Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Short articles on maintenance and reliability engineering subjects.
James Kovacevic is the primary author writing articles for the series.
Never miss an article by signing up for the Maintenance & Reliability Series list to the right. Receive an update weekly highlighting the lastest article.
Let us know your reaction and thought, plus any questions. Please use the comments section below each article.
This is the final post in the series on roles & responsibilities and is the final step in ensuring the team is working together. So far in the series we cover the importance of defining role & responsibilities. How to determine roles & responsibilities, and the major roles in the maintenance department. In the last post, we will cover how to tie it all together in a simple, easy to use document. A RACI. [Read more…]
The storeroom manager has the responsibility of ensuring the right parts, in the right quantity, at the right time are available. But what if they are pre-occupied with other tasks to properly manage the storeroom? It increases costs, delays work and increases Mean Time to Repair. This series continues with the storeroom manager. With the storeroom manager clear on their roles and responsibilities, the storeroom can operate efficiently and accurately. [Read more…]
The Maintenance Supervisor is known as the coach of the maintenance department. But what if they are pre-occupied with other tasks and unable to coach the technicians? It has the potential to increase overtime, increase rework and increase Mean Time to Repair. That is why this series continues with the Maintenance Supervisor. With the Supervisor clear on their roles and responsibilities, the technicians get the coaching they need to succeed. [Read more…]
The Maintenance Planner / Scheduler is known as the coordinator of the maintenance department. But what if they are unsure of the priorities of the department or business? It has the potential to increase overtime, planned downtime and increase costs. That is why this series continues with the Maintenance Planner / Scheduler. With the Planner / Scheduler clear on their roles and responsibilities, the technicians can deliver the right amount of care. [Read more…]
The maintenance manager is known as the leader of the maintenance department. But what if they are unclear on where they are going or need to do? It has the potential to derail the entire department. That is why this series is going to start with the maintenance manager. Once they are clear, the rest of the team can follow.
If you followed the steps in first post of the series, you would be ready to review the roles & responsibilities across the department. This post takes the next step of breaking down the individual role of the maintenance manager to help you on that journey. [Read more…]
Your planner is putting together a scheduler to 8:00pm on a Friday night for Saturday morning. Your storeroom doesn’t have the parts you need and you maintenance supervisor is running back and forth. On top of this, you are unable to meet your maintenance goals, preventing the orgainzation from achieving its goals.
Depending on your organization, you may walk into this type of chaos every morning, and those that don’t, chances are you did at some point.
So what seperates the organizations that have this choas and those that don’t? Clear Roles & Responsibilities is what seperates these two types of orgainzations. This is the first of a series of 6 posts on the topic of Roles & Responsibilities. [Read more…]
Often times the maintenance team is focused on preventing failures in the facility. All failures need to be addressed and no failures are acceptable. This mindset may be holding back the uptime in your facility. How is this? After all, if we strive to prevent all failures shouldn’t uptime improve?
Most organizations do not have the resources to prevent every single failure and as such, resources are often pulled from failure to failure. When the organization focuses on the consequences of the failure, instead of the failure itself, it can free up the resources to improve reliability. Once the consequences are understood, running equipment to failure becomes an option. This allows the team to focus on preventing the failures that make a difference to the business. [Read more…]
PdM & CBM are in almost every discussion that involves improving plant performance and reducing costs. But what is the difference between the two and when should one be used over the other? This post will address those two questions and a few cautions when using these techniques. [Read more…]
You walk into the plant on Monday morning. You are immediately confront by the production manager stating “Press 201 is down. The mechanics are saying it is the clutch again.” You feel an overwhelming sense disbelief. You ran overtime last weekend and replaced clutch at a cost of $30,000. How is it the clutch is failing again?
This scenario may sound familiar. It happens all the time, across many different industries and plants. So what exactly happened? The root cause was not properly diagnosed, and the clutch was replaced. Based on the short life of the new clutch, the root cause was likely something else that is affecting the clutch. [Read more…]
When you hear the term basic care, what comes to mind?
I remember hearing a story of a brand new packaging line that was installed. It operated at high OEE, delivering significant improvements over the old line. Within 6 weeks, the line was running worse than the original one. Finger pointing ensued, the OEM saying it was how it was maintained. With the manufacturer saying it was a poor design.
A few weeks later, a prominent government official was scheduled to visit the site to officially open the new line. The site was shut down and all the equipment was thoroughly cleaned. The line started up and ran just as well as it did when it was first installed. This story highlights the importance of having clean equipment, and the impact it can have on an operation. This is where Basic Care comes in. [Read more…]
Imagine a world where the Maintenance Planner can quickly and easier find all the material information for each job. Even those that do not yet have a job plan. Dreams or reality? Reality. This reality is found within operations all over the world and you can have it too. How can you achieve a level of efficiency with your Planner and have all materials information readily available? With Bills of Material.
A Bill of Material or BOM as it is commonly referred to, is a list of material needed to support the operations and maintenance of an asset or component. It includes a part description, part number and how many are required on a specific component or assembly. It may also include a reference number that refers to a sub assembly drawing. [Read more…]
Imagine an operation in which there are no lost time accidents, OEE is increasing and there is a plan to address the skills shortage. These sites do exist and chances are they using procedure based maintenance. Procedure Based Maintenance is simply having all maintenance activities documented in a procedure. These procedures are then followed step by step when conducting breakdown, corrective and preventative maintenance. [Read more…]
Understanding the how equipment failures along with utilizing a proven and effective approach to developing an equipment strategy is a winning combination for manufacturers everywhere. When combing the knowledge and the system, manufacturers can yield significant improvements in their operation, such as a reduction in PM workload of 22% with gain 4% in line efficiencies. Or how about a reduction of 42% of PMs, without a single loss in equipment availability. It is possible and required for manufacturers to become and remain profitable. [Read more…]
Knowing How Equipment Fails Allows Effective Plans to Be Put In Place and Improve Equipment Reliability
In the 1960s the failure rate of jet aircraft was high even with the extensive maintenance programs that were put in place to prevent the failures. The programs required overhauls, rebuilds and detailed inspections which required the various components to be disassembled. All of these activities were based on an estimated save life of the equipment. [Read more…]
Making the criticality analysis work for you and drive improvements in the maintenance strategy
Most manufacturers do not have an up to date criticality analysis and those that do have one, do not use it to drive decisions. Having a criticality analysis facilitates improved decision making and prioritization within the site and business.
How many times are there debates regarding which work needs to be done, which PMs will be dropped from the schedule because the planned downtime was reduced? These debates occur regularly, but to not have to occur. A criticality analysis drives improvements in the business by: [Read more…]