What is the basis for your Preventive and Condition Based Maintenance Tasks?  I recently posted this as a poll question in a webinar and the majority of respondents replied their OEM Equipment Manual.  For years, I have always said the OEM Manual is a great starting point but your operating context may be very different as an example over the averages used by the OEM. Therefore, you should perform a level of analysis depending on the equipment criticality.  The equipment criticality will either lead us to perform a full RCM2 analysis or a simplified Maintenance Task Analysis. This is a much better basis to determine the right maintenance tasks.

After working with different OEM groups across the last several months to include the groups that actually write the manuals and track the warranty information, I’m more convinced than ever about using the OEM Manual as a basic starting point. Here are some facts that may disturb you with regard to reliance on the OEM Manuals.  First off, just like you try to get MTBF information from the OEM, so is the OEM trying to get the same information from their OEMs, often with little success.  Recognize too that the operating context is different from client to client and site to site.  This means there are relatively few samples of component failure within any given operating context for many OEMs. Add to that the clients all have differing levels of Maintenance Best Practices (reactive, emerging proactive, proactive, and world class) as examples.  Depending on the type of equipment, the client user may not track maintenance information in a CMMS or other tool, so no equipment history other than tribal knowledge. Unless it’s a warranty issue, often the OEM gets little or no feedback on failures. Some do track or estimate equipment hours or cycles and send email alerts that a particular time-based service is due.  Very few OEMs install health monitoring on their equipment.  Many have never done an analysis to determine on condition tasks that may be utilized to find components in the act of failure. Therefore, most everything published in the manual as a task is a time-based intrusive overhaul or discard. Intrusive maintenance introduces the opportunity for infant mortality. If you are familiar with how equipment fails, you will recognize this as the most expensive type of maintenance short of “run to failure” or breakdown maintenance.

Cheers,

Jeff Shiver

Ever seen a “defect” tag? I have been familiar with them for years as a product of TPM activities. I was at the SMRP Conference this week and my old friend Doc Palmer shared a self-laminating “defect” tag with me. If not familiar, a “defect” tag is simply a roughly 2.5” x  4” tag with a hole in the top.  A string, tie wrap, or wire is passed through the hole to allow attachment to a piece of equipment.  Generally, the tag has a top sheet and a back sheet with a layer of carbon paper between them.  There is usually a unique number imprinted on the sheets as well. The intent of the tag is to allow an Operations person to identify a defect in the equipment such as a loose air fitting or the location of leaking pipe.  The Operator documents the defect found on the tag, tears off the top sheet which is submitted to Maintenance, and applies the tag as close as possible the identified issue.  In this case, the tag had a self-laminating clear sheet that is used to protect the writing on the tag from water or other damage.

Using this approach allows a process for Operations to identify current or potential issues and report them to Maintenance without actually accessing the CMMS.  Another benefit of the tag concept is that it allows the Maintenance person to quickly identify the location of the trouble since the tag is placed near the defect.

Are you using “defect” tags?  If so, what are your experiences with them?

Cheers, Jeff Shiver

Want to take your organization to the next level? Start with the foundation. Do you have one? I know the answer to this question seems obvious but you would be surprised at how many different groups I keep running into that have never established the proper foundation to build basic metrics from, much less to build a world class organization from.

Get your house in order by establishing the foundation. Items like a solid CMMS built with a functional asset and location hierarchy, failure codes, work types, and so forth. Then, establish and audit the work management system. Next, address the Storeroom and materials management issues. I see some groups where more than 50% of the inventory in the Storeroom is obsolete. Next establish the partnership between Operations and Maintenance. It doesn’t do any good to generate PMs or Condition based Maintenance activities if Operations will not make the equipment available for the inspection or repair. Another item is to get your craft skill levels up. Do you have a training schedule or do toolbox training?

These are just a few of the foundational items that you should be considering? Struggling? Send me an email and I’ll provide a more focused approach for you to concentrate on.

Cheers, Jeff

On occasion, there is value added in looking back in order to move the organization forward from an educational perspective. It seems that many times,we forget the foundational elements that can help us build an effective Maintenance strategy to care for our equipment assets. That said, recognize there are three basic groupings of Maintenance Tasks that you can employ.

