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.
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Understanding the risks allow effective mitigation plans to be put in place
Where is your biggest risk to the site? If you can’t answer that, than your maintenance program is most likely not adequate. As previously discussed, an effective maintenance program must align with business and its needs. A criticality analysis allows the site to understand where there are risks that must be managed. [Read more…]
Providing the right level of service to production will ensure the profitability of the business.
Using a Business Needs Analysis will ensure that your maintenance program is on the same page as the goals of the business. Often times the two are not aligned, which leads to excess costs for the business, reducing the ability to be profitable. For example, does your operation require 99.9% reliability? It would be nice but that level of reliability is extremely difficult & costly to achieve. Think of the various industries that require that level of performance. NASA, the Armed Forces, Nuclear Power, etc. require 99.9% reliability and to achieve so, the effort in design and in operation is extremely intensive. [Read more…]
How did the PM routines come to be in your business? PM routines are often the result of a failure and the maintenance department being told to implement a PM to prevent it from happening again. The PM is hastily put in place without much detail or thought. Fast forward a little ways in time and soon you have a monster of PM program, in which you struggle to execute on time. Overtime increases to complete all of the PMs, yet the performance of the operation does not improve. [Read more…]
Use a Balanced Scorecard to Ensure the Right Behaviours are embedded in Your Organization
This post is the third of a miniseries on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). If you haven’t already, please go back and read the first post on what is a KPI and the second post on leading Vs Lagging KPIs. [Read more…]
This is the second part of a mini series on Key Performance Indicators. If you haven’t already please read the first post of this series on KPIs.
KPIs are often used to measure the past performance of a process, but did you know that they can be used to see into the future and predict the performance of the organization?
KPIs can be used to measure past performance, or predict future performance. This is because there is a cause and effect relationship between leading and lagging KPIs. When a process is measured, it will in turn effect another process which is also being measured, providing insight to future performance. [Read more…]
Using Leading & Lagging KPIs Can Make The Difference In Driving Performance, By Allowing You To See Into The Future.
This is the second part of a mini series on Key Performance Indicators. If you haven’t already please read the first post of this series on KPIs.
KPIs are often used to measure the past performance of a process, but did you know that they can be used to see into the future and predict the performance of the organization? [Read more…]
“What gets measured, gets done” and Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are critical to measuring the performance of the organization and business. So what specifically is a KPI? According to the The Professionals Guide To Maintenance And Reliability Terminology
Being able to communicate the improvements with Maintenance Planning & Scheduling with finance and senior leaders can be difficult. The maintenance team sees a high PM Compliance, or more work being complete, but what does that mean for the business in tangible benefits? This is where the communication between maintenance and finance breakdown. By being able to identify and link the maintenance improvements to financial returns, maintenance will be able to generate support for current and future projects. [Read more…]
Implementing a Maintenance Planning & Scheduling process can be trying, difficult and downright frustrating. How would you like to dramatically reduce the stress involved and see results quicker? By utilizing these 5 tips, you will be able to build a robust, highly efficient and effective process with reduced effort. [Read more…]
Shutdown, Turnaround, Outage are all the same thing. An extended planned downtime event, in which a tremendous amount of resources are utilized to ensure the site will be able to achieve its business goals. Whether the shutdown involves overhauls, CAPEX or a combination, the successful completion of the shutdown depends heavily on the planning and execution of it.
Shutdowns are resource intensive and often under compressed timelines. This unique situation requires a different approach to planning, scheduling and executing work, than the typically Maintenance Planning & Scheduling process. [Read more…]
One of the most important, but often the least effective parts of the Maintenance Planning & Scheduling process, is the work order close out step. Here critical data is supposed to be captured and used to improve the job plan, identify future work and improve reliability. All of these add up to improve the profitability of the organization. [Read more…]
Coordinating all of the maintenance activities within a site can be overwhelming. A schedule is supposed to help reduce the sense of being overwhelmed. But why is it that when trying to pull together a schedule for the next shift, day or week, it always seems to be a mad dash?
Often times the maintenance scheduling process is not well defined or thought out, and this leads to being overwhelmed. It also projects an image to our operational partners that we do not have our house in order. This image may or may not play a role in having our Maintenance windows moved or cancelled, further our scheduling issues. [Read more…]
This is exactly what some operations staff think of when we tell them to submit a work request.
It means that they do not think that the work will be completed, or it will after it no longer matters to them.
What if you called the cable company and reported an issue? You would expect prompt service, and would expect that you would not have to chase them down to do the work correct? Maintenance is a service organization that enables the successful operation of the business.
The business shouldn’t have to chase us down or wonder if we will repair the equipment. [Read more…]
Maintenance planning = doing things right. Identifying and addressing any possible issues ahead of time enables our craft to complete work quickly and correctly.
Maintenance planning identifies the what, why and the how. These three items allow the planner to identify most potential issues and provide the information, and materials to avoid them. [Read more…]
What if you could improve your maintenance department to the point where you increase the efficiency and the amount of work completed of your department by 80%? Would this be something that interests you?
A properly setup and managed Maintenance Planning & Scheduling Program can enable that type of success and enable your operation to plan for profitability.
This type of increase in efficiency may seem farfetched, but it can be achieved. The typical maintenance department operates between an efficiency of 30-35%, with best in class departments operating at 55% or better. What separates these operations? Planning & Scheduling! [Read more…]