Improving reliability/maintenance -- step II

Pulp & Paper, Sep 2003 by Idhammar, Christer

MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT

This is the second in a series of columns about implementation steps you must take if you want to be successful in improving reliability and maintenance, to sustain that improvement, and to continue improving in the future.

STEP II. DISCOVER IMPROVEMENT POTENTIAL. After your fundamental beliefs and principles are defined, agreed upon, and documented (Step I in the pyramid) as described in the July column, you should do an educational evaluation of how your present practices and performance compares to current best practices (CBPs). We call these practices "current" because we constantly discover better practices than those we have today. In defining CBPs, we structure them in nine key processes:

1. Leadership and organization

2. Planning and scheduling of operations and maintenance

3. Maintenance prevention and preventive maintenance

4.Technical database

5. Root cause problem elimination

6. Stores management/maintenance interface

7. Facilities, tools, and workshops

8. Engineering interface with maintenance

9. Skills development

Some of these key processes are divided into subprocesses, such as preventive maintenance, which is divided into eight subprocesses:

3.1 Maintenance method selection

3.2 Cleanliness

3.3 Lubrication

3.4 Alignment

3.5 Balancing, etc.

All key processes and subprocesses are defined by their elements. It is on this elemental level that you must evaluate and learn from best practices. Examples of elements include: "Work order backlog is reviewed weekly by operations and maintenance," and "Work order status is updated automatically when parts arrive for awaiting work orders." The previous elements would be just two of a total of 130 elements within the planning and scheduling process.

It is critical that an organization executes these practices. If they are documented and not executed, they carry less value. In the evaluation, you should distinguish between documentation, execution, and tracking, giving execution highest weight.

Evaluations should be documented and precise in their definitions and scoring methodology, since you will use them as learning tools and to measure progress or lack thereof. Many corporations use this structure to perform self evaluations in their plants.

When you do the evaluation according to a well-structured document, you educate the organization, since members will discover for themselves the right things to do and how well the organization executes best practices compared with how well they could be executed.The fact that the organization itself discovers what needs to be done is key to commitment, successful implementation, and achieving results in increased production reliability and lower manufacturing costs.This process is called "discovery-based education."

We have evaluated operations and maintenance organizations all over the world. On a scale of one to 100, the best one rated 75, while the average is 36. So, there are many opportunities to improve reliability and maintenance, and the biggest potential lies in improving all or part of these key processes:

Maintenance prevention and preventive maintenance

Technical database & storeroom management

Planning, scheduling, and control of operations and maintenance

Root cause problem elimination

The important thing is that the whole organization must discover improvement potential together. If you do this evaluation with much involvement from your organization, you save a lot of time and money compared with more traditional maintenance audits, and you will also have started improvement initiatives and results.

By completing Step II, you have aligned the organization and decided what to improve and in which order to begin improvements. In the November column, I will further discuss Step III.

CHRISTER IDHAMMAR is president and CEO of IDCON Inc. in Raleigh, NC, a company specializing in training and implementation of improved operations, maintenance, organization, and practices.