They are:

1. Time based Maintenance Tasks
2. On-Condition Tasks
3. Failure finding Tasks

Time based Maintenance tasks are the old standby and one of the more costly forms of maintenance.  These include scheduled discard and scheduled restoration tasks.  Scheduled discard tasks might be changing the oil based on time (where the cost of oil analysis outweighs the benefits) or changing the filters on a duct collector.  These tasks are typically intrusive in nature. The time period can be calculated based on days, hours, cycles, strokes and so on.

On-Condition tasks can be a combination of condition based monitoring using a control system, predictive technologies, or simple visual inspections. Consider a flow meter measuring pump output to show impeller wear or the use of a vibration pen by an operator. These tasks are typically non-intrusive as a rule.

Standby equipment and protective devices require failure finding tasks because the failure is NOT evident to the operator under normal circumstances.  When it comes to protective devices, a large portion of safety devices are never inspected and we don’t know they have failed until it’s too late, hence the need for failure finding tasks. It may surprise you to learn that a tremendous number of “failsafe” devices can fail without your knowledge.

Now, I’ll ask the hard question.  How did you determine which approach to use?

Cheers, Jeff Shiver

I was at a site recently walking down a few jobs with the Maintenance Planners as part of a coaching effort around developing job plans.  Whenever I go out and walk in the site, I generally find something in the act of failing or that has failed.  That trip was no exception.  I looked through a 2″ hole in a guard and found a drive belt that was almost sheared in two.You might ask “Why is it you that finds it, Jeff?” There is a very simple answer.  I’m LOOKING for it.

As a manager, you have to create a preventive failure finding culture.  Teach your people to look up, in guards, and at the equipment for potential failures.  When you stroll through the site, take one or two from your Maintenance staff with you. Point out potential issues to help set the expectation of what they should be looking for.  While it may seem obvious to you, you might be surprised at what you learn when you take a walkabout with them.   How many of you teach your people to inspect on the fly? How many times do you take a walkabout in the plant with them in a month? What are the stumbling blocks?

Cheers, Jeff Shiver

It’s been a great few weeks for me related to Maintenance Planning and Scheduling, not to mention Operational Excellence in general.  In the previous week, I conducted one week of our 4 part series entitled Maintenance and Reliability for Managers.  As part of that course, I covered the A to Z of Maintenance from a benchmarking assessment perspective.  With a number of Operations and Maintenance Managers, it was eye-opening in many areas but especially the Planning and Scheduling side.  The following week, I enjoyed seeing the light bulbs go on in a number of Maintenance Planners as well as Operations and Maintenance Supervisors during an onsite 2 day Maintenance Planning and Scheduling course.  To top it off, I had the opportunity (pleasure is a better word) to follow the 2 day class with a day and a half of actual coaching at the job site. Before we started the class, the organization was like most others with no job plans.  When I left, they had created a number of job plans and had more on the way. I really enjoy when those attending the course share with you how much they learned to drive success within their organization.

I can tell you that education is a powerful tool in building effective partnerships and helping the organization create a positive environment where Planning and Scheduling can succeed, especially with your Operations partners as an example. Courses like these give the different groups an opportunity to gather in a single room, not be distracted by the events in the factory or facility, and focus on what the future can look like together.  Now, that’s powerful.  What prevents you from creating a winning environment in your organization?

Trust is considered a soft skill by most but it translates to hard realities. As an example, consider some of the vendors that you have business relationships with. IF trust exists in the relationship between the Vendor and yourself, often the transactions occur with little effort and at a relatively swift pace. Contrast that with Vendors where little or no trust exists. To move the process forward requires considerable effort with constant bantering back and forth which slows the transaction rate. Steven M. R. Covey in his book, the Speed of Trust relates it this way.

High Trust drives increased speeds and lower cost compared to Low Trust which reduces speed and increases costs.

The result of trust in personal relationships is very similar. As I teach in the Maintenance Leadership and Supervision courses that I facilitate, “Managing people is about building relationships with them”. What are the relationships that you have with your direct reports or peers for that matter? Do you have a foundation based on trust? Interestingly, a number of companies survey their employees asking one simple question that is “Do you trust your boss?”. How would your people answer this question about your relationship?

Covey tells us that trust on the individual level is made up of character and competence. Have you paused to look in the mirror lately and reflect on your character and competence? Have you considered how it may influence those answering the “trust your boss?” question?

