The customer trusted Quaker to know and be a part of GM's process and procedures. This level of confidence led to an open exchange that benefits both parties.

“When all the low-hanging fruit is gone, we need to grow closer to the customer and their manufacturing/reporting processes, to discover what can be improved upon to be of even greater value to the plant,” Roger Chmura, operations manager for Quaker, said.

That is reinforced by an excellent working relationship with the customer, in which the customer knows and trusts that its chemical management services provider is working in their best interest.

It was this relationship that helped GM succeed in tackling this cooling water system glitch.

Why now?

There was general consensus that the cooling water system in the plant was contaminated with oil.

On multiple occasions Metal Assembly complained, the problem was examined, and meetings were held involving plant engineers, plant maintenance, Metal Assembly supervisors, chemical management, the wastewater treatment provider, and the oil supplier.

Many suggestions and ideas were recorded during these meetings, but none of them succeeded in resolving the issue. The meetings always ended without a true plan; thus the contamination issue would fall off the agenda until Metal Assembly complained again, and the cycle would start all over again.

The chemical management services provider was involved primarily due to its relationship with the cooling water treatment provider and the oil supplier.

The chemical management services provider is a “value added resource” within the plant. After ten years of trusted service, the customer has come to accept the chemical manager as part of the team. As part of the team, the chemical manager was invited to a problem-solving class held by the customer. The class introduced the chemical manager to a methodology GM calls “Statistical Engineering” - a disciplined philosophy of root cause convergence based on strategy and contrast.

Statistical engineering had typically been used for solving quality and warranty issues, but by training the chemical manager, the scope had been broadened.

Once the chemical manager was trained in statistical engineering, the chemical manager analyzed the cooling water contamination issue from this new, skilled viewpoint.

By applying the statistical engineering methods of the customer and working closely with many people in the plant, a true solution was finally realized; the trusting relationships, a deep knowledge of the systems, access to process information, and speaking the plant's problem solving language had all come together.

“Training the chemical management supplier in technical problem solving has been one of our best investments — after training they hit the floor running, identifying several growing problems. They were able to gain an understanding of how the problems worked and, through engineering, come up with irreversible corrective actions. Their efforts have saved us money and improved the environment simultaneously,” Phil Brooks, GM statistical engineering master, said.

Results

The statistical engineering project initiated by GM's chemical management services provider was based on the problem statement: “Find and eliminate the root cause of contamination in the cooling water system causing downtime in Metal Assembly.”

By following statistical engineering methodology, the chemical management services provider identified what the contamination actually was (see Figure 4), where it was coming from, and how to stop it.

The problem had to do with heat exchangers (see Figure 5) on high-pressure hydraulic systems — not the units themselves, but rather with the plant's start-up procedure.

“Using the statistical engineering process, the chemical manager was able to prove where and how oil was contaminating the plant's cooling water. We had previously suspected the heat exchangers, but our conventional testing methods were unable to detect the leaks,” Steve Andreen, manufacturing engineering director for General Motors, said.

Once the contamination was stopped, the chemical management services provider began the process of cleaning out all of the residual contamination left in the cooling water system.