Owens Corning is a global leader in building and industrial materials, producing insulation, roofing, and composites. The company operates with a strong focus on sustainability, safety, and performance improvement across all sites worldwide. In the Netherlands, Owens Corning runs a production facility in Apeldoorn. This site plays a key role in delivering high-quality non-woven glass fiber veils. Owens Corning wants to further professionalize their maintenance strategy and organization and asked MaxGrip to help including building and implementing an asset hierarchy in SAP-PM.
Project Highlights
- Within just one year, the Owens Corning site in Apeldoorn has successfully evolved into a best-practice location for maintenance execution and SAP-PM usage
- Strong teamwork between Owens Corning and MaxGrip's global team with an essential hands-on approach to change and continuous improvement
- A newly built asset structure implemented in SAP-PM and aligned with supporting systems
- Valuable contribution to refining and enhancing the corporate asset hierarchy standard
- Optimized OPEX budget setup aligned with maintenance strategy
Ambitions: Elevating Maintenance Execution
The project's ambition was clear: to elevate the maturity of maintenance execution, engineering, and reliability practices through the correct setup and effective use of SAP-PM. At the start of the project in April 2024, SAP-PM was being used to schedule preventive maintenance during shutdowns by one planner. The maintenance department saw the opportunity to also manage other maintenance activities in the EAM system. MaxGrip was engaged to train planners and set up the correct and complete asset hierarchy or breakdown structure in SAP-PM.
Approach: Building the Foundation for Continuous Success
While these initial requests were being addressed, it became clear that training and setting up the asset hierarchy in SAP alone would not be enough. Together with Owens Corning, MaxGrip reviewed and aligned the entire organizational setup to support the new processes.
This included:
- Reviewing various organizational structures together with the Maintenance Manager and Human Resources and selecting the most suitable one
- Updating and creating role descriptions aligned with the new organization and way of working
- Discussing these new role profiles with staff, which was received positively
- Reviewing the meeting structure and introducing new meetings, combining Owens Corning standards and MaxGrip recommendations
Steps Taken to Build and Implement the Asset Hierarchy
With the organizational foundation in place and roles clarified, the next phase focused on translating these improvements into the SAP-PM system. A step-by-step approach was taken to build and implement a complete, reliable, and future-proof asset hierarchy.
- Asset Master Data
The project began with an exploration of available asset master data. The P&IDs were identified as the best available master data source to build the structure upon. While some data required updates or supplementation—a common situation in many organizations—the team decided that this was the best and strongest foundation for developing an accurate and structured asset overview. - Asset Structure Creation
Owens Corning has a corporate standard for the data structure, but this didn't fully support the required asset hierarchy. MaxGrip collaborated with Engineering to create a new structure that adhered to corporate standards while incorporating local tagging philosophy. This update was approved by Corporate Maintenance Management and a proposal has been written to have this adopted into the company-wide standard. - Data Improvement
To ensure a reliable asset structure, the team supplemented the available P&IDs with data from the Distributed Control System (DCS), which reflects the live operating environment. This provided accurate and up-to-date tag information. By combining and aligning both data sources, a dedicated team of experts—working both on-site and remotely—was able to create a robust and comprehensive asset overview that accurately represents most of the current installation. - Review and Approval
Draft versions of the asset hierarchy were carefully reviewed by two local experts per P&ID, ensuring valuable site-specific knowledge was incorporated. This collaborative review helped identify recent changes and optimizations that had not yet been documented. After incorporating these insights, the finalized asset data was uploaded into SAP-PM. A final validation round followed to ensure the highest possible data quality and completeness. - Integration with TPM-OEE Tool
Owens Corning also uses a TPM-OEE tool for reporting failures. The tool was updated with the new asset structure to enable future integration with SAP. This update significantly improved data and information consistency across tools and systems.
Roll Out of Reliability Work Process
To ensure sustainable performance, Owens Corning rolled out the work process. MaxGrip facilitated classroom training and on-the-job coaching in close collaboration with a SAP specialist. The rollout began with planners and expanded to all other roles involved. This new way of working also impacted financial processes. Together with the Finance Manager, MaxGrip reviewed the OPEX budget structure to align it with the updated maintenance workflows, enabling optimized budget control. In parallel, Owens Corning's Reliability Engineers started reconfiguring and optimizing maintenance plans. Now that the fundamentals are in place, the process is being finetuned using KPIs. Owens Corning and MaxGrip agreed to allow the organization time to get used to the new processes and fully adopt them before exploring further improvements—such as optimizing the MRO process.
MaxGrip remains actively engaged through regular check-ins and ad hoc support as needed.
Benefits: Best Practice Site
Within just one year, the Owens Corning site in Apeldoorn has successfully evolved into a best-practice location for maintenance execution and SAP-PM usage. This achievement reflects the strong collaboration between Owens Corning and MaxGrip's global team, as well as the site's and Maintenance Managers proactive approach to embracing change and driving continuous improvement.
Benefits:
- Clear organizational alignment with updated workflows and defined roles
- A newly built asset structure implemented in SAP-PM and aligned with supporting systems (f.e. OEE-system)
- Valuable contribution to refining and enhancing the corporate asset hierarchy standard
- Smooth and successful rollout of the reliability work process
- Optimized OPEX budget setup aligned with maintenance strategy
- High adoption rate of new processes, enabled by targeted training and coaching
The project is regarded by both teams as a highly rewarding collaboration that delivered lasting impact and set the stage for continued operational excellence.
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