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1481

1:22 pm
May 1, 2015
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The Psychology Of Successful Maintenance and Reliability Programs

By on May 1, 2015 in 2015, Management, Training, Work Processes 1

Value-added opportunities to learn from the success of other industry pros don’t come along everyday. Grab them when you can, starting this June at the Mainstream Conference in Denver. Here’s what Joe Park of Novelis will be talking about.

By Jane Alexander, Managing Editor

Joe Park is a busy man. The Global Director of Reliability for Novelis, he spends considerable time helping drive excellence in maintenance and reliability efforts at his company’s sites around the world. As Maintenance Technology’s Sept. 2014 cover feature details, Park is good at his job. Moreover, he and Novelis are willing to share even more insight into these successful efforts with other busy maintenance and reliability professionals.

Park is among the featured speakers at this year’s information-packed Mainstream Conference, scheduled for June 7-10, in Denver, CO. His presentation, “Maintenance Psychology 101,” will address what he says are “some of the most overlooked and neglected components” when it comes to driving excellence in maintenance and reliability management. In the process, he’ll discuss approaches for dealing with a top challenge managers face across industry today: how to identify, grow and sustain competent maintenance and reliability teams.

According to Park, a hallmark of a successful, high-functioning, maintenance and reliability programs is the organization’s ability to implement work and activities via strongly defined hierarchies and closely aligned teams. But how does an organization get to that point? That’s where “psychology” comes in, Park says. It’s a key component managers often overlook and/or neglect in their maintenance and reliability efforts. He offers some quick tips:

“Hire first for attitude and aptitude,” Park advises. “Many maintenance managers make the mistake of valuing skill set above all else.” That strategy, evidently, can come back to bite them. “Hiring first for skill set without regard to attitude can lead to unhealthy dynamics within an organization,” Park warns. He says people with good attitudes and the aptitude to back them up will quickly learn the skills, and also be a more positive influence on their organizations.

Park also cautions maintenance and reliability managers against relying too heavily on a select few “experts” in their organizations. “That type of dependence can limit the overall knowledge base and capability of the organization,” he notes.

In Park’s opinion, getting the right people into the right jobs is paramount. After all, not everyone is suited for every task. “Understand the strengths, weaknesses and interests of people,” he says, “then align them with the proper roles for maximum effectiveness and job satisfaction.”

One goal of Park’s Mainstream Conference presentation is to help attendees ensure their maintenance and reliability programs have the right people in the right roles at the right time. Upon leaving his presentation, he says, attendees will have answers to the following questions:

  1. How do I select the right kind of people for different roles within an organization?
  2. What does a craft person value vs. what a maintenance manager should value?
  3. What motivates technical people?
  4. How do I identify and engage the natural leaders within the organization?
  5. How do I handle the naysayers and negative influences within an organization?
  6. As a manager, who is my target audience within the organization, i.e. who should I be spending time with?
  7. What traits do I look for when adding someone to the organization?
  8. How do I overcome the “electricians vs. mechanics” mentality to develop a functional maintenance team?

Park adds that too many maintenance and reliability managers still either spend too much time trying to convince naysayers on their teams to align or, conversely, too much time interacting with the positive team members to the exclusion of the “silent majority.” Neither approach makes the cut as an effective management strategy.

“The secret to turning organizations around,” Park stresses, “is for managers to embed themselves between the two extremes and win the hearts and minds of the people in the middle. Above all,” he says, “a manager must model the behavior and attitude he/she expects from the entire organization.”

Park will go into greater detail in his “Maintenance Psychology 101” presentation at the upcoming Mainstream Conference in Denver. To learn more about the event or to register, visit mainstreamconference.com/na.

Atop the Rocky Mountains, 2015 Mainstream Conference Will Be Digging Deep into Maintenance and Reliability

The Eventful Group’s Mainstream Conference is characterized as “an asset-management conference for companies that care about Leadership, People and Culture.” It’s also an interactive experience rather than a sit-and-listen event.

According to conference organizers, they continually meet with reliability, asset-management, maintenance and operations leaders to uncover their most critical challenges. In the past year, they claim to have spoken with more than 300 leaders and professionals from 150+ asset-intensive organizations. Recently, they conducted a full-day workshop with over 20 of the nation’s senior leaders in the space. Based on these conversations, they developed a list of 27 umbrella Hot Topics that reflect the pressing issues and areas of interest to the community in right now.

Solutions to these challenges will be in the spotlight at the 2015 Mainstream Conference June 7-10, in Denver, CO. The event features 40+ sessions, workshops, roundtables, panel discussions and interviews, along with a busy slate of networking opportunities and social gatherings. The entire schedule has been designed to help participants pinpoint new and different ways to increase reliability, reduce risk, embrace new technology and standards and unlock the true potential of their assets and people.

The 2015 Mainstream Conference will be held at the Westin Westminster Hotel, atop the Rocky Mountains between Denver and Boulder, CO. For complete details, visit mainstreamconference.com/na.

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1729

7:45 pm
February 17, 2015
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Living With And Learning From Your Data

By on February 17, 2015 in 2015, Automation Strategies, CMMS, Management, Work Processes 0

Big Data can be too big for some. Getting a grip on it—and its value—means separating wheat from chaff, say experts, and acting on revealed trends.

By Rick Carter , Executive Editor

A January advertisement for SAP claimed that “complexity” costs the world’s top 200 companies $1.2 billion annually. It goes on to say that “Simple saves.” And while some maintenance professionals might find SAP’s plug for simplicity amusing, the business-management software giant is on the mark—not just for the eye-catching dollar amount, but for the cause of those wasted dollars.

Definitions of “complexity” vary, of course, but in the current manufacturing environment, one factor maintenance pros increasingly view as a complexity contributor is data. Suddenly, there seems to be a data surplus. You can’t live without it—the challenge, in fact, has always been to obtain more data—but technology has now met the challenge, and then some.

“With the continued adoption of industrial automation systems, device and equipment data is originating from a variety of technology platforms,” says Juan Collados, Principal Applications Consultant for Schneider Electric. “This includes SCADA and distributed control systems, safety management systems, manufacturing execution systems and mobility applications, to name just a few. Add to that the Internet of Things, where billions of devices and machines are becoming interconnected on a global basis, and we can see why we now have an overabundance of data.”

ABB’s Kevin Starr, Director of Product Management for Process Automation Service, likens manufacturers’ exposure to data as taking a drink from a fire hydrant. “You get really wet,” he says, “but you don’t know what hit you.”

