Maintenance Management

Useful Root Cause Analysis Tools to Use in Each Phase of the RCA Process

RCA is used to investigate and address unwanted problems, troubles, and failures, be they within a procedure; from a business or operational process; or in a physical asset.

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A Preventive Maintenance Planner Shows When Preventive Maintenance Jobs are Due to Be Done

Preventive Maintenance is the replacement of equipment assemblies and parts which have aged from the normal wear and tear of use. It is a good idea to show people well in advance on a wall planner calendar what dates the work is scheduled to be done.

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A presentation by Mike Sondalini at the Shutdowns and Turnarounds 2011 Conference.

The presentation covers:

• The connection between maintenance work quality and the time to the next breakdown.
• Using the Taguchi Loss Function to explain why work quality is important.
• Effectively specifying and measuring maintenance work quality requirements for shutdowns.

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Behavioural Based Safety (BBS) involves peer reviews of fellow workers’ safety practices. You use members of your workforce who take five minutes out of their day to observe a colleague at work and see if they are truly doing safe work practices

Use of a Behaviour Based Safety Program has seen an exponential rise in recent years. A number of eminent psychologists believe deeply in it, and in its ability to gain positive workplace safety results

Workforce behavioural observation, behavioural based safety, and a behaviour based safety program all involve observing people doing their work and seeing the safety behaviours they use. They are a proactive approach for getting workplace safety rather than a reactive approach to force safety improvement. The use of BBS is proactive because it gets shopfloor people working together to identify their hidden workplace hazards. It also gets unique data on your employees’ interaction with the hazards they have around them.

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Modelling your process improvement initiative on another organization’s success is foolish—they are but a sample size of one!

A sample size of one success can also be due totally to luck. To guarantee your process improvement will be a complete certainty you must have repeated proof that what you copy will bring sure success to you too

We love great success stories: The wizard entrepreneur; the person who crusaded for a worthy cause; the champion athlete; the financial guru; the innovative business solution with astounding results; the failing firm that turned their fortunes around; the penniless emigrant whose wits made them wealthy. Those stories are inspirational. They challenge us to be better. They make us want to achieve more in our life roles and with our lives.

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Maintenance Planner and Scheduler are Two Separate Roles. Planning is Always Done Before Scheduling

Planning maintenance work means developing the work breakdown structure activity by activity, including buying parts and services. Scheduling maintenance work means organizing and coordinating resources so a job is done on the agreed date.

A lot of people mistakenly think that maintenance scheduling is maintenance planning. They are not the same. There is a big difference between the two functions. The job description might say Maintenance Planner and Scheduler, but in reality they are two roles. Maintenance Planning needs to be done before you can do maintenance scheduling. One person may be tasked with the maintenance planning and scheduling functions, but each has its own duties and responsibilities.

First comes maintenance planning, and then you do maintenance scheduling. A maintenance work pack must be developed and completed in full first, so that comprehensive scheduling can be done using the work pack.

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Introduction to the Concepts and an Overview of the Purpose of Maintenance at the Turn of the 21st Century

Maintenance management is a key element of enterprise asset management and applies for the whole lifetime of your physical assets. The purpose of maintenance is much more than ‘fixing things up’; it is the appropriate management of asset health for its lifetime.

The philosophy that “a stitch in time will save nine” is very appropriate and is an important part of maintenance. On operating plants where this approach is formally recognised and acted upon, there is a very significant lift in the reliability of the plant.

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