DOTR: METRO MANILA SUBWAY PROJECT 30% COMPLETE

Schaeffler customer success story in Philippine mining sector

As one of the largest rolling bearing manufacturers worldwide, Schaeffler is a partner to all leading manufacturers and companies involved in the mining and processing industry. Our bearings and service solutions increase the functional reliability and performance of machines and processes. We support our customers in reducing maintenance efforts and protect their employees by providing a safe working environment. In this issue, we will share with you how Schaeffler has helped a mining corporation in Philippines optimize their maintenance efforts in their plant operations.

Slaked lime is produced at Visayas Slaked Lime Corporation’s (VSLC) plant in the Philippines. To ensure proper and reliable lubrication of the numerous fans and blowers in the dusty environment, VSLC switched from a manual to an automatic lubrication solution. With the CONCEPT1 gas-driven automatic lubricators, the company will reduce maintenance efforts in the future, protect its employees and therefore be more sustainable.

Customer Benefits

• Integrity of grease is maintained with no penetration of impurities during relubrication • Longer bearing life in fans and blowers with reliable preset time intervals

• Enhanced safety with less human deployment in hard-toreach locations • Increase in productivity of the Maintenance Team with elimination of manual lubrication • Sustainable – lubrication cartridges can be refilled up to three times

Challenge

VSLC operates in a very dusty environment resulting from the production of slaked lime and limestone. Therefore, impurities often occur in the lubricants. These impurities affect, among other things, the bearing life in the fans and blowers. The maintenance team has to keep an ongoing focus on lubrication. As the numerous lubrication points were checked and relubricated manually and due to the sometimes difficult to access lubrication points, the safety of the maintenance staff was at risk.

Schaeffler Solution

Schaeffler’s experts recommended the flexible and costeffective lubrication solution with the automatic lubricator Concept1. The CONCEPT1 automatic lubrica-

What Schaeffler’s customer says... “With the automatic lubricator, we were able in a short time to significantly reduce efforts compared to manual lubrication. We are impressed and absolutely satisfied.” — Maintenance Section Manager, VSLC

tion solution has one outlet and consists of a 125 millilitre cartridge driven by a gasproducing dry cell. The flow rate can be preset differently depending on the amount of lubricant needed for the bearings.

VSLC is very satisfied with the lubrication solution and has fitted a further 50 lubrication points with CONCEPT 1 as a first step. Another 50 lubrication points for motors will soon be installed with automatic lubricators.

SCHAEFFLER PHILIPPINES, INC.

5th Floor, Optima Building, 221 Salcedo Street, Legaspi Village 1229 Makati City, Philippines

Contact:

+639178056589 Fax: +632 7798703 E-mail: marketing_ph@ schaeffler.com Contact Person: Peralta Charleson – Head of Sales

Website:

www.schaeffler.ph

DOTR: METRO MANILA SUBWAY PROJECT 30% COMPLETE

Some 30.55 percent of the Metro Manila Subway Project (MMSP) is already complete, Department of Transportation (DOTr) Undersecretary for Railways Timothy John Batan said.

“Despite the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, again, backto-back to back major milestones were still realized despite all odds,” Batan said during an inspection of the MMSP’s Valenzuela depot.

He said 576 out of the 6,400 tunnel rings needed for the partial operability segment of the MMSP have been completed, with more underway at the MMSP’s 7.5-hectare fabrication yard in Norzagaray, Bulacan.

He said the DOTr has acquired 197,000 square meters of land and 585 structures from 324 property owners as part of the project’s right-of-way acquisition.

Despite this, he said there has been no “forced eviction resettlement” of the 183 informal settler families affected by the project through the help of the Valenzuela City government.

With 17 stations—two of which are interoperable with the North-South Commuter Railway line—the MMSP is seen to reduce travel time between Quezon City and NAIA from one hour and 10 minutes to just 35 minutes.

Through a right-of-way agreement signed with the Department of National DefenseArmed Forces of the Philippines in December 2020, he said the MMSP will make use of 50,000 square meters of DND-AFP land, with an additional 60,000 square meters of land for tunneling works, and additional 55,000 square meters of land for temporary works.

Ritchie Bros. providing the Philippines a world of choice

Driven by long term infrastructure growth, the expansion of mining activity and post COVID-19 recovery plans, the demand for construction and mining equipment in the Philippines for the medium to long term is strong. Coupled with global supply chain constraints and long lead times for buying new equipment from OEMs and their dealers, equipment users in the Philippines are now, more than ever, looking around the globe for quality used equipment.

Ritchie Bros., the global marketplace of choice in the used machinery industry, has more channels and opportunities for Filipino customers to buy and sell equipment in the global marketplace.

Ritchie Bros. pioneered live public unreserved auctions in the Philippines when they conducted auctions for the benefit of Pinoys equipment owner in the mid to late 1990s in Subic Bay. Live public unreserved auctions are how Ritchie Bros. has secured its unparalleled reputation over the past 60 years. Scheduling an auction date, marshaling hundreds if not thousands of late model quality used equipment into one auction yard, and inviting the public to bid. All assets in our unreserved auctions are sold, regardless of the final sale price, benefiting both buyer and seller.