Context drives value

For Starr, Collados and others tasked with making sense of data for clients or crew, determining exactly what does hit you is the real issue, and cannot be a random action. The same technology that provides the quantity can manage and guide it, they say, but it’s first necessary to know exactly what is valuable for your operation. Data is too often “served up without specific context,” says Collados. “Acquiring quality data and transforming it to actionable information, therefore, becomes a focal point in enabling an effective asset-management strategy.”

Here, “quality” means data that has value in its ability to provide useful interpretation of equipment status and trends. But with so much data pouring in, value takes on new meaning, too, says Gil Acosta, Director of Engineering Services at eMaint, a New Jersey-based provider of CMMS software-as-a-service solutions. Asked what he tells clients who are looking for guidance on how to handle the abundance of incoming data, Acosta says he guides them “into finding the metrics of importance. I’m careful to use the word ‘importance’ because it’s easy to get caught up in the standard measurements out there. And if you get too involved in them, they may not be that meaningful at your place of business.”

Metrics that should be reviewed, suggests Acosta, include Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) and Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF). “These are old, reliable measurements that are still useful, but don’t always tell the whole story any more.” They carried more weight, he says, when reliable data was in short supply. “They were a way of getting a small sample size and turning it into information. Now, with the massive amount of data that we have, we have way more calculations available to us than just MTTR or MTBF. We have trend analysis.”

Trend analysis can be as simple as a “change in slope,” says Acosta. It can occur over any period of steady data input of important measurements, as opposed to the former need to catch changes during the brief windows of observation that were typical in traditional data-capture techniques. Important measurements are anything condition-related: temperature, pressure, hours of operation, amperages and others. “And with many condition data points, you can start to monitor trends,” says Acosta, “and see changes in the condition of that asset, making MTTR and MTBF less useful.”

Most of the maintenance pros Acosta meets quickly agree on where such data detail can lead. “It’s the kind of information they have been missing for years and would love to suddenly have,” he says. “Things like cost of ownership, energy consumption, labor consumption, parts consumption. So when they learn how their work-order system collects that data, and how easy it is to get those reports out of the system, the process itself almost becomes an afterthought because it’s so simple. It’s the concept of starting with the end in mind,” he says, “and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used that phrase. I tell folks to concentrate on the data you want to extract from the system to help you make better decisions. Invariably, I’ll get three or four things right away. Then I’ll say, let’s work backwards. Let’s make sure the data source is there to answer that.”

Let your system do the work

Starr uses a simple analogy to describe ABB’s current approach to providing data context from automated systems. “We’ve put in devices that assimilate the information and sort it,” he says. “And if you can imagine the old game Stadium Checkers with the marbles that would fall into holes at different levels, that vision is really accurate because you have all these levels now, and so much information, but nobody can see anything, so you have to filter it so it catches.”

Some call this process “data reshaping,” says Starr, which “basically means that you’re looking at statistical computations and probability of wave patterns in the data that correlate with known problems. This allows you to then sort it into smaller bins a human can look at and interpret. That’s the new skill I see evolving and is very much needed.”

When it comes to automated systems, this skill is sometimes more easily handled at the vendor rather than plant level. Starr therefore recommends that every time you add a layer of automation to make your life easy, you should add a service component that makes sure that level of automation gives you the right answer. ABB offerings in this regard include its ServicePro Service Management System, a global, real-time database of proven maintenance best practices and schedules.

“ServicePro,” Starr explains, “allows us to look at failure rates from the factory, replacement times, how long should it take, how often should it fail, and we make comparisons with global figures to this particular site. If a part fails on average once a year, but at your plant it fails once a month, we know something’s wrong. One of the issues with data,” he adds, “is that you can make it read whatever you want. But when you have a global average and you have thousands of items—we’re now managing 600,000 parts—you get updates every day” and, ideally, a relatively clear path to problem-solving.

An in-field factor that lends support for a service like this is equipment age. Certain older control systems can make data-capture difficult. “For example,” says Starr, “if the system is not OPC-compliant—and there are many out there like this—you can really be flying blind. A lot of [manufacturers] are trying to compete in this century with old technology. And if you don’t maintain these assets, at some point you’re going to be out of business because you just can’t see the information.” While this stance usually requires him to explain why new systems are so much better, Starr says this is an easy task. “The new systems have fail safes, redundant servers and decoupled processes for collecting data so you can’t harm them by trying to extract data [as in some older systems]. And when customers see what can be done, they’ll often say they want this every day, which means they’re talking about an integrated solution.”

Collados concurs that the newer your equipment, the better your data analysis can be. But he also recommends creating system and data solutions that don’t depend on a single vendor’s approach. “Maintenance professionals should ensure their data collection and analysis solutions are vendor-agnostic to both the sources of data, control and safety platforms, and the business systems (CMMS\EAM) being utilized to manage industrial assets,” he says. “Ease of use leading to end-user adoption is critical, where applications should provide an end-user experience that offers a clearly perceived benefit relative to the implementation and operability investment. Applications should be uniquely intuitive and offer standard configuration ease-of-use concepts such as wizards, drag & drop and templates. Equally important, is support from all levels of management in implementing a clearly understood asset-management strategy.”

When data speaks

Getting management support is clearly an ongoing challenge for some maintenance operations. With modern data elements, the process can be much easier, provided data meanings are properly collected and conveyed. “Too many maintenance professionals treat every asset in the plant the same way,” says Acosta. “This is often because it’s so obvious to them when an asset needs replacing that they don’t bother to calculate the return on investment. But not everything is a bald tire. They need to be able to say it’s costing X per month to maintain it, the number of PMs it needs is up, the warranty has expired and it’s near failure. They then have to be able to say, if you give me X to replace this, I’ll give you a return of some sort.”

The response to this approach is typically an approval for funding, says Acosta. But too often the story is not presented that way and the request will be “added to the list.” Noting that the data to support this type of story is probably already in the CMMS, Acosta adds that “you must do the homework to understand what the investment part of it is, and then interpret what you’ll get back. For example, how will current costs change once I make the investment? Answering that means tracking the labor, the parts, the oil consumption and everything else that goes into maintaining an asset.”

And that’s where Big Data can simplify the entire process. Not only can it rapidly take maintenance and reliability teams many steps forward on their continuous-improvement path, it can help bridge the skills-shortage gap most operations now face. “It used to take a person five years to get to the point where they could really maintain a site,” notes ABB’s Starr. “Now, with the tools we have, we can take somebody who is relatively new to the industry and in six months to a year, they’ll be doing work that took me 10 years to figure out. So we’re moving in the right direction.” MT

The 3 Main Types of Data

Data-collection-and-analysis training requirements can be described from the following three distinct, but interrelated perspectives, says Juan Collados, Principal Applications Consultant for Schneider Electric.

