ALL IMPROVEMENT IS CHANGE BUT NOT ALL CHANGE IS IMPROVEMENT

IN 2006, THE ENGINEERING team at the NSW Sugar Milling Co-Operative (Co-Op) Harwood Mill and Refinery began the process of examining their effectiveness, with the aim of better utilising existing personnel resources to strengthen their ability to deliver value to the Co-Op by way of growing their LIMS (Scott, 2008): growing their focus on Leadership; growing their focus on Improvement; growing their focus on Maintenance; growing their focus on Systems. An initial paper was presented to the ASSCT (Peppernell et al., 2009) reporting on progress with the focus on maintenance and how the first 3 parts of a 5-point strategy were being implemented to drive the improvement of this element. Gaining control of the maintenance effort was the critical first step to unlock the potential within the team to expand their improvement focus towards a broader range of leadership, improvement and systems initiatives. This paper looks briefly at the development and progression into stages 4 and 5 of the maintenance strategy but primarily reports on how the strategic management approach has operated to release potential from within the existing team to achieve other positive outcomes encompassing: occupational health and safety (OHS), employee engagement, continuous improvement (CI), energy efficiency opportunities (EEO), and systems development.