Optimize and streamline before digitalizing

A major actor in the nuclear industry

Our client produces elements for nuclear power plants and also manufactures zirconium assemblies used for nuclear fuel on several sites.

They launched a digital transformation programme of their industrial processes. For these processes, digitalization must lead to a drastic reduction in downtime of the parts and also the creation time of manufacturing reports connected with nuclear regulations.

Streamline and help the solutions converge

In the plan to digitalize their industrial processes, our client had already launched several projects and one of them involved the elements manufacturing processes. This is what SPC worked on with the client.

Similar projects had already been launched locally and some of them had resulted in the implementation of different solutions.

The challenge was on the one hand, to streamline, and on the other hand, define the requirements so that the different factories converged.  In fact, these factories do not use the same processes or have the same production constraints. The objective for the equipment on these sites was therefore to have a single unique MES-type solution.

The key was to find an easily maintainable solution which would make the decision-making processes easier and faster by bringing real-time information to all the actors concerned. In addition, this would help limit the downtime of the parts and lead to the collection and centralization of reliable and contextualized production information enabling richer, adapted and simpler production reporting.

Relying on a unique study to cover the different processes

As the production processes are not identical for the different sites, and as some of them manufacture unique and complex parts whereas others make simpler parts but in a larger volume output, our client thought of starting two studies.

However, our approach was rather to offer a single overall study in order to determine all the gaps in terms of the needs of the different sites and undertake a convergence of these sites.

We therefore first led a site approach to take into account what existed and highlight the problems/difficulties on each site. For this, we involved the different industrial actors on each site using thematic workshops (Production, Logistics, Quality, Maintenance, Methods). Second, we worked on the convergence of the needs with all the representatives together and from this basis, focused on the definition of the global needs for all the sites. With this approach, we produced a roadmap of how the project would be implemented based on the common needs and priorities.

A relevant and functional target and an implementation strategy for the project over a 5-year period

This study over the different sites enabled us to bring together the different actors who did not know each other and who thought that their needs were specific. In addition, it helped converge towards an identical global requirement, which was even slightly modifiable to suit clearly-identified specificities.

Furthermore, this study underlined the functional gaps and inconsistent use of existing solutions but also the need to launch a hardware project in order to address the complexity of certain activities.

Finally, using our business skills, methodology and much feedback, we were able to define a functional and relevant target, a roadmap to progressively reach it, as well as a deployment strategy and we could dimension the resources necessary for this 5-year project.