Maintenance Management 101: Part 2

Maintenance Management 101: Part 2

• Preventive and predictive maintenance is the most important work you can do.
  There is a big difference between “urgent” and “important”. PM/PdM activities are not urgent, but they are important. If you defer these tasks because some urgent activity is allowed to take precedence, the consequence will be a failure at some point in the future. The future failure will very likely cause more PM/PdM to be deferred, resulting in another failure, etc., etc. It’s a vicious cycle that has no end!
  
  Keeping up with scheduled proactive activities is the only way to break the cycle. You must make PM/PdM work a high priority and make sure the tasks get done according to the schedule. A good way to do this is to populate the weekly work schedule with some portion of low priority work on equipment that does not require a process outage to execute. This is the work you can defer if an emergency occurs. If your schedule contains only high priority work, you will be forced to make a decision to defer something of equal importance. And, if you defer PM/PdM work, your organization will quickly come to the conclusion that you’re not serious about the proactive maintenance environment.
  
  Another way to show the importance of PM/PdM is to audit the program periodically. Since the routine can get somewhat boring, there is a tendency for crafts people to be “less than diligent” in their execution. However, if the manager spot-checks after a PM has been done and provides prompt feedback if something is amiss, the expectations become very clear. Also, an equipment failure is a great time to audit the PM/PdM activity. One of the first questions that should be asked after an equipment failure is “Why didn’t our PM/PdM program prevent this?”



• Proper planning of maintenance work will provide you with free labor.
  Statistical work sampling studies show that the BEST productivity (hands-on-tools-time) you can expect without planning is around 35%. Most reactive organizations are lower than that. The remaining 65% of the craftsperson’s day is spent trying to find parts, looking for technical information, talking to Operations to see what’s wrong with the equipment, and other nonproductive activities. If you have 20 people in your crew, they are doing the equivalent work of 7 people at 100% productivity. In essence, you’re paying for 13 people who aren’t adding value to your organization.
  
  Some productivity loss is unavoidable; planning the work in advance will eliminate the avoidable delays. With good planning, you can expect a workforce productivity of 55% or better. That’s a 57% improvement in the amount of work your crew can do in a day. Do the math; your 20-person workforce can now do the work of 11 people at 100% productivity. You just added the equivalent of four people to your workforce - at no additional cost! In addition, your workforce is less frustrated because they have what they need to do a quality job.
  
  Planning also provides other benefits. Since the planning function is so integrated into the work management process, it provides the “glue” that holds it together and ensures that it functions properly. Planners also provide a “quality assurance” function to make sure that the data in your system is accurate and meaningful. Considering these benefits, a good planner can be one of the most valuable members of your organization!



• You have to build a partnership with Operations.
  One of the easiest traps to fall into is to create an adversarial relationship with the Operations organization. After all, if they wouldn’t break it, you wouldn’t have to fix it, right? Bet if you asked them, they’d say that if you’d fix it correctly, it wouldn’t break. You spend a lot of time and effort trying to decide who gets the “blame” for an equipment failure, and it usually winds up in your lap. This is a counterproductive situation and one that is guaranteed to cause your maintenance process to be reactive.
  
  Face it; your functions are interdependent. The plant cannot exist without Operations, nor can it exist without Maintenance. Neither function can be successful without the other. A proactive Maintenance function is dependent on operators being the “first line of defense” and taking responsibility for equipment care. It is also dependent on getting necessary downtime for correcting problems discovered on predictive inspections. Your weekly work schedule is worthless if Operations is not involved in its creation because they have to commit to the equipment being available at the appointed time.
  
  A great way to build a partnership is to sit down with your Operations counterpart and have a frank discussion about what each needs from the other in order to be successful. Draft a “partnership agreement” that spells out, in writing, your responsibilities to each other. Commit to it, sign it, and review it periodically to make sure you are both complying with it.

Maintenance Management 101: Part 1

Maintenance Management 101: Part 1

Introduction:

You’ve just been named Maintenance Manager of a large manufacturing plant. You have the responsibility of maintaining the plant equipment at a high level of reliability within a severely constrained budget. How in the world do you get your arms around this beast we call Maintenance and get it under control?

The good news is that there is a wealth of information in books, magazine articles, internet articles, and conference proceedings concerning the subject of Maintenance Management. It’s also the bad news, because there is so much out there that it’s overwhelming. It really doesn’t tell you where to start. This article will explore ten of the most basic concepts that every maintenance manager must know to put into practice. These will provide a springboard to more advanced concepts that will provide increasing value to your organization.

• Failures don’t have to happen.
  This is an attitude; a philosophy; a way of thinking. Reactive organizations expect failures to occur and position their resources to repair the failures as quickly as possible. This typically means lots of spare parts in stores and maintenance coverage around the clock. Although it sounds logical on the surface, it is the most expensive management philosophy you can have.
  
  Proactive organizations realize that the fastest repairman in the world is not as fast as the craftsman that did not allow the failure to happen in the first place. They do not expect failures to occur; if one does, they seek to understand why it happened. --Something had to cause it, whether a design problem, a faulty part, an error by an operator, or a problem with the maintenance strategy. The important point is that you should not accept an equipment failure without asking that most powerful word, “WHY”.
  
  Failures represent the most expensive information you can get, and therefore the most valuable. Not only do you incur the cost of the repair, but also the cost of downtime. Perform “post-mortems” on failed components and perform root cause analysis to learn the causes of failures so that this money is not spent in vain.
  
  
  
  
• The work order system is your best friend.
  Your work order system, and the entire work management process, is your most valuable management tool. It allows you to manage the daily work load, manage your resources, and create asset history as well as providing the information that you need to identify opportunities for improvement. However, it’s not much good to you if you don’t have the discipline to follow it. If it’s only partially used, you won’t be able to trust the data collected.
  
  Your process should be mapped in a process flow diagram. This will allow you to show everyone how it’s supposed to work, which is the key to ensuring it’s followed with the right level of discipline. No maintenance work should be allowed to be done without a work order to cover the labor and material costs. By the same token, no inventoried storeroom materials or outside purchased items should be purchased without a work order to capture the costs.
  
  Just as the Production Manager needs a production management system to track production, and the Finance Manager needs an accounting system to track money, the Maintenance Manager needs a work order system to track maintenance. And, like those other critical systems, it should be audited periodically as well. This serves two purposes – it illustrates the value you put on it (which makes it more likely to be followed), and identifies any potential flaws that will require a modification to it’s design.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Maintenance Management 101!

The Management of Change

The Management of Change

Organizations are recognizing that standardized and complete asset data is critical to having trustworthy information on which to act. Obtaining this data is a costly endeavor, and as soon as the data is collected, there is a possibility that some will become obsolete as routine equipment replacements occur. The importance of managing change as a proactive process vs. scrambling to react to the changes can easily mirror those reactive maintenance tendencies so many manufactures try to avoid. This is why Management of Change (MOC) is so vital to maintaining foundational data as equipment goes out and new comes in. This simple process can be compared to updating P&IDs. Without standardized foundational data your entire program will be compromised, so don’t forget the foundational data in your MOC program.