the first time last May, that event quickly sold out. For more information on this year’s Forum, including online registration, visit www.packworld.com/paf.