UPM‑Kymmene’s Best‑Practice Audit: Elevating Reliability at Caledonian & Shotton Mills

Best‑practice in maintenance is often easy to define, but implementing a continuous improvement culture that sustains high reliability is a far more complex challenge.

Having state‑of‑the‑art techniques, procedures and systems does not guarantee a flawless operation or record‑low failure rates. Success depends on aligning maintenance strategy with production goals, risk management, and the entire organizational ecosystem.

At UPM‑Kymmene, this alignment is critical. Every department—from frontline production to senior maintenance—must understand how their actions influence the mill’s ability to meet market demand.

In this context, the United Kingdom’s Caledonian and Shotton mills undertook a comprehensive Best‑Practice (CBP) audit, designed to benchmark their reliability performance against global leaders and identify actionable improvement areas.

About the Mills

Caledonian Paper – The only UK manufacturer of magazine paper, producing over 250,000 t per year. Located 35 miles southwest of Glasgow, it serves local markets and exports to Europe, the United States and Asia.

Shotton Paper – The UK’s largest newsprint producer, with an output of ~470,000 t annually, supplying 20 % of the country’s newspaper demand. It also recycles ~350,000 t of old newspapers and magazines and is situated a few miles from Chester, North Wales.

Audit Objectives

1. Raise awareness of best‑practice standards across both mills.
2. Foster constructive collaboration between Caledonian and Shotton maintenance teams.
3. Provide a learning platform for maintenance personnel.
4. Pinpoint critical improvement opportunities and drive action.
5. Encourage transparent sharing of experiences and data.
6. Maximise the effectiveness of the maintenance workforce.

Traditional audits often focus on budgets or procedural reviews, which rarely translate into tangible performance gains. In contrast, this CBP audit offered a data‑driven, peer‑comparison approach that delivered clear, actionable insights.

The CBP Process

• Two‑day training workshop for audit teams, led by Christer Idhammar of IDCON.
• Collection of plant‑specific data and a 270‑question questionnaire covering every CBP element.
• One‑week on‑site interviews with 50 employees at each mill.
• Scoring of responses against world‑class benchmarks.
• Consensus on scores, identification of strengths, and formulation of improvement plans.
• Presentation of findings to all stakeholders by the audit’s end.

The questionnaire was meticulously crafted to evaluate:

• Plant layout and product mix.
• Staffing and hourly rates for maintenance and operations.
• Bottlenecks, production data, and safety records.
• Maintenance productivity, cost, and preventive strategies.
• Condition‑monitoring tools and predictive maintenance staffing.
• CMMS utilisation, material management, and scheduling performance.

Three thematic pillars emerged from the data: Preventive Maintenance, Planning & Scheduling, and Root‑Cause Problem Elimination—each dissected into detailed subprocesses and elements.

Audit teams scored each element on a 1–10 scale, aggregated into subprocess and key‑process scores. World‑class performance is defined as a score of 85 or higher. While both mills fell slightly short of this benchmark, the exercise revealed critical gaps and offered a roadmap for improvement.

Key Improvement Areas – Shotton

• Leadership & Organization – Develop a written, communicated long‑term strategy, KPI framework, and robust feedback loop.
• Preventive Maintenance & ECCM – Establish clear guidelines for lubrication, balancing, alignment, and leak resolution.
• Skills Development – Create a skills matrix, identify core competencies, and roll out targeted training.
• Root‑Cause Problem Elimination – Implement a standard documentation and five‑why analysis process.

Key Improvement Areas – Caledonian

• Leadership & Organization – Define a three‑year plant‑wide maintenance plan with measurable KPIs and detailed standard operating procedures.
• Planning & Scheduling – Adopt a systematic work‑prioritisation system, refine backlog management, and standardise job plans.
• Root‑Cause Problem Elimination – Launch a site‑wide RCPE programme integrated with existing maintenance systems, using cost‑effective methods where failures persist.

Both mills now have a clear, evidence‑based action plan and a renewed commitment to continuous improvement. The audit also reinforced the value of cross‑mill collaboration and knowledge sharing within the UPM‑Kymmene network.

Looking ahead, UPM‑Kymmene has the opportunity to institutionalise this benchmark framework across its 53 paper machines worldwide, ensuring that every site benefits from structured, data‑driven improvement cycles.

About the Author

Ian Farrell is a seasoned maintenance leader at UPM‑Kymmene, one of the world’s leading forest industry companies. He brings hands‑on experience from production plants and sales operations across every continent.