Understanding & Communicating the Value of PMs with Rick Clonan
Welcome Rick Clonan who has been in maintenance for 30 years working both in defense and industry. More about Rick:
Currently at SMRP working as implementation and training manager.
In this episode we covered:
- How do we communicate the value of PdM and PM?
- What is/isn’t a PM?
- What about PMs with instructions to “inspect and replace if necessary”?
How do we communicate the value of PdM and PM?
You have to set measurements for performance.
Consider the following:
- What is the reliability of the assets on which you perform the PM?
- How are you utilizing resources?
Combine the two to measure and communicate the value of PMs.
What is/isn’t a PM?
PM is the intentional maintenance activities before failure. It may not take into account the current state of the machine but instead sticks to a schedule.
They include:
- Adjustments
- Cleanings
- Lubrications
- Non-distractive testing
What about PMs with instructions to “inspect and replace if necessary”?
- It is not appropriate because it lacks a job plan for maintenance.
- It also implies that you are only doing maintenance to find mistakes and not to prevent them.
- Possibly means that you are under/over utilizing the resources at your disposal
- PM not being done in a timely manner.
- Intending to fix a problem you haven’t known its magnitude and impact means you will not prioritize your tasks appropriately.
PMs have to be intentional whether you find mistakes or not.
How do we know whether PMs are effective or not?
You have to measure it from two perspectives:
- Reliability: no unmanageable backlogs, delivering to customer (operations)
- Operations: Uptime, downtime, units delivered.
At SMRP we use PM Yield: Take the amount of corrective work found in PM and divide by PM work in hours to produce a ratio.
How do these help communicate the value of our PM?
- Communicate the cost of reduced corrective work as a result of the PM.
- PM should be 30% of the time, 60% corrective maintenance and 10% crafting.
- Have a system that allows for recording the data i.e. what corrective work comes out of the PM alone.
- Have closing codes; telling hours used and saved by the PM.
Do we look at PM to corrective maintenance ratio at an individual or macro level?
Always view it at a program level because its yield should be the same for all assets. Assess the program not the asset.
Have you ever heard of the 6:1 Rule?
Yes. It is a statistical tool for setting the frequency of inspection to find failures. Means that for 6 regular inspections should at least once reveal a given failure criterion.
- Its utilization is based on a curve depicting failure data for a long period of time of repeated inspections yet what we want is a narrow curve (few regular inspections that reveal a failure criterion).
- 6:1 rule is useful in critical systems to determine how a given number of inspections will capture a failure criterion.
- However, it should only be used at a micro level (task-based) on a specific failure mode but not as an overall (macro level).
- It is not programmatic.
Micro and macro metrics are often interchanged right?
Also, PM yield is not a macro-metric because even as you find work through PM, you should check its input to asset availability.
So should we view all these metrics together for the full picture?
Separately assess these two:
- PdM yield and PM yield separately.
- Asset availability I.e. downtime, uptime, maintenance between failures.
They could show:
- High corrective work with low reliability- poor corrective practices.
- Low reliability and low corrective work- excessive inspection with reasons for failure not being identified,
- High reliability with low corrective work- PM optimization is low, reassess 6:1.
- High reliability high corrective work- is right but if operation demand goes up then the time for inspection reduces.
- High reliability with not too low/high corrective work is the best.
Do we have to stick to PM schedule to get the right measurements?
There is a 10% rule where you can always start two days prior to or after the scheduled PM date.
Some may do PMs at any time in a month but this implies they won’t be well spaced and won’t stick to 6:1 rule.
How do we link all these to get operation’s cooperation?
- PM needs support from other functions such as planning and scheduling.
- Create a structured corrective work in your CMMS from structured PM based on failure PM tasks.
- Structured corrective work then goes to backlog and feeds planning and scheduling process and execution process as operational capacity is provided.
- Use terms that concern operations for them to understand.
With all these we can then communicate?
- Maintenance teams have to learn to communicate in quantities that concerns operations.
- Communicate that reactive corrective work is more costly than planned downtime
What makes the biggest difference?
Communicate PM outputs in terms of asset availability, uptime, product losses, overhead labor costs.
Key takeaway
- Communicate value of PM
- Asses PdM , PM yield, 6:1 Rule
- Look at reliability
- Look at resource utilization
- Have structured work order type in CMMS
Eruditio Links:
Bennett Fitch Links:
- Eruditio
- Rick Clonan Linkedin
- Eruditio Linkedin
- SMRP.org
- Leading Reliability Conference
- Book: Engineer’s Guide to Preventive Maintenance By Rick Clonan
- Book: Maintenance & Reliability Best Practices by Ramesh Gulati
- Book: Making Common Sense Common Practice by Ron Moore
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