News Archive
2009 News archive
Mending maintenance and improving profitability
Right tools, rights parts and engineering team competence are all keys to getting maintenance slick and effective. But alone they are not enough, as Brian Tinham, Plant Engineer discovers. Read the article in August's Plant Engineer, where Richard Jones, MCP's Managing Director talks about Maintenance Best Practice....."Maintenance Engineers need to help managers understand how they can change operations and improve profitability."
MCP's 17th Edition Training
Major British companies, covering a variety of businesses, have taken advantage of MCP’s new 17th Edition training courses since April 2008. In that time over 100 delegates have participated in their 17th Edition five day full course and their one day update at training venues in Reading and Birmingham. Key organisations which have participated include BAA, Johnson Controls, ICI, AWE, IKEA, Mabey & Johnson, Airbus and Royal Mail. The results have been amazing with 100% success rate on the full course, and a 92% success rate on the update course.
John Saysell, Technical Training Manager remarks “This success rate reflects the standard of our trainers. All of whom are practically involved in their own workplace and this ensures that they can relate the theory to the practice and bring their experience to bear to the advantage of their students.”
MCP's AMIS Research show how companies can improve performance
Read the August issue of Maintenance and Engineering to find out what opportunities for improvement MCP discovered when analysing the AMIS research. AMIS, MCP's Asset Management Improvement Service has been used to assist in over 4000 improvement programmes worldwide within food and drink, pharmaceuticals, chemical, general manufacturing, utilities and facilities management.
Training leads to production gains at United Biscuits
In times when production efficiency is crucial, and plant uptime levels critical, a multi-skilled engineering workforce is an effective workforce. Michelle Lea visited United Biscuits' McVities's plant in Harlesden, to find out how MCP Consulting and Training is training engineers in the skills they need to keep production running....full article
Training that delivers manufacturing cost reduction
Read Peter Gagg's article in this months maintenance and engineering magazine. During times of uncertainty, businesses often make the mistake of assuming that the only way to survive is workforce reduction. However if a company can be guaranteed that cost reduction would be apparent within 6 weeks by training their staff to be more productive and efficient, then training would be their first option.
The ten questions you should ask about your maintenance activity and physical assets
If you are looking at ways to reduce your maintenance costs this helpful short check list from MCP will help you to ensure you are covering all aspects of maintenance and asset management activity. If you answer no to more than two of the questions you are missing an opportunity to reduce your maintenance costs and improve your plant performance, which typically results in lower cost of goods sold. Reducing maintenance costs
Noel Grinsted
The Directors of MCP Consulting and Training regret to inform you that our fellow director; Noel Grinsted, died suddenly on Sunday 10th May, aged 57 years. He leaves behind him a wife and two young sons and our thoughts are with them at this very sad time.
Noel was a founder member of the Institute of Asset Management and was actively involved in the institutes growth and development. More recently he was heavily involved in the development and introduction of PAS 55. Noel Grinsted
MCP develop skills training database for manufacturing teams
MCP’s web based training database will enable you to manage the skills and training requirements of your workforce. It will keep track of when a course needs updating in line with legislation, identify the skills needed by an entire team and enable individuals to assess themselves. Find out about MCP's Electronic Training Needs Analysis.
The ten questions you should ask about your maintenance activity and physical assets
If you are looking at ways to reduce your maintenance costs this helpful short check list from MCP will help you to ensure you are covering all aspects of maintenance and asset management activity. If you answer no to more than two of the questions you are missing an opportunity to reduce your maintenance costs and improve your plant performance, which typically results in lower cost of goods sold. Reducing maintenance costs
Cross training in MCP’s Mechanical to Electrical course supports Scottish & Newcastle’s Berkshire Brewery redundancy programme
The company recognizes the value of treating people properly, helping them into the next phase of their lives, and with this in mind worked with MCP to offer their technicians the City and Guilds accredited Mechanical to Electrical course.
MCP launch PAS 55 one day awareness training
MCP’s PAS 55 one day training course will increase your understanding of what PAS 55 involves. It will also provide you with an awareness of the requirements for compliance and certification. PAS 55 training
The National Skills Academy for Food and Drink Manufacturing has recognised MCP as champion for engineering and maintenance
The NSA for Food and Drink Manufacturing has been designed to provide the food and drink industry with the training it needs to develop the skills of employees to drive the productivity and competitiveness of the sector. MCP has joined other providers from across the country as a member of the NSA, as a specialist in Engineering Maintenance training.
www.foodanddrink.nsacademy.co.uk
PAS 55 offers organisations an independent standard for asset management best practice - one which could help them to lower costs, deliver sustainability and satisfy regulators - MCP's Noel Grinsted PAS 55 article in FMWorld
Following on from the success of Diageo's St James Gate site achieving world class asset care status and interest from the article in the Manufacturer magazine Diageo are now hosting an asset management seminar -MCP are organising the AMIS Master class in Dublin during late January.