Disconnected and Stranded Assets
Equipment and devices outside of the automated control and safety network, where a mobility solution can be effectively implemented. This often comes in the form of operator rounds or planned inspection activities supported by mobile data-capturing capability. Data is either manually collected or automatically entered through handheld device such as an infrared camera. Condition-based data for this asset base also often originates from third-party services, such as oil spectroscopy and analysis contractors. Regardless of its origin, the data is still relatively raw. However, it can be monitored with rules- and template-based condition management applications to make it truly actionable.

Instrumented Equipment and Components
This asset base is typically within the control and safety network and can provide valuable maintenance-relevant data that can be transformed into actionable information through condition-management solutions. This data is typically stored in process historian platforms and can be collected through a variety of “data source” communication protocols such as ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) or OPC. Condition-based maintenance rules utilizing analysis tools such as thresholds, statistical process control or even simple expressions can then be associated with the collected data. The analysis should yield the desired results, typically in the form of notifications to maintenance and operations, automatic generation of contextual event-driven maintenance work orders or requests, and an ongoing optimization of the overall maintenance plan.

Intelligent Devices and System
This asset base generally resides within the instrumentation layer, but can include larger equipment and systems. Both can provide critical process and maintenance-relevant data, including, but not limited to, information relating to its current state and health through its self-diagnostics capabilities. It includes devices, such as smart-valve positioners and transmitters (level, pressure, etc.), as well as major equipment, such as HVAC systems in a data center or cleanroom. This type of asset provides advanced data broadcast capability directly through the base-level automation network. It utilizes a variety of real-time digital communication fieldbuses, such as HART, Foundation Fieldbus and Profibus, to name a few. Despite its complex nature, device manufacturers now provide rich human-machine interface applications that empower end-users to easily interface with this type of device or equipment. Vendor-neutral HMIs based on open standards are also available and increasingly relevant since one HMI can be used with any device regardless of the original manufacturer. In many cases, smart-device manufacturers provide not only the quantity of data required to manage the asset, but also offer richness to information quality and context.

Don’t miss Juan Collados’ free Webinar “Lower Your Maintenance Costs Through a Condition-Based Management Approach,” Thursday, Feb. 19. For information or to register, visit maintenancetechnology.com/SchneiderWebinar.

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1280

7:42 pm
December 1, 2014
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For on the Floor: More Good Than Bad in 2014

By on December 1, 2014 in Management, Uncategorized, Work Processes 0

rick_carter_mugBy Rick Carter, Executive Editor

We’re in the final weeks of what has turned out to be an above-average year for U.S. manufacturing, with output and key indicators up. The 2014 year-end review from the factory floor is also encouraging, according to our Maintenance Technology Reader Panel. The group reports strong personal achievements for the year, coupled with positive changes within their maintenance organizations and companies. Not everything was rosy, but most Panelist comments suggest that 2015 will get off to a good start. Here’s a sampling of what they had to say about the ups and downs of the past 12 months:

Q: From the perspective of your own professional development, how do you rate 2014?

“I have become more proficient using some of the computer programs, and it really has made life easier. Bringing dinosaurs into the 21st century isn’t an easy thing. Just ask my daughter.”

… Maintenance Coordinator, Mid-Atlantic

“2014 was a year of change for the better. We had some management changes and a lot of improvements have happened and still are happening.”

… Maintenance Leader, Midwest

“I would give myself a high rating. After six years of always finding an excuse to not take the CMRP exam, I finally took it and passed!”

… Production Support Manager, Midwest

“I rate myself high because I took several programs concerning state-of-the-art manufacturing technologies. Plus, I attended several International Society of Automation programs and expanded my management skills.”

… Former Chief Maintenance Engineer
(now college instructor), West

“2014 was a good year for my professional development. I completed a Financial Management Certificate and joined the Society of Maintenance and Reliability Professionals, which has improved my knowledge base and professional worth. I look forward to continuing to educate myself in the years ahead.”

… Process Engineer, South

“2014 has been great. I was promoted to Reliability Engineer, have only two classes left to finish my business degree, I passed the Certified Reliability Leader exam, and am working to build a consulting business.”

… Mechanical Maintenance Supervisor, Midwest

Q: What are some of your top on-the-job accomplishments this year?

“I trained a new group leader, and helped implement a new centralized material distribution area.”

… Maintenance Leader, Midwest

“Being asked to [train others] on a more proactive way of doing maintenance. The message doesn’t always stick right away, but I can see changes starting to happen. It’s a step in the right direction.”

… Production Support Manager, Midwest

“My favorite on-the-job accomplishment was a project I began back in 2013 where I coordinated all logistics of the project and brought key players together to go over the timeline, goals and deliverables. It was one of the first projects where I was able to use my recently learned [engineering software] skills and design some of the parts. It finally came to fruition in September with the completion and acceptance of machine upgrades and safety improvements. It was a very good feeling.”

… Process Engineer, South

“[Our team was] accident-free this past year, and we completed five large capital projects on time and on budget.”

… Mechanical Maintenance Supervisor, Midwest

Q: What are some of the biggest on-the-job challenges you faced this year?

“Once again, our major challenge has been our PM program [due to] management changes and a new coordinator. There have been improvements in that area too.”

… Maintenance Leader, Midwest

“Getting IT to make the changes that are necessary to keep improving our CMMS.”

… Production Support Manager, Midwest

“We are extremely shorthanded in our maintenance department (13 technicians for 175 machines in two manufacturing plants), so keeping the floor covered and the fires out as well as keeping the PMs, PdMs and work orders complete was quite a challenge. My staff is an aging staff and a long-tenured one, so they have a lot of vacation and PT available, and we need to schedule around that as well.”

… Process Engineer, South

“Changes in our mid- and upper-level management.”

… Mechanical Maintenance Supervisor, Midwest

Q: How has your maintenance organization progressed this year?

“Regretfully, due to matters beyond our control, our efforts have taken a backward slide. As a company, we are in transition to someone else. I can’t pretend to understand the dollars and cents of it, but I can tell you it has taken the wind out of maintenance’s sails. I know life is about changes and the strong survive, but not without pain.”

… Maintenance Coordinator, Mid-Atlantic

“We have added several new trades people along with some of our apprentices journeying out. That has been a real asset.”

… Maintenance Leader, Midwest

“I think we have just realized that we need a vision for our maintenance departments. This is a great start.”

