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Caterpillar - rethinking "painting within the lines"

Mitchell, G.

The constant attention that leading manufacturers are paying to building upon competitive advantages will, over time, drive the rethinking of conventional wisdom. A practical example of this, involving large-scale painting operations, occurred between 2000 and 2001 at Caterpillar's Mining and Construction Equipment (MCE) division. The experience illustrates why Caterpillar now opts for an internally managed approach to the design or redesign of many of the company's paint-system assets around the world. As part of a cost-reduction and building-consolidation project launched by MCE management in 2000, all products painted in the division's two large painting systems had to be accommodated in one location. Once the system was installed, demonstrated performance became the day-to-day return on the effective project design and equipment procurement. Advancements made by the SCADAware control of the completed system are substantial and include an interesting combination of control technology and workforce optimization. The SPC control and monitoring of paint and solvent usage is handled by Autoquip's Autolog software, which collects and records real-time data of individual units. This is useful not only for quality assurance purposes but also for environmental permit reporting purposes. Since full production began in December 2001, Decatur's MCE paint operation met or surpassed every cost and efficiency goal set for the team 14 months before. Paint finish quality has never been higher, and the paint line staff consistently uses two fewer people per shift to paint in two shifts what formerly required three shifts plus overtime, working most saturdays. Per-unit usage of paint flush solvent is approximately half of what it was and per-unit usage of paint has also been significantly reduced. At the end of the day, the gains made by an empowered group of MCE employees and PFG staff have served as an outstanding example, reinforcing Caterpillar's novel approach to the acquisition of paint and material-handling systems. PFG has subsequently completed other internal and external projects, most recently a large and challenging system in Mexico, all with similar results. These results will be chronicled in an upcoming issue.