SUCCESS STORY
Frontline operators independently diagnosing and leading improvements
Coaching Asset Care and Culture Change at Sellafield HLWP
- Transforming maintenance, daily discipline, and culture within Container Handling & Waste Extraction (CH&WE)
Outcomes
Training Reshaped
Maintenance and Operations training and roles matched to skill levels, critical skills, and work complexity.
Proactive Maintenance
Quick kaizens tackled welding, cutting, and wash pressure issues, supported by the development of TPM asset ledgers.
Cultural Shift
18 operators trained in Lean and TPM to solve problems and plan independently, with leadership coaching to find the real root causes.
background
Sellafield Ltd operates one of the most complex nuclear sites in the world, with its High-Level Waste Plant (HLWP) critical in converting highly active liquor into vitrified waste for long-term storage.
However, the HLWP was struggling to meet its master production schedule due to breakdowns, cultural resistance, and a lack of consistent operational discipline.
Despite multiple attempts at improvement over the years, breakdowns continued to recur, daily operations felt reactive, and frontline teams were increasingly frustrated. There was a clear need to reset, not just systems, but culture. Sellafield brought in Henkan to help shift the dial by coaching the teams, not just advising them.
The central problem statement was clear:
“Why can we not get the work done, that we have planned to deliver, according to the master production schedule?”
the challenge
Breakdowns were starting to recur, daily operations felt reactive, and frontline teams were frustrated by the lack of progress. The site needed a reset – not just processes, but working systems and culture.
The Solution
In response, Sellafield launched the HAL Reset Plan, seeking not just performance improvements but a cultural transformation. Henkan was engaged to co-design and deploy a Continuous Improvement (CI) Programme underpinned by The Henkan Way – coaching-led, people-focused, and designed for sustainability.
Approach included:
- Lean Manufacturing / Operations – Deploying 5S, Daily Management, and visual controls.
- Asset Care / Maintenance – Restoring basic conditions and embedding Total Productive Maintenance (TPM).
- Cross-functional Sprints – Tackling priority operational pain points through structured, time-bound improvement cycles.
Henkan’s interventions included
- Launching Reliability Week to build shared understanding of maintenance.
- Creating detailed TPM Ledgers for Lines 1 and 3 saws, capturing mechanism diagrams and operator insights.
- Introducing autonomous maintenance routines adapted for high-hazard environments.
- Designing Daily Management Boards and piloting 5S in key cells.
- Coaching leaders through Human Factors Healthchecks, Lean Leadership Bootcamps, and “Go & See” routines.
results
- Operators identified overheating and misalignment as the true causes of recurring saw failures.
- Maintenance routines were restructured using skills matrices and waste classification.
- Over 18 operators were actively engaged in diagnosing and improving their processes.
- Saw training was led by the top operator, aligning skills with material complexity.
- Simple Swabbing processes were redesigned to improve safety and reduce reliance on bespoke packs, in addition to saving thousands of pounds per year.
- Leaders started to see the real root causes – not just the symptoms.
Perhaps most importantly, the team started to believe that change was possible – and that their voice mattered.
HLWP Operator
“I’ve learned more from the Operators than the Engineers. The culture has to change – and this place could lead the way.”
what’s next?
Sellafield now has a foundation to build on: clearer processes, engaged teams, and the start of a cultural shift. The next focus? Scaling Daily Management and TPM across HLWP – and supporting leaders to lead from the floor, not the desk.
Why it worked?
We didn’t just solve problems, we equipped HLWP teams to solve them themselves. By coaching from within, firefighting turned into foresight and confusion into clarity. The HLWP story isn’t finished, but it’s now being written by the people who run it every day.
HNK1010