… Production Support Manager, Midwest

“We have progressed somewhat as we are actively looking for new ways to do things and new technologies to help us evaluate our equipment that will help us be more effective at troubleshooting and making repairs.”

… Process Engineer, South

“We were more focused on planning.”

… Mechanical Maintenance Supervisor, Midwest

Q: How has your company progressed this year?

“I really do not feel [we’ve progressed], but the corporation as a whole believes that the changes will make our company more competitive and secure.”

… Maintenance Coordinator, Mid-Atlantic

“It has been another busy and profitable year for our company, both in the U.S. and abroad.”

… Maintenance Leader, Midwest

“We are just trying to integrate new growth opportunities into our current business.”

… Production Support Manager, Midwest

“We definitely progressed this year. Our sales and earnings are up, due in great part to getting back to basics, to what made us a great company, and what made us a leader in the industry. We had lost sight of that, and are starting to turn the corner. The future looks good for us.”

… Process Engineer, South

Q: What specific goals or plans do you, your maintenance group or your company have for 2015?

“My plans for 2015 are to do what I can to make sure the Maintenance Department that I love weathers this storm and comes out better for the experience.”

… Maintenance Coordinator, Mid-Atlantic

“My goals are to make sure that our new distribution area is completed, and we continue to see our PM program improve by having the right parts at the right places.”

… Maintenance Leader, Midwest

“I have a personal goal to be involved with an SMRP committee. For the maintenance group, I would like to keep pushing the CMRP for our leaders and supervisors so we can all speak the same language and have the same goals.”

… Production Support Manager, Midwest

“We are actively searching for a new CMMS system to better track our asset management, inventory accuracy and work-order requests, and compare these metrics with our goals and see where we lack and where we excel. The purchase of this system, for me, has been a two-month process so far, as I like to do my homework. This will greatly aid our company and save us money as we track our KPIs and eliminate waste.”

… Process Engineer, South

“I want to stay accident-free and healthy, finish my business degree, and complete 35 years of employment in the spring.”

… Mechanical Maintenance Supervisor, Midwest

The Maintenance Technology Reader Panel includes approximately 100 working industrial maintenance practitioners and consultants who have volunteered to answer bi-monthly questions prepared by our editorial staff. Panelist identities are not revealed, and their responses are not necessarily projectable. The Panel welcomes new members: Have your comments and observations included in this column by joining the MT Reader Panel. To be considered, e-mail your name and contact information to rcarter@atpnetwork.com with “Reader Panel” in the subject line. All Panelists are automatically included in an annual cash-prize drawing after one year of active participation.

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1360

10:51 am
December 1, 2014
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Operational Excellence: A Holistic Pursuit

By on December 1, 2014 in Management, Work Processes 0

1214f4-1

Something extraordinary develops when everyone in an operation pulls together. World-class organizations understand how to reach this level of excellence. Yours can too.

The impact of Operational Excellence (OpEx) in every aspect of an enterprise is impressive. Top companies like Boeing, Hyundai/KIA, Coca Cola, Ford, Google, General Electric, Bimbo, and many others work daily to this effect. They have learned how to turn obstacles into firm steps toward achieving the extraordinary efficiencies a true OpEx culture affords.

The OpEx culture develops when everyone in an enterprise fully grasps how their individual roles align with the needs of the organization. The goal is to be the best there is. In this environment, there’s no need for someone to be in charge of encouraging or reminding others of their behavioral commitment. People understand the culture and stay focused on it. Those who have decided to operate with excellence must compare themselves to an open-heart surgeon—there is no room for poor performance. As more organizations implement the level of Operational Excellence referenced in the new ISO 55000 standard, OpEx cultures will likely become more common. You can also take steps toward OpEx right now.

OpEx and plant maintenance

Maintenance teams are often used to working in isolation from other activities in an organization. Many are frequently unaware of important changes in factors outside of daily job requirements that can impact their efforts. These include everything from the marketplace for the company’s products to internal issues such as the company’s administrative plans or financial health. These “silos” of information have often been shown to impede the effectiveness of maintenance.

To align with OpEx principles, a maintenance sector might first determine the level of importance it occupies within the larger organization. Ideally, the concept that maintenance exists to “repair whatever gets damaged” should be long gone. World-class companies have discovered how a good maintenance organization can contribute to the optimal collective results of their operation. Yet if maintenance customers are not always completely informed or satisfied, for example, or if problems and failures recur or if a job is simply not adequately finished, OpEx has not been reached.

A recurring failure, though, presents a good starting point for a new, better way of doing things. Such situations may arise because personnel haven’t received the training they need to do their jobs correctly. While they may have the technical skills, some might not be equipped to perform as professional individuals or teams. In many cases, such individuals may lack a clear concept or awareness of the importance that their jobs represent in the big picture. Each of these conditions represents an opportunity for improvement.

Operators are often in a similar situation. Few enterprises, for example, are aware of how important good training is to operators. Although new production hires may receive a few safety instructions, learning and understanding the essential principles of operation of the equipment they are expected to run is often a matter of trial and error.

Within the OpEx culture

The OpEx model creates a new vision. Everyone in the enterprise must relate their work function to the process of satisfying customers’ requirements. People must reach such a level of ownership and accountability in their workstation in either administrative, operative or corporative tasks that they all can clearly see how the value flows and grows at each step, assuring that this process keeps ongoing in the value chain.

At the same time, they all must be prepared, empowered and motivated to respond proactively to take actions or help others solve or prevent any possible interruption or delay in that flow. Teams must be highly performing at all times without the need for a manager or leader to intervene. This approach to
Operational Excellence requires a high level of commitment from everyone and a strong culture of cooperation and ownership. Without this level empowerment and ownership, OpEx cannot exist.

Within this type of culture, “maintenance professional” and “professional operator” are defined as follows:

Maintenance Professional—A professional with technical knowledge and soft skills who can reliably and effectively perform or support the necessary tasks to preserve, create or modify buildings, plants, equipment and tools to optimize their cost-effective utilization. He/she must be able to learn, communicate and share knowledge with others in a friendly manner to assure that everyone understands the processes and the right utilization of the plant’s assets to comply with the organization’s mission.

Professional Operator—A professional with a deep knowledge of the process, resources and equipment, and who is educated and informed of correct production flow. He or she has constant access to real-time information that will allow him/her to understand and detect any abnormality that may lead to a delay or failure to deliver the specified quality and expected amount of product to the final customer. This person will have the motivation and empowerment to take direct actions or have someone intervene in the correction, prevention or avoidance of problems.

