Improve Maintenance and Production
The journey to world-class production performance is a partnership effort from the Engineering, Production and Maintenance groups in an organisation. It requires involving them in improving business quality systems and assuring work quality. Improving Maintenance and Production calls-for setting-up opportunities to work together in teams and to help each person master their duties.
1 Define Exactly the Process and Equipment Reliability Practices and Principles to Use
If you want your people to deliver high equipment reliability, do they know what great reliability looks like; exactly? Do they know how to measure it so they can correct their actions and learn how to get the best reliability? Teach your maintenance and operations people exactly what reliability looks like on their equipment and in their processes. Paint a clear and detailed picture of everything they need to do to get world-class equipment reliability. Let them measure their results. In time you will have exactly the level of reliability you clearly detail and specifically define. But with no detailed specification no reliability improvement is possible. Provide clear and detailed reliability specifications and measures, and with consistent effort, you will be absolutely certain to get the level of reliability you describe.
2 Life-Long Learning and Up-skilling Only experts can be expected to deliver expert performance. Great companies have systems in-place to train and provide hands-on experiences that teach their people to be better and to do their work better. They turn their people into masters of their duties. You can help operators and maintainers learn the engineering of their plant and equipment with a planned training process over an 18 to 24 month period. Fortnightly provide new knowledge and detailed explanations, along with site-specific examples, of how to use the information to improve plant, processes and equipment performance. Explain simply what really happens in the machines and with the process. Use diagrams and open group discussion to reveal how things work. You will see the benefits brought to the business from a short 30-minute training session held fortnightly over 18 to 24 months in the decreasing number of breakdowns, improving product quality, the lower cost of production, and the many personal thanks you will get from the people you train for improving their lives.
3 Set Standards to Quality Control Workmanship
To keep production equipment functioning as-new and producing in-specification product, the maintenance of machinery and equipment must be done right, and be done to design accuracy. Ensuring the required work quality needs a quality assurance process. Quality means setting standards and meeting them.
Hence doing maintenance with quality requires setting standards for every maintenance action performed on an item of equipment to ensure the necessary standard is achieved every time.
Doing production with quality means setting standards for every operating action performed. This maximises the chance that operators will do the right actions that keep the process in-control and capable of meeting the product specifications.
requires documents that list the standards to be met for every activity done by maintainers and for every activity done by operators. Equipment maintenance standards must be set for lubrication, fastener tension, rotating equipment balancing, bearing vibration, shaft alignment, machine distortion, tolerances, along with many other engineering requirements. For operators, standards must be set for starting equipment, for stopping equipment, for changing process parameters, for keeping processes running steadily, along with all other requirements that can affect the behaviour of the operation.
Standards must also be set for task workmanship quality. Maintainers need to be given clear specifications on the condition of parts to use in a machine. They need to be clear whether a part is condition to use, as well as how to install it correctly for maximum reliability and trouble-free life. This knowledge is not taught to maintainers.
They mostly learn it on-the-job. Often from people that did not know it very well in the first place. There is documented evidence 1that most equipment failures are caused by poor and negligent maintenance practices .
To solve most of your equipment maintenance problems it is necessary to document the right way to do a job and the standards it must be done to.
The ideal format for procedures to control work quality and provide work quality assurance is the Accuracy Controlled Enterprise 3T format with tolerance banding. The 3Ts are Target, Tolerance, Test, and must be part of every maintenance activity and every operating activity, if you want high equipment reliability and production plant productivity.
4 Provide Instant Access to Engineering Knowledge and Work Quality Specifications If you are intentionally creating a world-class business with world-class performance, your maintenance people will need correct information on equipment parts, their engineering design limitations and on their in-specification installation and use. For operators, they must have ready access to how their machines and production processes work and how their jobs are properly and expertly done.
Getting the right information to maintainers when they need it is the responsibility of the Maintenance Department Management. The best way is to have all the maintenance information in the work procedures and work pack documents for the job. Getting the right information to operators when they need it is the responsibility of the Operations Group Management. This too needs to be right
A lesser alternative is to have an electronic library that can be interrogated in real-time while doing a job. This means using computers in-the-field with satellite or wireless communications connected to engineering databases. It is a lesser alternative because it will slow the job down and cause people to waste time. But at least they will get the right information when they need it.
5 Teamwork Maintenance with Engineering and Production to Fix Problems No one in a company knows everything about the way their machines and production processes are built and work. There are too many variables and intricacies that can impact on their operation and performance. But put a group of people together in which each member know various things about those machines and processes and you have created a gestalt an integrated whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Once you connect people with various expertise and knowledge of your machines and their operation together, it is very likely that someone in the group knows the answers to all the problems. The power of teamwork is its ability to bring widely distributed knowledge and experience together to solve previously unsolvable problems.
6 Develop Precision Practices in Operations and Maintenance
Achieving high reliability by reducing installed stresses in operating parts is the responsibility of Maintenance. The responsibility to run machines to group. Operations need to apply precision practices in running processes and equipment because if they create high stresses and strains in their equipment they will cause early failures. Low stresses and high equipment reliability can only truly be achieved when maintenance people do Precision Maintenance and operations people do Precision Operation.
Precision means to be exact in what is done. Precision Maintenance means identifying how maintainers need to build equipment so it is under the least stresses when in operation. Precision Operation means clearly specifying how operations will run their plant and process to minimise stress and degradation. If you know exactly how to achieve low stress in your equipment parts, and you do those practices, the payoff is life extensions of 10 to 100 times what you get without them.
Precision is a mindset. It requires the discipline to follow well-researched and clearly written instructions carefully. It necessitates the use of proof testing and evaluation of evidence to confirm that things are progressing as required. It means up-skilling people to become masters of their work and their equipment. It requires putting in-place the information and quality systems that support such high levels of expertise and professionalism. It needs leadership, commitment and courage from management to do whatever needs to be done to become that good.
