Web Exclusives

Lean Principles Help Bus Company Reduce Downtime

2012-02-10T09:14:26-06:00

Collins Bus Corporation in Hutchinson, Kan., recently reinvented itself through implementation of lean manufacturing principles.

On peak days, Collins Bus used multiple 55-gallon drums of undercoating per day. The problem was the company experienced excessive overspray of its undercoating. The overspray drifted into the plant, creating a hazard for plant personnel. The overspray also fell onto finished buses, causing additional clean-up and thus additional production delays.

In addition to these issues, the 55-gallon drums installed in the spray booth caused further production delays, because when a drum emptied, spray operations had to stop until another drum could be installed. This took a half hour or more out of production for each changeover to a new drum.

Daubert Chemical took a proactive role in helping Collins Bus achieve its objectives by first examining how it could solve the overspray situation. The result was a reformulation of the undercoating, wh

Involve the Right People for Effective Change

2012-02-08T10:05:42-06:00

In “Alice in Wonderland,” the white rabbit is eternally behind schedule and skittishly hyperactive. What is easily overlooked is his firm grasp of the subtle intricacies of effective change management. For example, he off-handedly advises Alice, “Don’t just do something, stand there!”

Although this statement initially appears counterintuitive – after all, much of formal change management is getting individuals to actually do things differently – the change will only be effective when the right people do the right things.

Oftentimes during change, so much emphasis is placed on end results that we take shortcuts on the way those end results are achieved. For instance, during a recent engagement, a client was implementing a new process for the operators to follow. To meet the expectation of a speedy implementation, the area manager intended to provide the process training to the operators. On the surface, that might not sound like a

Reliability Reduces Waste of Time, Talent and Resources

2012-02-06T08:45:11-06:00

Waste is seen in many different forms in manufacturing. Some of these wastes include physical, time and talent.

Physical waste is anything that is left over from the process that has to be discarded, recycled or sold. For every process, there is an expected amount of waste that is unavoidable. However, the waste that we will focus on is the excess waste that is produced because of equipment or process reliability issues. There are many processes that are a one-shot process, where if it is interrupted during the process, all of the materials become waste.

Time waste also directly relates to equipment and process reliability. Any time that the system is down for unplanned maintenance, that means there is extra time required to make up the work, idle manpower and manpower required to correct the deficiency. In many cases, the extra time required to make up the work falls into overtime or extra shifts.

Talent waste is the use of time and education to repair or cor

Using Orbits for Condition Monitoring

2012-02-03T08:32:41-06:00

Orbits have historically been used to measure relative shaft movement within a journal-type bearing. The shape of the orbit told the analyst how the shaft was behaving within the bearing as well as the probable cause of the movement. This was accomplished using proximity probes usually mounted through the bearings with a 90-degree separation and a tip clearance set to around 0.050 inches. With today’s modern analyzers, it is possible to also collect an orbit using case-mounted velocity probes or accelerometers to see how the machine housing is moving. Another way of putting it would be the orbit represents the absolute path in space that the machine housing moves through (see Figure 1).

How to Use Key Performance-based Metrics

2012-02-01T08:38:35-06:00

In today’s competitive global environment, we are constantly being asked to do more with less. Now more than ever, companies are asking their employees to become more productive, more efficient and more “lean.”

Strategic planning, value stream mapping, reliability engineering, loss elimination – these phrases have become popular from the boardroom to the shop floor. But where does their value really lie? How do we make decisions that uncover value, eliminate loss and allow for proper strategic planning for the future?

The answer lies not in the decisions we make but in the data we use to make those decisions. Good, strong data is key to making good, strong decisions. We are all familiar with the axiom of “garbage in, garbage out.” So what kind of data should we use? What metrics give us the best snapshot of our current levels of performance?

Asset utilization (AU) and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) are key performance

Get More Maintenance Work Done with Proper Planning

2012-01-30T11:43:23-06:00

Famous financier Bernard Baruch was often quoted as saying, “Two and two still and always will equal four.” This, some would say, quaint concept has fallen out of favor more and more in recent years, as clearly the restrictiveness of basic arithmetic is not something that should continue to bind us in today’s brave new world.

It’s much more useful if two and two can equal:

Whatever analysts are expecting it to be (or better).
Whatever your boss wants it to be.
Whatever will make this current project justifiable.

Keeping this in mind, some odd-looking math that actually works in plant maintenance is the rule that:
“10 minus 1 equals 16.5.”

This rule is a huge help with another rule that is always pretty much true:
“In most plants, there are never enough maintenance people.”

