Efficient Plant June 2020 - 26

feature | solution focus

Operating System

The Americold
Operating System
connects a global
facility network to
improve transparency,
awareness, and asset
reliability.

Drives Reliability
AMERICOLD REALTY TRUST, Atlanta (americold.com), temperature-controlled warehouses are a "mission-critical" component of the
food supply chain. Our function is to ensure the safe, secure preservation of foods that feed communities across the globe. Thus, the reliability of our refrigeration systems and material-handling and automation
equipment within our temperature-controlled warehouses relies on all
13,000 employees. We accomplish this with the Americold Operating
System (AOS).
With 183 sites across three continents in five countries, it is extremely
important to operate as one company. To do so requires an operating
system that ensures integration through associate engagement, leadership, end-to-end strategy, and a continuous focus on improvement.
AOS provides a roadmap for building capability within our teams and
continuous improvement across our work processes. Sites that have the
highest levels of AOS maturity demonstrate a direct correlation with our
highest overall business performance.
The Maintenance Excellence component within AOS is focused on
developing reliability and maintainability expertise, improving maintenance cost as a percentage of replacement asset value, lengthening
the mean time between failure, and creating a culture of reliability
practitioners. In short, it's our playbook for reliability. Strategically the
elements follow the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle.

| EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM

EP2006fsolfocus.indd 26

Keith Ruprecht
Brian Dunn
Americold Realty Trust

The first, and most critical, element, is Standard Work. It provides
routine meeting agendas that are directly linked to the performance
elements of Maintenance Excellence. Standard Work defines each
meeting objectives, attendees, agendas, inputs, and desired outcomes.
It also lays the foundation that enables our maintenance teams across
183 sites to operate as one and provides a roadmap that enables our
daily/weekly success.
Decision making requires accurate data, and data from our enterprise
management system (SAP) feeds our Standard Work dashboard. The
dashboard provides the financial results, key activities, reliability performance, and forward-looking performance indicators that allow teams
to pivot quickly to close gaps and seize opportunities for improvement.
The dashboard is known across the organization as the Maintenance
One Pager.
The Maintenance One Pager allows any team member at any facility
to monitor critical performance metrics such as spend, energy, asset
availability, PM effectiveness, safety, and process-safety management
(PSM). It is the driver for daily and weekly meetings, and our monthly
reliability meetings. The monthly meeting is when we review, as a larger
team, what's working and what can be improved. It's at those meetings
that maintenance teams develop plans to address bad actors and methodically reduce unplanned maintenance and increase asset availability.

JUNE 2020

5/27/20 4:54 PM

http://www.americold.com http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM

Efficient Plant June 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Efficient Plant June 2020