• For over 350 years Royal Mail have been delivering letters and packages to households and businesses across the UK.

• In 2008 Royal Mail adopted a technique called World Class Mail (WCM), developed by Professor Hajime Yamashinas’s 10 pillars of World Class Manufacturing. WCM is a collection of tools for improving safety, quality, productivity and reducing breakdowns.

• Initially implemented in just 3 Mail Centre’s, Royal Mail’s ongoing commitment to the rollout of WCM has resulted in full involvement from the majority of Mail and Distribution Centre’s (including the Bristol Mail Centre), whilst ensuring that people, processes and practices are conducive to the journey of Continuous Improvement.

• To adhere to the autonomous and professional maintenance pillars of WCM, Royal Mail required performance measurements to be captured in real-time and sought greater accuracy than those generated by the existing manual data collection method.

• It was essential that the reasons and locations of quality losses were quantifiable, in order to respond quickly and to focus on appropriate improvement efforts.

• Royal Mail was drawn to the platform for it’s flexibility to be used across all mail sorting equipment, regardless of the vendor or age.

• Professional maintenance activities had to be driven from the same platform so that the costs of spare parts and maintenance activities could be attributed to the number of items processed rather than a fixed time base.

• One of the primary requirements was for operators to be fully involved in the improvement process through having access to the visualisation of performance measurements in real-time. This will ultimately encourage operators to contribute to the built-in culture of Continuous Improvement.

Sought-After Productivity Solution:

“Having visual information about the performance of our equipment is an essential part of

our WCM initiative at the Royal Mail.  

We had a paper based system for capturing performance losses - this was time consuming and the accuracy of the

information we gathered was often questioned.  

Cimlogic and TrakSYS was an ideal fit for us, it gave us the real time data we initially needed with trusted accuracy.

We did not stop there – the system has been further developed to assist us on our WCM journey.”

CASE STUDY

How Cimlogic Delivered First Class Improvements to Royal Mail Bristol

Company Profile The Business Requirements

Shane Morcom - World Class Mail Champion, Royal Mail - Bristol

Cimlogic Ltd, Salts Mill, Victoria Road, Saltaire, West Yorkshire BD18 3LFe: enquiries@cimlogic.co.uk t: 01274 599 955 f: 0870 762 5559

www.cimlogic.co.uk

• Within one working day Cimlogic installed a TrakSYS™ performance management pilot system on a single IMP (Integrated Mail Processor) using existing sensors. This allowed performance metrics to be instantly recorded in real-time.

• An intuitive operator interface provided simple interaction and instant feedback, giving them the tools to suggest improvements and to make an instant impact on production.

• KPI reports presenting metrics such as OEE, TEEP and MTBF were instantly accessible to Royal Mail staff. Ensuring key business intelligence arrived at the right persons door while they still had the ability to make an impact on the days throughput.

• Expansion of TrakSYS™ will allow the system to obtain and pass information back to other business systems such as SAP, allowing for schedules to take account of the expected performance and cost of professional maintenance.

“The project was delivered on time with absolute professionalism. The application is really

simple to use and the IMP operators have really taken to it. 

We are now working to take the system to the next level by including maintenance schedules with images

and guides for each maintenance activity, as well as tracking if maintenance activities were performed on

time or ahead of schedule.”

The Cimlogic Solution

• 20 point OEE improvement in just six months – from an average of 35% to 55% !

• IMP5 at the Bristol site is now consistently amongst the top performers of over 124 IMP’s in the country, previously ranked 74th !

• The Cost and frequency of maintenance activities can be monitored and their frequency aligned to give best availability and performance.

• Royal Mail now has real-time accurate visibility of the top losses.

• Full employee engagement has been achieved – a key component of lean, improving efficiencies from the shop floor through to senior management.

The Benefits

Outstanding manufacturing solutions

Shane Morcom - World Class Mail Champion, Royal Mail - Bristol