Find our details on the keynote pater, Peter Gagg presented at the 9th BEMAS Maintenance Day in December 2008 (The Belgium Maintenance Society) - Maintenance, a key driver for reducing costs. ...Further Details
Autumn 08 News
October News
Exclusive operator asset care seminar at Johnson and Johnson
Johnson and Johnson, Val de Reuil France are hosting an operator asset care and performance improvement seminar on the 19th November. The intimate event will be workshop style, and will give operations, manufacturing and engineering heads from Reckitt Benckiser, Warburtons and GlaxoSmithKline the opportunity to share experiences around effective maintenance techniques. The Johnson and Johnson site in France is recognised as world class, and they foresee the event as an excellent opportunity to discuss and initiate further improvement techniques.
September News
The Diageo-owned Guinness Brewery embarked on a journey into asset care.
Read the "The road to reliability" article from the Manufacturer's August issue detailing Diageo's steps to success with support from MCP Consulting and Training.
Summer News from MCP
August News
MCP Consulting and Training will be exhibiting at the CIPD show - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
The three day exhibition and seminar is at the Harrogate International Centre between Tuesday September 16 and Thursday 18th September. It is the UK's largest Human Resources forum aimed at keeping people management and development professionals up to date with the latest issues, thinking and trends.
Come and visit MCP on stand M117, and find out more about our technical, maintenance and management training programmes.
To find out more and pre-register for the show, please click here
July News
MCP work with West Midlands Business Link to offer over 50% off electrical and maintenance training during July and August
Organisations within the West Midlands with employee numbers between 10 and 249 are eligible for a minimum of 50% off a range of training programmes from MCP Consulting and Training. The “Director Development Programme” from Business Link, West Midlands Brokerage Service is only available to managerial staff within Birmingham, Black Country, Solihull, Staffordshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire, Coventry and Warwickshire and Shropshire. Click for full press release
For further details on Business Link go to: www.businesslinkwm.co.uk
April News
April 8th, Euromaintenance, Brussels - To receive a copy of the paper "Delivering World Class Asset Care in a 250 year old Brewery" presented by MCP and Diageo please click here....
Get Connected - MCP are presenting at the next Manufacturing Pro User Group in Stratford 6th and 7th May. Noel Grinsted will be part of a session on "Are your plant assets performing to full profit potential?" please click here for more details.
New Qualification in Business Improvement
Managing continuous improvement programmes can only truly be successful when all your workforce, from shopfloor to topfloor are engaged and committed to the improvement process. Success in todays marketplace demands that everybody in the company is empowered to identify and eliminate waste, in order to make significant improvements in performance. A learning programme from MCP in Business Improvement Techniques can help to involve employees in the improvement of business efficiency and continuous improvement.
March News
MCP provide training on NEW 17th Edition Wiring Regulations
Jumping on the 17th Edition band wagon MCP is ready and waiting to offer 17th edition training from January 2008 to maintenance technicians within the manufacturing and facilities sectors...Read More
St James’s Gate Brewery ensures Diageo World Class Status through AMIS
Dublin – St James’s Gate Brewery, Diageo Ireland’s production centre for Guinness and one of Dublin’s most famous landmarks, has become the first Irish manufacturing plant, and the first brewery worldwide to achieve AMIS world class Operational Excellence status.
With a focus on delivering outstanding business performance, Diageo embarked on this programme over 3 years ago with the goal of achieving World Class status within 4 years. The programme focused on continuous improvement to deliver best practice asset care and enhanced plant performance across the Brewing and Kegging departments in relation to quality, service, health & safety, environmental performance and cost management.
In 2004, the team at St James’s Gate, as part of their constant quest for business improvement, asked management consultancy MCP to perform its AMIS Benchmarking audit and help deliver the AMIS Improvement programme. Initial activities included the development of a cohesive Asset Care Strategy with senior management sponsorship and the establishment of processes to deliver plant reliability more effectively.
Guinness was first brewed at St James’s Gate almost 250 years ago and today the brewery produces the equivalent of almost 1 billion pints of Guinness a year for markets around the world. In the last couple of decades, significant investment and operational improvement has transformed the Guinness Brewery into a world-class facility. Proving that age is no barrier to success, the AMIS world class status achievement has been delivered by a change programme in parallel to many other achievements. (Less than 4% of the 4,000 participating companies around the world have achieved world-class AMIS status.) In a busy period for St James’s Gate in the run-up to Christmas, the Brewery collected no fewer than six external awards – accreditation to two new management system standards in Energy Management (IS393) and Food Safety (ISO22000), winning three national awards in Safety (National Irish Safety Organisation), Environmental Award (Chambers Ireland Presidents Award), Energy Management Award (Sustainable Energy Ireland) as well as achieving AMIS world class status.
Guy Dumbrell, the Site Operations Manager for St James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin commented on this recent success: “2007 has been a particularly successful year for us at St James’s Gate. It is very pleasing to have received external recognition for our hard work and success in these six areas and to now have been benchmarked as a world-leading operation. For these awards to come at the same time is unprecedented and reflects the involvement and engagement of all of our people on the St James’s Gate site towards achieving our goal. We are very proud of the many achievements that have been recognised by all of these awards. ”
Starting as a local initiative at St James’s Gate, the AMIS programme is
now being rolled out across other Diageo Global Supply production sites around the world.