Ritchie Bros. has replicated this model around the globe, with over 50 permanent auction facilities located in 14 counties around the world (North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia).

But as the needs of the market change and technology advances, Ritchie Bros. provides sales channels and offerings that meet the dynamic needs of our customers. Our live public unreserved auction, with thousands of assets, is still the backbone of our business. However, to match the needs of our customers, we have also developed other sales and buying channels. IronPlanet is our online only auction platform, our 24/7 marketplace, Marketplace E, allows customers to buy equipment through offer and negotiation, while Ritchie Bros. Private Treaty, provides the ability to buy and sell assets discretely with Ritchie Bros.

Each of these unique channels allows our customers more choice and timely opportunities to buy and sell equipment. Each one is uniquely formulated to provide our customers with solutions for every situation they may face. Online only platforms make it easy and convenient to purchase equipment from anywhere in the world.

Ritchie Bros. comprehensive sales solutions give you a choice of selling channels through our global network.

Our unreserved online auctions

Ritchie Bros.’ unreserved auctions help you sell heavy equipment and machinery for the best price. Since we shifted to online auctions through our Timed Auction system, we’ve seen record-breaking bidder participation and sales results. sell from your own location or at one of Ritchie Bros. yards.

Our Ritchie Bros. Private Treaty

Ritchie Bros. facilitates private treaty negotiations for a wide variety of specialized and high-value heavy equipment and industrial assets. Buying is easy: just contact us to arrange an inspection and make an offer. We will handle confidential negotiations between you and the seller and manage the settlement of transactions.

Ritchie Bros. in the Philippines

Our reserved online auctions

IronPlanet offers a convenient way to sell equipment quickly from your yard to a global buyer base. With the sale and transaction all taking place online, it’s a service designed to work with your schedule and location.

Our 24/7 marketplace

With Marketplace-E, our 24/7 online marketplace, you can set a minimum price and let us take care of finding the buyer. You can decide to

With the vision to serve the needs of our customers in the Philippines, Ritchie Bros. has set up a Philippine Country Representative based in Manila. Chris Edwards has more than 20 years’ experience in the equipment trading business in the Asia Pacific region and conveniently located in Manila to serve your needs. Have assets to sell? Need to find quality equipment for your project? Reach out to Mr. Edwards for a no-obligation consultation on how Ritchie Bros. and its many sales and distribution channels would be best for you and your situation.

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lems at a superficial, phenomenological level and as Hammer (2002) posited, it can only work effectively if placed under Process Management. Furthermore, due to its project-oriented and problem-solving focus, it cannot help in discovering better processes. The underlying assumption here is that the existing process design is sound and needs minor fine tuning to be efficient. As such, this kind of assumption will not lead to substantial performance improvement. If it happened to be that there is a wide discrepancy between the existing process performance and the desired performance, the process owner should initiate Business Process Reengineering (Hammer 2002). One should take note that the wide discrepancy in performance can be due to system disruption which we have witnessed during the pandemic.

On Business Process Reengineering, it is the third phase which is an intentional and comprehensive redesign of work. The difference between Business Process Improvement and Business Process Reengineering is analogous to the difference between waste and non-value-adding work. Waste is generated from the erroneous and inconsistent individual activities performed and it can be eliminated using DMAIC. On the other hand, non-value-adding work holds the process together hence cannot be eliminated at once. Business Process Reengineering aims to reduce the number of non-value adding work. While it is easy to identify non-value adding work, it is difficult to reorganize the process to have less of it (Hammer 2002).

In all the three phases of Business Process Management, the stages of Business Process Design shown on Figure 1 are undertaken.

In Stage 1, the activities in a business process are conceptualized and arranged sequentially to come up with the desired output. This require a lot of thinking, i.e. idea generation and brainstorming. In Stage 2, the preliminary business process design is further analyzed and more details are added such as control mechanisms (e.g. stage gate, decision, etc.). In Stage 3, the process is optimized by determining the likely pain points, bottlenecks, or vulnerabilities and countermeasures are put in place. To ensure agility, the process undergo “What-If” Scenario Analysis where various scenarios are looked into to determine countermeasures in case such scenario would occur. The scenarios generated can be as many but those which will be considered for analysis are those with high likelihood of occurrence. Layers of protection are also put in place to ensure that the likelihood of process failing is low and that it is not disastrous. Moreover, potential unintended consequences are identified and to ensure productivity gains, the process is optimized first before automation (Davenport and Brain 2018). After the approval of the process design by the client, it is implemented (Stage 4). In here, the work area and equipment are rearranged according to the designed process and employees are trained on executing it. Control mechanisms are installed and the IT systems are reconfigured. Troubleshooting is also done at this stage. In Stage 5, the process is tested and the objectives in terms of Key Performance Indicators are measured to determine if the process delivers as intended. If externalities or emergencies occur and the testing and measurement results are the same as that during normal operations, then the process can be considered agile. In view of continuous improvement, the 5-stage cycle repeats.