Maintenance, operations and plant engineering functions are among the most critical contributors to the successful pursuit of a holistic OpEx culture. This is because they are in a position to help upgrade processes and ensure they are completely visual or transparent to everyone in real-time. In this way, all can keep these processes under constant surveillance and discover any obstacle or deviation from the optimal delivery to the final customer. Each individual, regardless of position or hierarchy, should have access to the details of the process, and know exactly what to do or whom to contact to prevent the delay of value flow.

Key OpEx benefits

The direct benefits of Operational Excellence to the success of the maintenance organization are endless. Some of the most immediate and measurable are:

Failure Prevention—When all plant personnel are taught to detect malfunctions, and someone realizes that associates, equipment or tools are not delivering the right quality or throughput, he/she will directly—or through communication with others—help to resolve or avoid the unwanted situation(s). This brings the plant to an optimal condition of preventive maintenance, since the capacity of timely inspection grows exponentially.

Total Involvement and Cooperation—These traits are developed as common practice within the OpEx enterprise. Through good motivation and empowerment, this involvement and cooperation occur naturally, creating a powerful teamwork environment. This happens most easily when individuals realize there is personal benefit for doing so. A great time to start this culture is during orientation talks with new hires. This can help an individual understand the uniqueness of his/her role and foster continuous communication with others in the organization.

Less Damage to Equipment—When operators learn more about their equipment, they’re likely to follow appropriate best practices in the performance of their jobs. This reduces damage to assets and accidents. Consequently, losses and interruptions are reduced or prevented.

Reduced Cost of Maintenance—When a failure or malfunction is detected in its early stages, the time and cost needed to correct, adjust or repair are drastically reduced. This avoids damage to associated equipment components and, at the same time, increases the level of safety in the operation. This seems to be particularly true in petrochemical and shipbuilding where replacements are specialized and costly.

More Focused Maintenance Efforts—Traditional maintenance efforts aren’t always based on actual observations, requirements or complaints. As a result, efficiency can suffer. With higher levels of knowledge and empowerment under OpEx parameters, users help reduce troubleshooting and repair process times and, thus, become more productive. To bring work-order systems to the OpEx level, it is critical to keep a clear—visible-to-all—tracking process and avoid lengthy “pending” statuses. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used to track progress.

A cultural breakthrough

Those who have traveled the path to Operational Excellence sometimes find it easier to achieve than they might have initially imagined. Still, there’s no doubt that for an OpEx culture to develop, high levels of motivation and leadership are mandatory. This is essential for survival under today’s current conditions of global competition.

Countless problems and losses can be attributed to personnel not knowing what, when or how to do something. These situations are typically associated with lack of: communication, flow of information, training, accountability, motivation or leadership. It is common to find such voids in organizations based on authoritarian hierarchies, wherein some individuals believe that knowledge they don’t share is a valuable asset to which only they are entitled.

OpEx is a means to ensure that information silos (or information hoarding) and the poor work habits they spawn disappear from an organization for good. It works because of the timely performance of every individual in the group. Resources and efforts put into reaching this level of excellence will have enormous, positive repercussions across the enterprise. MT

This article is based on information supplied by Enrique Mora, a senior consultant for companies worldwide who specializes in teamwork and labor synergy. Reach him at Enrique@opexculture.com.

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3395

12:56 pm
November 4, 2014
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The Reliability-Driven Maintenance Organization

By on November 4, 2014 in CMMS, Maintenance, Management, Predictive Maintenance, Reliability, Reliability Engineering, Work Processes 0

Getting there requires taking a close look at weaknesses and taking measurable steps to correct them. Here, a respected industry expert shares tips on how to become a high-performing operation.

By Christer Idhammar

Any plant maintenance department wants to be known as a cost-effective organization. For our purposes, “cost effective” means maintenance without waste: where waste is the gap between how good the organization is and how good it can become. Waste includes poor safety, losses in quality and high costs.

In a poorly performing maintenance organization, the gap between the real and the ideal world tends to increase over time because it reacts to problems instead of preventing them. As a result, there isn’t time to take measures that will break this reactive work cycle. Even in periods when equipment is operating well and no panic-work comes up, the maintenance organization tends to slow down and wait for the next problem. This creates a culture where maintenance personnel think it is useless to start other work because they will be interrupted with real, or often perceived, urgent work. So even between reactive work, maintenance personnel accomplish very little.

From an operations standpoint, this situation can be comforting because it means maintenance can deal with equipment problems on short notice. It is far easier for operations to call maintenance to fix a problem when it occurs than to write a work request to correct an anticipated problem. This type of relationship typically occurs when operations does not feel responsible for the cost of maintenance. Even if most work is requested by operations, the maintenance manager is in the hot seat if budgets are overrun.

A high-performing maintenance organization is far different. It is founded on anticipating what will happen in the future and planning and scheduling corrective actions in advance. It is not only DO-oriented, it is THINK-oriented. It is an organization that continuously designs out problems and improves.

  • Correcting attitudes and cultures
  • To develop a high-performing maintenance organization, the first steps are:
  • To fully understand how good the organization is currently, and locate the gaps where improvement can occur
  • To develop and commit to an action plan to close the gaps, including clearly defined roles and responsibilities
  • To change work attitudes and culture.

In some plants, the typical first step toward improving maintenance performance is to purchase a new computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) or instruments for predictive maintenance. They may also implement fragmented improvement initiatives using Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM), 5S or similar tools. And while these are good tools, they often fail because they are implemented before an organization does the basics well or changes the work culture to support their efficient use.

Bill Gates addressed succinctly the potential value of technology-based tools when he said, “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient, well-defined operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient or poorly defined operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

Measuring results

To measure the results of maintenance activities, plants traditionally view good maintenance in terms of low costs. With few exceptions, this cost is always considered too high. This view of maintenance stems from an old attitude, which is that maintenance only costs money and does not contribute to productivity.

Plants must change the way they measure maintenance results. Analysis of production advancements over the past 35 years reveals that many process industries have more than tripled their production output. During this time, the number of operators has decreased about 30%, while the number of maintenance crafts people has decreased about 6%. This growth in productivity can be traced to increased automation and more reliable equipment—and it’s not necessarily a result of efficient maintenance.

A common way plant maintenance departments measure their effectiveness is to compare maintenance costs with other plants. This is the wrong thing to do, because those who are not the top performer in the comparison will waste time explaining why the figures are wrong instead of focusing on how to improve. We also know that different accounting principles can make a difference of up to 100% in what is considered a maintenance cost, capital investment or operations expense.

