on Maintenance Reliability

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…]

by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Cost Control or Value Generation?

If you can’t sell all you can produce, then reducing costs is often the only way to improve margins, but that simplistic accounting perspective is not always the case.

Cost control is often thought to be key to attaining profitability but it the case of maintenance it can get you into trouble.

Cost control can have a big opportunity cost if you don’t take advantage of the opportunities you have. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Making Walkways and Platforms

Here are the things to watch out for when you need to fabricate platforms and walkways.

Stairs, walkways, platforms, and ladders are required to be made to the Australian Standard AS 1657-1992. This standard specifies the design requirements and the materials of construction to be used.

Keywords: deflection, allowable load, live load, guard rails, connections, treads. [Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette Leave a Comment

The 10 Worst Things About Business Travel

Today article is one of those off-topic things I just felt compelled to write about. It also has a bit of the sarcasm us New Yorkers are famous for, but I’m betting the other business travelers will be able to relate!

With my work comes travel and in the last 15 years, I have seen a fair amount of the world.

Let me rephrase that, I have seen a fair amount of the world’s airports, hotels, manufacturing facilities, and restaurants.

Along the way, I have met some very good people, learned a whole lot about how different products are made or produced and discovered for myself that no matter where you live, where you grew up, or what you do, everyone still wants the simple things in life: a secure job, a roof over their head, and to be afforded the time to both provide for and enjoy raising a family. [Read more…]

by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

The Need for Maintenance Management Assessments

Conventional consulting approaches begin with assessments to determine your current state of affairs, judge what’s good and bad about it, give it a score, provide a long list of recommendations and then build an improvement strategy based on the outcome.

Strategy development is normally carried out by a select leadership team and then the change is rolled out to lower levels in the organization. This approach has served well for a long time and it is at the outset of almost any major consulting engagement.

It is useful when comparing sites among each other, but is there some sort of award for being best? Usually not. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic 2 Comments

Be a Leader

Caution Future World and Local Leaders at Work and Play — Photo by Wesley Fryer

Applying the Dale Carnegie Principles to Build a Reliability Culture

Building on the Dale Carnegie® Principles from the famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, we can progress to the final set of principles.

Using his key principles as a guide, we can bring about change within our organization.

In the first post, we covered how to build authentic and meaningful relationships. In the second post, we covered how to win people to your way of thinking. In this last post, we will cover what it means to be a leader.

If you haven’t read the previous posts, I strongly suggest that you do, as they build on each other. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini 2 Comments

Heat Welding of Plastics

Written with assistance from Ben Karel of Fusion Engineering Plastics

Pty Ltd. Unit 1, 7 Dobra Rd, Yangebup WA ph (08) 9494 1004

Abstract

Welding can join thermoplastic parts together. It can be by melting the surfaces and pressing them together or by extrusion welding with a filler rod.

Several methods of welding are available. Proper manual techniques are critical to success as is the pressure testing of pressure parts.

Keywords: electro-fusion, butt welding, electro-socket welding, hot air gun, melt temperature. [Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette Leave a Comment

Cracks in the Road

“Dave is the guy we call when we need to get the plant up and running again; there really isn’t anything he can’t fix.”

Dave sits back in his chair, he looks down and while he is smiling I can see he is slightly embarrassed by the praise his manager is heaping on him.

It’s clear to me that he is not comfortable sitting in this conference room with a group of people that includes his manager, supervisor, and two engineers who are here to kick off their first RCM analysis. I have just begun asking the group to introduce themselves; Dave followed his manager and the two engineers in the room who each rattled off where they attended college, what their degrees they earned, the areas of the plant they are responsible for, their hobbies outside of work and some banter regarding the upcoming college football season.

Then it was Dave’s turn. [Read more…]

by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Process Optimization

Welcome to the final blog in my 10-part series called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.

To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.

Uptime Insights Part Ten:

Process Optimization

Whenever you are following a set of steps to achieve some goal you are following a process.

Your people do their jobs through day to day implementation of those processes in order to deliver results. If the processes are ill-conceived or inefficient things move slowly and results are more expensive to obtain than they need to be.

Well designed, efficient processes that integrate with other related business processes keep things running smoothly, costs down and help to keep people motivated. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

Win People to Your Way of Thinking

Road caution sign with Think below — Photo by Taymaz Valley

Applying the Dale Carnegie Principles to Build a Reliability Culture

Building on the Dale Carnegie® Principles from the famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, we can progress to the next set of principles.

Using his key principles as a guide, we can bring about change within our organization. In the previous post, we covered how to build authentic and meaningful relationships.

If you have not read that post, yet, please go back and do so before reading on.

I was part way through my Dale Carnegie® course when I was challenged to make a change at work by using one or two of the principles below.

We were struggling with being able to complete our weekly PMs because we had to support the production line changeovers. Dwelling on this, I approached the skilled trades that were preparing to perform a changeover. I asked them about the changeover, and what were the sticking points.

I allowed them to do a great deal of the talking. I listened to the challenges they had and why the changeovers took so long. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Radar Level Detectors

Radar level detectors are becoming a popular technique for tank level detection of liquids.

The radar sends a sub-millionth of a second pulse from an emitter and the return signal is detected at a receiver.

The reflection’s time lapse is measured and electronically converted to a distance from the liquid surface. Installation peculiarities need to be understood and appreciated in order to provide a reliable operating set-up.

Keyword: antenna, spurious reflection, reference plane, emission cone. [Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette 1 Comment

10 Things a Maintenance Supervisor Can Do to Improve Reliability

A few months back, I wrote a blog resulting from a conversation I had with a group of Maintenance Technicians who were attending the International Maintenance Conference (IMC) in 2011.

While the group was enjoying the conference and learning some new things, the general consensus was that they felt they would not be able to apply the tools and techniques they were learning because “management will say they support reliability, but when it comes right down to it, talk is cheap.” [Read more…]

by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Teamwork Produces Superior Results

Welcome to part nine of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.

Uptime Insights Part Nine:

Teamwork Produces Superior Results

There’s an old saying that, “two heads are better than one”.

Teamwork has been proven time and again to produce superior results. It is the basis for many successful methods like RCM, PMO, RCFA, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and various quality improvement programs like Six Sigma.

The importance of your people has already been stressed part 2.

Choosing excellence goes beyond that – the use of self-organized teams brings the best out of your people, delivers enhanced productivity and superior results. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

Become a Friendlier Person for your Reliability Culture

Dale Carnegie founded his training program in 1912.

Over 100 years later, the same course is taught to students, business people, and leaders. The course is not just about public speaking, but building relationships, influencing people to your way of thinking and finally becoming a leader.

In 1936 he wrote his famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

It is from this book, that the principles to winning friends and influencing people were born. Using his key principles as a guide, we can bring about change within our organization.

How these principles enable a Reliability Culture will be covered in this and the next two posts. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Valuable Secrets in Every Work Order Report

The work order report is the maintainer’s opportunity to advise the engineer what problems exist with equipment out in the plant.

It can also provide an accurate record of what was found during the repair. This makes it important that work order reports are completed in detail and are reviewed by managers and engineers.

Keywords: CMMS, computerized maintenance management system, breakdown, corrective, work order, implementation. [Read more…]