The stages in the foregoing paragraph were adapted from the general steps in the process design of chemical plants and petroleum refineries and follow the plan-do-check-act framework of the International Organization for Standardization.

One should take note that in all these endeavors, the application of design thinking is imperative where a wider field of view is required and external stakeholders are consulted (Bansal and MacMillan 2021). It will also be helpful to chart the business’ ecosystem and imagine the potential disruptions which could come from its various parts. Failure to have this ecosystem view is one reason why the US supply chain broke down at the onset of pandemic recovery when the demand for imported goods soared.

As Hammer (2002) mentioned, business success results from the effective performance of a welldesigned and agile business processes. By putting in place such kind of business processes, companies will be prepared for system upset and they can help stabilize the system and prevent future disruptions (Bansal and MacMillan 2021).

References

- Agile Business Consortium. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.agilebusiness.org/page/WhatisBusinessAgility> [Accessed 9 October 2021]. - Bansal, T. and MacMillan, K., 2021. How Your Organization Can Prepare for Systems Disruptions. [online] California Management Review. Available at: <https://cmr.berkeley.edu/2021/03/how-your-organization-can-prepare-for-systems-disruptions/?fbclid=IwAR 17ue8SBUCZ5YaLrFOWL_vkjf2MOG551WRLEp9QbNJsYH0Xk2gskTY028c> [Accessed 15 October 2021]. - Chountalas, P and Lagodimos, A 2012, Volume of Essays in Honour of Prof. S. Karvounis, University of Piraeus, Piraeus. - Davenport, T. and Brain, D., 2018. Before Automating Your Company’s Processes, Find Ways to Improve Them. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: <https://hbr.org/2018/06/before-automating-yourcompanys-processes-find-ways-to-improve-them> [Accessed 24 October 2021]. - Hammer, M., 2002. Process Management and the Future of Six Sigma. [online] MIT Sloan Management Review. Available at: <https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/process-management-and-the-future-of-six-sigma/> [Accessed 9 October 2021].

Figure 1. Stages of Business Process Design

Jed M. Bellen is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Bellen Management Consulting, O.P.C. based in Bacacay, Albay, Philippines. His specializations are on Business Process Management, Strategy, and Project Management. The clients he has helped to date are artist, educational institution, broadcast and print media, and a religious store. He is a Project Management Professional, a Stanford Certified Project Manager, an MBA from Asian Institute of Management (2011) and a licensed Chemical Engineer (BS Chemical Engineering, Bicol University, 2005). He can be reached via jed. bellen@bellenmc. com.

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Building Agile Business Processes

By Jed M. Bellen

If businesses have anything to learn from the Covid-19 pandemic, it should be making their operations agile. Business agility means the ability to adjust swiftly to market changes both internally and externally, address customer demands quickly and flexibly, and adapt and lead continuously the improvement initiatives in a productive and costefficient manner, while maintaining the required level of quality (Agile Business Consortium 2021). It is also based on the principles of teamwork, autonomy, and alignment. Having an agile business is becoming a strategic imperative because companies these days face more demanding customers, tougher competition (Hammer 2002) and a disrupted, volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, and diverse world. As Bansal and MacMillan (2021) posited, only a handful of events made it obvious that every business is embedded within a larger open system which necessitates for building agile, adaptive, and resilient organizations.

To achieve business agility, first, it has to become part of corporate objectives which can be translated into processperformance goals through balancedscorecard and economic-value-added techniques. The process-performance goals can be attained by putting in place a robust, flexible, and fast-response business processes. A business process is defined as “a construct consisting of a set of clearly pre-defined, structured, and logically related activities that work together and use resources in order to transform specific inputs into desired outputs (Chountalas & Lagodimus 2012).”

When we talk of business process, we are reminded of the bigger umbrella of business process management which is a structured methodology to improve performance that focus on disciplined design and careful execution of a business’ end-to-end processes (Hammer 2002). It encompasses business process design, business process improvement, and business process reengineering.

Business Process Design is the first phase as the designer charts the business processes to be implemented. At this stage, parsimony of process steps is observed but provisions for shifting to ‘externalities scenario’ operations are included. Parsimony in this case means employing simple methods and using fewer resources. The activities in a process are aligned to serve customer needs. Furthermore, the design should specify the duration of doing the activities and the respective responsible persons. It should also be ensured that the defined performance objectives mentioned earlier are applied consistently across the processes to ensure repeatability and consistency (Hammer 2002).

The second phase is Business Process Improvement. In here, the process owner can make minor modifications to the process design in order to fix a flaw or address new issues. Among the tools used to improve a process is Six Sigma which uses statistical analytic tools to uncover flaws in process execution. The most widely used methodology is known as the DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, and control). The premise here is that businesses have to be consistent in terms of high levels of quality, low levels of cost, and that a disciplined, organized approach will eradicate variance, waste, and error in the operations. However, Six Sigma cannot address business prob-

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