Reliability and Maintenance Implementation Model – Step III.

This column is the third in a series of articles about the implementation steps you need to take if you want to be successful in improving reliability and maintenance, sustain that improvement and after that continue to improve in the future.

After you have done the CBP (Current Best Practices) evaluation and discovered, understood and agreed upon your biggest improvement opportunities you shall not be surprised to find what you already knew, if you did not, it would be very bad. The difference is that key people in your organization have discovered this together. You have mutually agreed upon an action plan that includes roles and responsibilities for both operations, maintenance and engineering. This is different than traditional audits.

In this column I am only giving you a summary on the key improvement opportunities and the common actions that often come up among the first steps in improvement plans. (see step III in the emerging pyramid)

• Maintenance Prevention – We thought we aligned well because we bought laser alignment tools, we discovered we do not align well. Action: check and realign five alignment points every shut down.
• Preventive Maintenance – We do too many PM inspections because we have never integrated what is done by Operators, Electricians, Lubricators and Mechanics. Action: Reevaluate all PM inspections using CMS - Condition Monitoring Standards and a system that can merge all PM activities under each equipment identity. For examples on CMS please contact me and I will send to you info@idcon.com
• Technical Data Base – We discovered that one major reason why planners do not plan, is that they have to spend too much time searching for parts and technical information because our Technical Data Base is not updated. Actions: Make sure computer system tags where parts are used for every withdrawal from store. Assign work orders to each craftsperson to update ten pieces of equipment in their domains every quarter.
• Planning and Scheduling – We discovered that we schedule poorly on a weekly and Daily basis and we do not plan at all because we are too reactive. Actions: Agree on guidelines for priorities and implement them. (There are only two priorities Do it now or latest date to complete work) Call me if you want an example info@idcon.com Agree on definitions on “Break- In” work and track by area and individual. Agree on cut off times for weekly, Daily, Shut Down and Outage schedules, track, record and follow up on “Break-In” jobs. Again call me if you want examples.

What I have described above are of course just examples on initial improvement initiatives for the first three months, but if you do these very basic things well you will see results and you will be ready for next steps.

Step IV Root Cause Problem Elimination can always be done before you do anything else, but if you want to institute this process to become a part of daily work and thus changing your organization to a thinking and continuously improving organization, you need to do step III very well otherwise you will not have time to do any true Root Cause Problem Elimination.

In the January 2004 column I will discuss this next step.