Measure twice, cut once. This is what the sign read in our Apprentice Training shop at Eastman Kodak. Anyone who has worked for a living in the trades understands the true meaning behind this phrase. The intent is to help your company save time and money by doing things right the first time.
The sign really could be posted on the wall of every shop, every office and every conference room in every manufacturing plant around the world. It applies to more than the skilled trades. The sign in fact applies to every person and every job.
Do it right the first time!
If you want to perform Reliability Centered Maintenance right the first time it is extremely important to first, understand the RCM process, and make sure you apply it to an asset where you will get a return on your investment for the RCM training and analysis.
Twenty years ago I worked to develop a certification process for training and mentoring our RCM Blitz facilitators. The results of our RCM facilitator certification process speak for itself. In order to achieve certification one must perform equipment ranking and reliability measures to select assets for analysis. Upon completing their RCM analysis the facilitator must then work to ensure the RCM tasks have been implemented, that the tasks are being scheduled & performed and that reliability measures have verified improvement as a result of the new maintenance strategy.
In this same twenty year period innovations in automation and controls have made our equipment run faster and in many ways more efficiently. The question now is have you made sure the people who maintain these critical assets have the training and tools to ensure we maintain the inherent designed reliability? It’s estimated that less than 1 and 50 people working in manufacturing skilled trades today has been through a formal Apprentice Training Program or Military Equivalent. Adding to this problem, less than 1 in 100 maintenance managers have ever worked in or achieved certification in a skilled trade.
Think about this, if your people were never trained on how to do their job correctly and their manager never had to perform that job in his or her life; how do we know if we’re even working on the right things?
Good maintenance is only done once. If you’re experiencing the same failures over and over again it’s time to take a step back and look to understand your failure modes. Eliminating failure modes takes leadership, structure and discipline. RCM Blitz is the answer.
Measure Twice, Cut Once!
Doug Plucknette is a Principal and World-Wide RCM Discipline Leader at Allied Reliability Group. Doug is the creator of RCM Blitz and author of the books “Reliability Centered Maintenance – Using RCM Blitz and Clean Green and Reliable. Doug can be contacted by phone at 585-329-7040 or by e-mail at plucknetted@alliedreliability.com
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