Cheers,
Jeff

What kind of organizational culture have you helped to create in your site?  Is it command and control, top-down, the authoritarian approach? Or in contrast, are people empowered to make decisions? Is it OK to make an honest mistake as long as we learn from it?

When I go into a site and spend any length of time, I am often amazed at the disconnect that exists between management and the people.  When I talk to the Managers and Supervisors, they often tell me that they empower the workers and they are open to input. As soon as management walks out of the room, their people tell a vastly different story.  It not long before the picture becomes much clearer. Often, the walk doesn’t match management’s talk.

Have you ever paused to really consider what the people who add value to the finished product really think of their relationships with you as a Manager or Supervisor? Are those relationships predominantly adversarial, competitive, or distrustful as an example?  Have you bothered to ask or look?  When you do, you might find that the organizational culture you thought you were creating is far from reality.

How did your organization determine the compensation approach and levels for the Maintenance Planning and Scheduling function?  Salaried exempt, salaried non-exempt, or hourly non-exempt and at what level of pay are just some of the decisions faced when staffing the position.  It might surprise you to learn that many organizations haven’t reached the point of staffing a Maintenance Planner position while others have removed and are now re-staffing the position.  When staffing positions like this or others, there seems to be a level of hand wringing when it comes to addressing the question of compensation.  What is a fair price given the physical location and wage surveys based on the skill levels required?  What are the skills we want for a Maintenance Planner Scheduler? Based on my experiences both as a practitioner and consultant, I would like to share some scenarios on how NOT to do it.

At Alpha Two Company (hopefully a fictitious name), the Technical Director attends a Maintenance Conference where he learns about the benefits of the Maintenance Planner role.  With the nice 57% or 77% improvement in craft efficiency (depending on who you listen to), who wouldn’t right? So, he decides he has to have one of these people in the Maintenance organization.  During that same conference presentation, he heard that the Maintenance Planner ideally has craft skills and is paid at a level equal to the first-level Maintenance Supervisor or Foreman.  He works with the Human Resources (HR) group and posts the position internally.  After all, he views it as a nice opportunity for advancement from within the Maintenance Technician ranks which it is.  It’s posted as salaried exempt meaning no overtime.

Two weeks pass by and the posting expires on the company’s job board with no internal applicants.  The Technical Director scratches his head in puzzlement when he talks over the lack of response with the HR group.  He wanders out to the Maintenance Shop area in search of answers.  It doesn’t take long before one of the Maintenance Technicians shares the view of the group.  The salary posted is roughly what they earn as a base hourly rate now but they are getting overtime added to the mix.  Even without the overtime, the shift differential and the hope of overtime returning provides a greater return in their wallets.  While some of the guys would like to go to a Day Shift role, there are concerns about the position being a thankless desk job and the compensation issue drives the nail in the coffin. No applicants …

Now with a level of commitment regarding the salaried exempt compensation agreed to with HR, the Technical Director tells HR to post the position externally.  If the guys internally aren’t interested due to the level of compensation, what is the Technical Director liable to find on the outside?  Some applications trickle in from the external job boards.  From the interviews, the Technical Director determines the external applicants are either 1) unemployed looking for a port in the storm. He recognizes that at the first opportunity, they will move on to a better spot down the road.  The HR group has reminded him about the cost of bringing on people who leave the business at the first opportunity; or 2) people from other walks of life with no craft skills.  He settles for a person that scheduled production runs at a local baked goods manufacturer.  After all, if he hired internally, he would have had to send the successful individual to Maintenance Planner Scheduler training anyway.  By going this route, he’s halfway there, right?  Furthermore, he saves face with the HR group because the individual accepted an offer that was even less than what was posted internally initially.

Off the new Planner SCHEDULER heads to the Planner Scheduler training class and comes back all fired up. As time passes the problem of the lack of craft skills continues to haunt the individual, especially since they seem to have no mechanical aptitude at all. As a side note, I’ve heard numbers like only 37 out of 100 people have the aptitude for industrial maintenance. Yes, they are great at slotting people into a schedule but how long should the job take.  What are the steps required to accomplish the task or the materials required from a job planning perspective. In the end with the skill deficit, who does the maintenance planning fall to?  The Maintenance Supervisors!  A Maintenance Supervisor living in a reactive environment has to choose between fighting the fires or planning for next week. The first thing that is tossed out the window is Maintenance Planning, right?

