Precision Pump & Valve Receives Training in Documentation Development, 6S and Business System Transformation

For over sixty-five years Precision Pump & Valve Service, Inc. (“PPVS”), headquartered just outside Charleston, West Virginia, has combined engineered product solutions with industry-leading service throughout the oil and gas, water/sewer, power plant, petrochemical, and refining industries. They sell and service products from Flygt, Consolidated, Peerless, Howden Roots and more, with satellite offices in Louisville, Kentucky; Jasper, Alabama; Terre Haute, Indiana; and Wheeling, West Virginia.

Precision Pump & Valve Service recognized that legacy procedures and practices were causing inefficiencies in their operations and production. They requested assistance from the WVU Industrial Extension, part of the MEP National Network™, to identify/prioritize the most significant bottlenecks and to devise a continuous improvement program.

The WVU Industrial Extension provided a multi-pronged approach to resolving the continuous improvement challenges at Precision. The first step was to develop process maps for each department which helped to identify key tasks. Then, also using the process maps, the WVU Industrial Extension worked collaboratively with representatives from all departments to identify the accepted best practices. Training documentation was developed for identified best practices.    

For training documentation and development the WVU Industrial Extension identified best practices and assisted in training and development of related documentation. This included: completing training documentation for the manual valve shop; reviewing documentation generated for the pump shop to identify updates and revisions required for documentation to be released to the plant floor; developing job site documentation for activities related to the gas and oil industry; developing training documentation required for the relief valve shop; and working with precision pump and valve service leadership to develop an onboarding program for new employees.

The WVU-IE/MEP also provided training for selected Precision employees in each area of the Cross Lanes facility to teach participants how to take ownership of, and sustain, workplace organization, cleanliness, and safety through application of 5S. Precision Pump and Valve Service also attended 6 WVU Industrial Extension webinars including, "Creating a Process Map" and "Creating Job Instructions".