The focus must instead be on learning about activities, technology and processes that drive reliability, safety and cost. Better planning and scheduling of maintenance work correlates directly to high manufacturing reliability, better safety and lower costs. It is also important to understand that predictive maintenance alone does not prevent anything. It only gives information on failures that are developing toward a breakdown. But with this information, plants can “anticipate” the future and plan and schedule corrective maintenance actions.

In the best case, plants can schedule the corrective action to be executed in a maintenance “window.” This is an opportunity that presents itself when equipment is down for reasons other than planned and scheduled maintenance, such as changing belts, unscheduled shutdowns, cleaning and other tasks. The link between predictive maintenance and planning and scheduling of work is an essential basic reliability and maintenance process. Executed with precision, it will increase quality product throughput, improve safety and reduce costs.

Performance indicators*

The right thing to do is benchmark the maintenance department and measure continuous improvement internally. If comparing with other organizations, plants should learn what processes best performers use to drive improved reliability and maintenance costs, and how they execute them well.

To continuously improve execution of essential processes, it’s necessary implement performance indicators as close to the action as possible. This will motivate and trigger actions that will influence the overall performance.

In a reactive organization, break-in work must be reduced. During transition to an organization in control, planning and scheduling quality can be an indicator. Trends in backlog, overtime and contractor hours can also be meaningful indicators when the organization is starting to gain control. When an organization gains control over its maintenance strategies, it becomes important to measure Root Cause Implementations completed and problems eliminated. To do this properly, clear definitions on what’s measured are necessary.

In a study of 38 process lines, the only strong correlation between low and high performers is how well they planned and scheduled maintenance and operations work. All machines that planned and scheduled more than 50% of work had measured Reliability (as % Quality x % Time, with Time based on 8760 hours available per year) of over 85%. Top performers that planned and scheduled between 75% and 90% of all work achieved a Reliability of 92–96%.

Work measurements

Plants that use hands-on tools or other types of work measurements as a way to determine maintenance efficiency are doing the wrong thing. Here’s why:

  • They do not promote cooperation between management and crafts people.
  • They do not consider those who may be busy doing the right thing. For example, in the work-measurement system, thinking time and trouble-shooting time is considered hand-off-tools and, thus, non-productive.
  • Almost all time identified as non-productive by work measurement is typically attributed to a lack of work management and planning and/or scheduling. In fact, it is a result of poor management.
  • When equipment is operating, it is not always true that maintenance people who are busy with hands-on tools are productive. In fact, they can be busy doing the wrong things or only pretending to be busy.
  • In a scheduled shutdown, it is true that people are more productive if they can work on planned and scheduled work without interruptions. Again, only good planning and scheduling—good management—can accomplish this.

Partnering in reliability

To achieve results-oriented reliability and maintenance, plants must realize that production is a partnership between operations, maintenance, stores and engineering. The traditional view is that maintenance is a service organization; operations is the internal customer of maintenance; stores support maintenance; and engineering is an isolated “happy island.” The right thing to do is to view these sectors as partners in a joint venture to reliably produce quality products.

In this partnership, maintenance will deliver equipment reliability; operations will deliver production process reliability; stores will continue to support maintenance; and engineering will support both maintenance and operations, as well as practice life-cycle costs (LCC) or asset management in its design, specification and selection procedures for new equipment. This means that equipment selection will be based on the cost to buy and cost to own. The concept includes reliability and maintainability analyses.

Recognition is important

Most maintenance organizations can verify that they receive recognition when they fix a major breakdown, but seldom hear anything when they prevent a breakdown. While there is nothing wrong with recognizing good work in a breakdown situation, if this is the only time maintenance people are recognized, it sends the wrong message. This type of recognition fosters a culture of maintenance heroes or “Maintenance Tarzans.” They become action-oriented, which can make it difficult for them to transition to more planned, scheduled and organized maintenance work.

Overtime compensation can motivate, especially considering that breakdowns are about 74% more likely to occur when the full crew is off site. However, this is changing as the Y-generation enters the job market—a group that values time off more than higher pay. Plants need to remember that poor maintenance is visible and good maintenance is invisible, because it is less action-oriented. It is always right for plants to recognize implemented improvements, failure avoidance, planning and scheduling performance and overall reliability.

Performance-improving tips

The following strategies can help develop a high-performing organization:

Work management and planning & scheduling: Most frontline supervisors schedule work to the people they have available. The right thing to do is schedule work that must be done, prioritize it based on risk and what is best for the business, then schedule people to execute this work.

Time estimates are almost always based on four or eight-hour time segments. In many cases, no fewer than two people are assigned to each job. This provides the supervisor a buffer of resources he or she can use for jobs added to the schedule on short notice. In this setup, scheduling-compliance can wrongly appear to be high. Therefore, it’s better to schedule work with real time estimates and include problem solving, or thinking time, as part of all work done by crafts people.

In a high-performing maintenance organization, 20% of all effort hours should be used on problem elimination or continuous improvement that will “design out maintenance problems.”

Anticipation: Most plants have morning meetings to discuss what happened the previous day and night, and what is planned for the current day. High- performing maintenance organizations will spend most of this meeting on what will happen tomorrow and next week. Though it sounds unrealistic, this can be done because very few problems occur and little time needs to be spent on yesterday’s problems. The focus should be on future activities.

Following the same principle, the organization should work on a monthly or weekly forecast and finalize the next day’s schedule about four hours before the end of each day. The schedule should be communicated to crafts people before they leave for the day so they can prepare for the next day’s work.

Flexibility: The 12- to 14-person craft-line-oriented maintenance organization is, or must soon be, a thing of the past. Craft lines should not limit work flexibility—only work skills to do a job safely should be a constraint. This will often require changes in union agreements and a focused training program for crafts people. Experience indicates that if management presents a clear plan, it will be well received.

Lost-production analyses: These types of analyses often reflect lost production only by department. Such a procedure does not build a partnership between departments, nor does it solve problems.

The better approach is to define, solve and classify a problem by department, equipment and type of failure after analyses are complete, then follow up on how to solve the problem in the future.

Storeroom closure: Many maintenance organizations waste up to 30% percent of their time walking to the store(s) and searching for parts. Plants should plan and schedule maintenance activities so stores can prepare and deliver parts where and when they are needed. This will require a Bill Of Material (BOM) populated to 95%+ accuracy.

Technical documentation: All technical and economic information about equipment should be readily available. The equipment, loop or circuit number should be the key to this information. At a minimum, all parts kept in stores, or not kept in stores, should be tied to equipment identification in the BOMs. The lack of good and reliable documentation is one of the reasons why most maintenance planners do not have time to plan.