Before you beat me up, I have seen some people without formal craft skills make the transition but that is the exception and not the rule. Unfortunately, I see scenarios unfold like this way too often.  Another struggle is organizations that flop back and forth with reorganizations. They change people from salaried exempt to salaried non-exempt to hourly non-exempt and then flip over trying to do it all over again. In some organizations, the re-orgs seem to hit every 18 months or so. That’s a guaranteed way to make sure people stay disengaged.

What are some of the things like this that you have seen or experienced?  With items like this, what do you find disengages people the most?

As a Maintenance Technician, do you believe having responsibility for specific equipment is best way to perform your job? By responsibility, I mean you are only one that conducts PMs and major repair work on that specific equipment. Do you believe it’s the right answer for the organization?  As a Maintenance Manager, is this approach to equipment ownership the right answer for you or your stakeholder partners like Operations?  In all of my time in Engineering and Maintenance, this facet of Maintenance has been a struggle for many Maintenance organizations.

When I was part of a team that built a pet food facility in Columbia, SC a few years back, the Maintenance organization was modeled after similar organizations in the company.  There were two Maintenance Technicians that covered each of three shifts and rotated across those shifts. Ideally, one was mechanical and the other electrical. Then, there were five or six day shift Maintenance Technicians that had system ownership.  There was one technician for the Receiving, Grinding, Extrusion, Drying, Packaging, and Controls areas.  Each of these Maintenance technicians decided the day’s priorities, performed the Preventive Maintenance, handled the longer term strategic improvements, and capital work.  Obviously, they were the “go to” guys or system “experts” for any issues or work in their areas. They truly owned the equipment and (for my friend, Cliff aka Sniffer, I add this piece) took pride in the work they did. From a technician perspective, it was great as they called the shots and the business benefited.  If they needed help doing something, they might ask another system technician to lend a hand or they may write a work order for some contractor resources to help.

But this model is not always as rosy as it appears from a Maintenance management perspective. Consider Fred who has been the Extrusion system technician for 6 years. This area is not for the faint hearted as its 300hp motors and large equipment with complex support systems. Fred was working on his daughter’s car at home and injured his back. He’s going to be out for 3 months at a minimum.  Since Fred is the only one who works on it, no one else has any expertise.  Now what do you do? Let’s look at some other items.  While a Maintenance Planner existed, the System Technicians decided the priorities for their work.  That was by individual system areas, not the overall factory needs.  The thought was Just because it was a priority for one area didn’t mean it was a priority my area. So there was no real overarching priority matrix that was enforced. Trying to get people to work on equipment outside their areas was like pulling teeth at times.  Some guys didn’t agree with the approaches and methodologies that other guys used in their areas so consistency was a factor. So, rather than one cohesive factory; you ended up with six silos each marching to their own drummer.

I seen some organizations encourage ownership and try to overcome the expertise issue by using an approach called “secondary skills”.  If the Technician learned a skill outside his normal work area, then the business would compensate the individual with additional pay per hour. It was a management responsibility to make sure the people used those “secondary skills”.  Often, that never happens on a frequent basis.  So, time goes by, possibly years; and the Technician “forgets” how to do the work. The increased pay did not stop however and one day, the call comes to send the Technician over to apply those “secondary skills”. The Maintenance Technician isn’t too keen on the idea since its Fred’s area and they haven’t touched that equipment in 3 years.  Up comes the Safety flag and ten reasons why they aren’t the right person for the job.  Maybe they are right, you decide.

Conversely, if management makes the Technicians constantly rotate across the areas, you never build any expertise on any equipment.  And you don’t build any ownership either. Many organizations face this struggle today.  If the work gets complicated, they have to call the factory representative to come do the work or it’s outsourced. If the equipment has been modified, the factory rep smiles and says “Sorry but that’s not our equipment”.  It’s not just skills related to production equipment but consider someone with Machinist skills inside Maintenance organization. When the equipment’s down and you need it, you generally need it now. Many shops don’t have mills or lathes anymore, not to mention the skilled people to run them.

Some of this is driven by how you align the Maintenance organization as well, i.e. centralized or de-centralized. What’s a Maintenance Manager to do? How do you strike a balance between equipment ownership and building the skills through cross training, and having the ability to get the work done all the time? Is it based on the culture of the organization?

Speak soon, Jeff