1 Define Exactly the Process and Equipment Reliability Practices and Principles to Use
If you want your people to deliver high equipment reliability, do they know what great reliability looks like; exactly? Do they know how to measure it so they can correct their actions and learn how to get the best reliability? Teach your maintenance and operations people exactly what reliability looks like on their equipment and in their processes. Paint a clear and detailed picture of everything they need to do to get world-class equipment reliability. Let them measure their results. In time you will have exactly the level of reliability you clearly detail and specifically define. But with no detailed specification no reliability improvement is possible. Provide clear and detailed reliability specifications and measures, and with consistent effort, you will be absolutely certain to get the level of reliability you describe.
2 Life-Long Learning and Up-skilling Only experts can be expected to deliver expert performance. Great companies have systems in-place to train and provide hands-on experiences that teach their people to be better and to do their work better. They turn their people into masters of their duties. You can help operators and maintainers learn the engineering of their plant and equipment with a planned training process over an 18 to 24 month period. Fortnightly provide new knowledge and detailed explanations, along with site-specific examples, of how to use the information to improve plant, processes and equipment performance. Explain simply what really happens in the machines and with the process. Use diagrams and open group discussion to reveal how things work. You will see the benefits brought to the business from a short 30-minute training session held fortnightly over 18 to 24 months in the decreasing number of breakdowns, improving product quality, the lower cost of production, and the many personal thanks you will get from the people you train for improving their lives.
3 Set Standards to Quality Control Workmanship
To keep production equipment functioning as-new and producing in-specification product, the maintenance of machinery and equipment must be done right, and be done to design accuracy. Ensuring the required work quality needs a quality assurance process. Quality means setting standards and meeting them.
Hence doing maintenance with quality requires setting standards for every maintenance action performed on an item of equipment to ensure the necessary standard is achieved every time.
Doing production with quality means setting standards for every operating action performed. This maximises the chance that operators will do the right actions that keep the process in-control and capable of meeting the product specifications.
requires documents that list the standards to be met for every activity done by maintainers and for every activity done by operators. Equipment maintenance standards must be set for lubrication, fastener tension, rotating equipment balancing, bearing vibration, shaft alignment, machine distortion, tolerances, along with many other engineering requirements. For operators, standards must be set for starting equipment, for stopping equipment, for changing process parameters, for keeping processes running steadily, along with all other requirements that can affect the behaviour of the operation.
Standards must also be set for task workmanship quality. Maintainers need to be given clear specifications on the condition of parts to use in a machine. They need to be clear whether a part is condition to use, as well as how to install it correctly for maximum reliability and trouble-free life. This knowledge is not taught to maintainers.
They mostly learn it on-the-job. Often from people that did not know it very well in the first place. There is documented evidence 1that most equipment failures are caused by poor and negligent maintenance practices .
To solve most of your equipment maintenance problems it is necessary to document the right way to do a job and the standards it must be done to.
The ideal format for procedures to control work quality and provide work quality assurance is the Accuracy Controlled Enterprise 3T format with tolerance banding. The 3Ts are Target, Tolerance, Test, and must be part of every maintenance activity and every operating activity, if you want high equipment reliability and production plant productivity.
4 Provide Instant Access to Engineering Knowledge and Work Quality Specifications If you are intentionally creating a world-class business with world-class performance, your maintenance people will need correct information on equipment parts, their engineering design limitations and on their in-specification installation and use. For operators, they must have ready access to how their machines and production processes work and how their jobs are properly and expertly done.
Getting the right information to maintainers when they need it is the responsibility of the Maintenance Department Management. The best way is to have all the maintenance information in the work procedures and work pack documents for the job. Getting the right information to operators when they need it is the responsibility of the Operations Group Management. This too needs to be right
A lesser alternative is to have an electronic library that can be interrogated in real-time while doing a job. This means using computers in-the-field with satellite or wireless communications connected to engineering databases. It is a lesser alternative because it will slow the job down and cause people to waste time. But at least they will get the right information when they need it.
5 Teamwork Maintenance with Engineering and Production to Fix Problems No one in a company knows everything about the way their machines and production processes are built and work. There are too many variables and intricacies that can impact on their operation and performance. But put a group of people together in which each member know various things about those machines and processes and you have created a gestalt an integrated whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Once you connect people with various expertise and knowledge of your machines and their operation together, it is very likely that someone in the group knows the answers to all the problems. The power of teamwork is its ability to bring widely distributed knowledge and experience together to solve previously unsolvable problems.
6 Develop Precision Practices in Operations and Maintenance
Achieving high reliability by reducing installed stresses in operating parts is the responsibility of Maintenance. The responsibility to run machines to group. Operations need to apply precision practices in running processes and equipment because if they create high stresses and strains in their equipment they will cause early failures. Low stresses and high equipment reliability can only truly be achieved when maintenance people do Precision Maintenance and operations people do Precision Operation.
Precision means to be exact in what is done. Precision Maintenance means identifying how maintainers need to build equipment so it is under the least stresses when in operation. Precision Operation means clearly specifying how operations will run their plant and process to minimise stress and degradation. If you know exactly how to achieve low stress in your equipment parts, and you do those practices, the payoff is life extensions of 10 to 100 times what you get without them.
Precision is a mindset. It requires the discipline to follow well-researched and clearly written instructions carefully. It necessitates the use of proof testing and evaluation of evidence to confirm that things are progressing as required. It means up-skilling people to become masters of their work and their equipment. It requires putting in-place the information and quality systems that support such high levels of expertise and professionalism. It needs leadership, commitment and courage from management to do whatever needs to be done to become that good.