Maintenance shift coverage: Most three-shift plants have maintenance resources on the late shifts. Some have a maintenance supervisor on each shift. Ideally, a plant should operate without maintenance people on the night or evening shift. This is possible only if maintenance believes the plant can operate 16 hours without major maintenance problems. If this is not possible, the plant should do something about it.

The above issues are select examples of actions and cultures that will promote high-performing maintenance. It is important that a plant maintenance organization seriously examine how good it truly is, determine if it is promoting the right things and if improvements are needed. Only then can a maintenance organization proceed to make the changes needed to become as good as it can be. MT

Christer Idhammar is the Founder of IDCON, Inc. (idcon.com).

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8:25 pm
September 28, 2014
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Building And Using Effective Visual Management Boards

By on September 28, 2014 in 2014, Management, Uncategorized, Work Processes 1

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Leveraging simple communication concepts from everyday life for workplace applications can provide significant value in ever-leaner plant environments.

By Jane Alexander, Managing Editor with Rick Wheeler, Life Cycle Engineering

Visual management has been a normal part of our everyday lives for a long time. Consider your personal driving habits: How do you know it’s safe to proceed through an intersection? How fast can you travel along a specific stretch of highway? How much fuel remains in your tank (or battery) at any given time? We get these answers, respectively, from traffic signals (red, yellow and green), speed-limit signs and dashboard indicators.

Cars and trucks are a prime example of how we use various layers of information. At the highest level, vehicle dashboards tell us the speed, fuel level and the gear we’re in. On many new cars, however, several additional levels of information are available, such as tire pressure, percent of remaining oil life, average speed, fuel mileage and others. Do we need such information each time we drive? No, but it’s handy to have periodically.

Visual management boards are based on a similar concept. These simple displays of information can be invaluable to a facility. Used as key communication tools in increasingly lean workplace environments, effective visual management boards provide a wealth of important information at a glance.

There are several types of visual management boards, including those that convey information on continuous-improvement efforts, project status and point-of-use tools. This article highlights boards that support manufacturing operations.

Building an effective visual management board

When developing a visual management board for a manufacturing setting, simplicity should be paramount. Typically, the focus is to display vital measurements and other information so these details are:

  • Consistent — All boards throughout an organization should be similar, with minimal variation only as processes require it.
  • Easily understood by all — All levels of the organization should use this system to obtain a quick sense of the health of a process, line or cell.
  • Visible from a distance of at least 40’ (headers only) — This allows for a quick understanding of the health of the process, line or cell without having to walk to the sign.
  • Colorful — Use Green to indicate where a goal has been hit or exceeded; use Red for a miss. This “pass/fail” indicator avoids the use of Yellow.
  • Metrics for a visual management board can include:
  • People / Safety — Injuries and absenteeism
  • Quality — Scrap, defects and rework
  • Schedule — On track or not
  • Cost — Usually productivity, but could be efficiency as well
  • 5S — Making housekeeping measurable and updating daily conditions

What to communicate

Determining what should be displayed on a visual management board is a logical process. Think about an employee, guest, supplier or corporate visitor walking into your facility to his/her respective “work” area. What information does this person need to see? While the answer depends largely on your industry and what’s important at your facility, consider the following:

As we first walk into an operation, certain high-level data points should help us understand the values of the company and site, and how the facility performs against them. Most manufacturing businesses should focus on People, Quality, Schedule and Cost. Given the importance of these items, we would expect to see high-level indicators of the plant’s position on them. The information should not be too data-intense at this point. Usually, a simple Green/Red indicator is sufficient.

As we move deeper into the facility, the level of information should become more focused and relevant to the functions occurring in that area. Although high-level indicators are still appropriate, they would usually be refocused to a level that is applicable to the area. Take the manufacturing schedule: The visual management boards should tell us where a specific area stands against its goal for the month or campaign. We would then see the beginnings of additional data layers that reflect, for example, the sub-operations that run in the area and where they stand against their respective targets.

As we move to the functional-level work areas, we should see a deeper, even more focused level of information posted on visual management boards. This information will speak to the daily or weekly planned work for a function. It will also include information on tasks that have come up that were not planned. Such information becomes the focus of shift meetings. The area leader reviews the information with the area employees to ensure that everyone is aligned on what work is to be done. Again, there will be additional information that is relevant to an area, such as the status of training objectives and other issues. In some cases, it could be information about continuous-improvement projects in the area.

Gauging success

Like any tool, the most important aspect of a visual management board is how it’s ultimately used. The development and implementation of these boards can be deemed “successful” when production teams use them as vehicles to understand gaps in performance—and, in turn, address these gaps with actions to “right the ship” and achieve their targets.

Keep in mind that a visual management board must be as user-specific as possible. This means that the personnel responsible for the process, line or cell are the same individuals who actually maintain the board. This approach tends to build a sense of emotion behind the numbers: Think about having to use Red two or three days in a row when calling out an important production indicator. What emotions might this cause a supervisor and/or team to feel?

To create or improve your visual management processes—and ensure these efforts are successful—use value-stream mapping to understand where your bottlenecks are. Engage all employees in continuous-improvement efforts to relieve those bottlenecks. Develop focused key performance indicators (KPIs) that help measure the results. Finally, build, implement and maintain visual management boards to communicate and align your organization. MT

What’s the Best Visual Management Board Format?

Basic or high-tech, it’s the one that suits your site’s specific needs

Once you’ve determined the type of information to include on a visual management board, what type of board should you choose? There are many choices, from a basic manual tracking system to fully integrated electronic systems that extract data directly from plant control systems.

Clearly, the more automated the system, the less time personnel will spend on the “administrivia” of maintaining it. Conversely, while automated boards may look nice, they don’t necessarily provide relevant information in a form that is easily understood by the intended audience. Therein lies the key to effective visual management: The audience is crucial. And so is the board’s user-friendliness.

As explained in the driving example at the start of the accompanying article, we don’t have to, nor do we want to, push a lot of buttons to learn how fast our vehicles are moving along a highway. The same goes for visual management efforts in our workplaces. We need to spend time understanding what information is needed and the frequency with which it is supplied for an individual, team, department or plant to effectively manage equipment and processes. Accordingly, the best format for a visual management board is the one that supports that overarching goal.

Rick Wheeler is a Principal Consultant with Life Cycle Engineering (LCE), based in Charleston, SC. With experience in the pharmaceutical, chemical and nuclear industries, he trains clients on best practices and coaches corporate and site leadership teams on organizational change management. Contact him at rwheeler@LCE.com.

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7:03 pm
September 28, 2014
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My Take: Instrumental Approaches to Workforce Development

By on September 28, 2014 in Management, Training, Work Processes 0

1014janemytakeBy Jane Alexander, Managing Editor

The invitation to visit Endress+Hauser’s U.S. headquarters in Greenwood, IN, Sept. 10-11, was for two events: The first was an inaugural celebration of the instrumentation company’s new $16 million Customer Center (see related story, page 9). The second event was an information-packed Media Day held in conjunction with a “Process Solutions Summit” that the company and Rockwell Automation jointly hosted to provide hands-on training for customers.

As one of several hundred attendees over those two days, I expected to meet top Endress+Hauser Group executives from the U.S. and Europe; hear about strong business-performance results; tour sparkling facilities and manufacturing operations; and hear successful customer experiences with state-of-the-art instrumentation solutions and related services. We did all that—and then some.

What I came away with after my visit is that the Swiss-based, family-owned, environmentally conscious Endress+Hauser is doing lots of things right in North America and elsewhere around the world—with and for its customers, employees, communities and other partners. That includes putting extensive resources into something that will always be dear to my heart: the development of tomorrow’s skilled workforces.

When Todd Lucey, General Manager of the Endress+Hauser U.S. Sales Center, spoke, it was clear that he and the company share my passion. His eyes lit up as he discussed introducing children to the rewards that can come through the pursuit of technical careers. His message: There’s no time to waste—the sooner the better. I agree. Young people who begin participating in challenging STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) activities and competitions early on will grow up to be the world’s real problem-solvers.

Lucey pointed to several initiatives that Endress+Hauser has been leading and/or supporting to help grow the interests and skills of our up-and-coming problem solvers. Among the most recent was last summer’s “Community Career+Education Forum” (CCEF) that brought together 300 Indiana middle-school students, parents, educators and businesses to raise awareness of Advanced-Manufacturing careers and opportunities and the importance of STEM-related programs.

Hosted by Endress+Hauser at its Greenwood campus, in partnership with the Central Nine Career Center, the evening’s program, among other things, gave participants an up-close, hands-on experience with real-world production equipment, and simulated operations by way of a scavenger hunt based on the company’s new Process Training Unit (PTU).

By all accounts, this “first-annual” CCEF was a success. It’s a model that other companies and communities would be wise to adopt. I hope you’ll let me know when you hear of similar activities. As Lucey made clear, we need to put a spotlight on these approaches wherever we find them.

On a related note, as an editor of a publication that has frequently highlighted contributing factors to North America’s skilled-trades crisis, including dwindling support for vocational-education courses in many schools and formal apprenticeships in many industries, I’m intrigued by the career path of someone else I met in Greenwood—Matthias Altendorf, who began working at Endress+Hauser in Maulburg, Germany, as an apprentice mechanic in the mid-1980s. After completing his apprenticeship, he went on to further his education and rejoined the company in 1991.

To make a long story short, Altendorf is now CEO of the Endress+Hauser Group (only the third CEO in the company’s history and the only non-Endress-family CEO). I intend to share his story with every young person I know—and every un- or under-employed one I come across. I suggest you do the same. There’s no time to waste—the sooner, the better. MT

jalexander@maintenancetechnology.com

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4:13 pm
August 1, 2014
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A Contrarian View: Manage Your Management Problems

By on August 1, 2014 in 2014, Homepage-Right-Side, Management, Work Processes 0

By Heinz Bloch, P.E.

“Manage” was the blunt advice I recently gave an audience of reliability engineers. Earlier, someone from the audience had asked what should be done when “persons unknown” insist on doing things their own way. In his plant, unknown persons are apparently connecting a plant-wide oil-mist system to ordinary compressed air (plant air) instead of dry instrument air.

At first, I volunteered to return with a few bottles of expensive holy water that could be sprinkled on all bearing housings at the referenced plant. When the audience groaned, I reconsidered and said that exposing the bearings to wet plant air instead of dry instrument air would cause sludge formation. Sludge—a composite of rust, dust and water—is not good for bearings. That statement gets us first to an analogy and, a few lines later, to the entire point of this column.

Suppose a member of a plant’s fleet-maintenance team drained the lube oil from a vehicle engine and replaced it with an equivalent volume of sulfuric acid. The manager in charge would probably give the mechanic some counseling, arrange for considerable mind-altering retraining or simply find an outside-the-gate job (with zero future impact on equipment reliability) for the acidifier. My tongue-in-cheek point is also a serious plea: Manage for future reliability. Withdraw your support from the unteachable. Waste little time on the incorrigibly disgruntled. Manage like a manager.

Managing like a manager includes gathering information from others, of course. But, as a manager, beware of information based on mere opinion. While everybody is entitled to an opinion, smart managers will elicit facts and act on facts. Let me share another recent example:

Speaking to about 30 fellow employees, a young engineer claimed that plant-wide oil-mist lubrication is not cost-justified at their 2000-plus-pump facility. I let the audience know that some 37 years ago, a prominent engineering journal had published my article on the success of using pure oil mist for lubricating electric motor bearings. As of 2014, in excess of 26,000 motors (and close to 150,000 pumps) are lubricated in this manner. The motors range in horsepower from 2 to 1250; some of them have not had bearings replaced in the past 35 years.

That young, opinionated engineer was clearly dealing with anecdotal information. Had his cost-justification calculation taken into account the many thousands of oil-mist-lubricated electric motor drivers that have been in regular use since the mid-1960s, the picture he presented to his management would have been drastically different. Regrettably, his employer is not unique in allowing uninformed opinions to drive decisions with significant impact on safety, reliability and bottom-line maintenance.

So why doesn’t the reliability manager at that plant—or one of his/her superiors—ask why the competition is highly satisfied with oil mist? Or ask for authoritative data on why “they” but not “we” successfully use mature, decades-old technology? To some, that’s an iconoclastic suggestion. Finding the true answer, however, can greatly accelerate an entire corporation’s reliability achievements. Reasonable managers, therefore, will seek commonsense, factual answers.

Likewise, effective managers would probably not countenance the following situation in their plants: Two mechanics recently told me they liked failures because repair work puts overtime pay in their pockets. It appears their management hasn’t asked enough questions—nor emphasized the point that equipment failures can cause havoc.

Good managers, in fact, might demonstrate that workers’ paychecks can get even bigger when failure-avoidance is rewarded. In such a case, future generations will thank everyone for adding value instead of just jogging in place. MT

heinzbloch@gmail.com

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