If I have 10 maintenance mechanics and

Solving Maintenance Problems with Mobile Collaboration

2012-01-25T08:41:27-06:00

Time is money. For companies with operations spread across the globe, delays in equipment maintenance issues or production line problems can kill the bottom line. If the most skilled engineer is located in New York or Detroit and the most important machinery is in Mexico or China, costs mount quickly when decisions are delayed. Typically, the expert (or a whole team of experts) would board a plane to go and try to solve the problem, causing further delays and incurring expensive travel costs. With mobile collaboration, no one leaves their desk, let alone the country.

Secure Mobile Video

The standard form of video collaboration facilitates face-to-face meetings in video-conferencing boardrooms. However, for manufacturers, the heart of their business is often the plant floor —

Share the Responsibility for PM Attainment

2012-01-23T08:28:43-06:00

Preventive maintenance (PM) is a cornerstone of reliability-based maintenance. It’s no surprise then that PM attainment has become a key performance indicator (KPI). However, it may surprise you that in many organizations, maintenance is not primarily responsible for this KPI.

Maintenance always has an important role, of course. It must create the PM program. It must generate, schedule and plan PMs. It also must have staff with enough skill to accomplish the PM. If maintenance is missing any of these things, it has a lot of work to do. But if PM attainment is already one of your current KPIs, these steps are probably already being done.

Yet if those planned PMs are not being accomplished, there is another likely reason besides maintenance capability. The most common reason for scheduled PMs not being accomplished is a change in the production schedule removing access to equipment and lines that were scheduled for work.

This doesn’t absolve maintena

Know Where You Are Going for Successful Change

2012-01-18T08:44:14-06:00

Early in his change-management career, Yogi Berra was advising a professional sports organization in New York on some of the finer points of managing change. At the executive briefing, Berra delivered his change-management theory overview, which he summed up in this single statement: “You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might end up someplace else."

Apparently, the executive board was impressed because they extended his engagement an additional 14 years. Although his actual change consulting career was short lived, Berra did highlight one of the most critical aspects of successful change – knowing where you’re going. In organizational change, where you’re going is usually summed up in business terms: lower cost, higher quality, greater customer satisfaction, etc. These objectives, however, are the results of specific, repeated behaviors. How change truly occurs is by getting people in the org

Creating an Environment for Planning and Scheduling Success

2012-01-16T08:47:43-06:00

Too many times and in too many organizations, we send people off to training with high expectations that they will lead change and improvement upon their return. We hope that overnight they have become equipped with the skills and knowledge to effectively start doing their new work. Unfortunately, weeks later, the trainee and his or her organization are frustrated with the lack of progress.

Where did we go wrong? Let’s take a recent case that I had the opportunity to witness. ABC Company chose to send its new planner/scheduler off to be trained in the proper procedures for planning and scheduling work. The planner came back to the site with his newly learned planning skills and attempted to plan and schedule work. On the first day back, he attended the normal morning meeting where the issues of the last 24 hours are reviewed and any items left uncorrected are assigned for the day. After the first hour was spent in the meeting, the planner headed off to his office only to be s

4 Steps to Learn New Skills in Less Time

2012-01-11T08:55:22-06:00

Business changes require that we effectively learn new processes and skills in less time. With the influx of a new workforce and the imminent exit of our most experienced workers, we need to document expertise so that it can become institutional knowledge. In this article, we explore a four-step kick-start that can help you capture the critical elements needed for a course in minimal time. After completing the four steps, a learning organization can prioritize development without losing vital intellectual capital.

The Life Cycle Institute believes that learning is a process of alignment, assimilation and application — alignment on learning goals and documenting expectations, participation in a learning event designed and delivered for how adults learn, and application of learning on the job. The four-step process described in this article is used to help ensure that the assimilate phase results in learning transfer and leads the learner to apply new understanding and to

Answering Common Maintenance Planning Questions

2012-01-09T09:07:39-06:00

At a recent conference, a number of questions came up that were never properly answered, so I thought I would try to address some of these. The questions involved getting maintenance planners to focus on planning, getting them focused on future work and allowing time to plan.

First, let’s look at roles. The planner should be strategic and focused on future work (i.e., next week and beyond). The supervisor, team leader or lead person should be tactical or focused on today and this week. If parts are needed this week, it’s not the planner but the supervisor who should be dealing with it. The same goes for emergencies; we can’t plan and schedule them, so they should not normally involve planners.

The planning group should be a separate group. The planners should have craft skills; often, they are some of your best craftspeople. However, if you have your planners attending the production meeting where the last 24 hours are reviewed, shame on you. How can th

5 Time Wasters for Reliability Engineers to Avoid

2012-01-05T08:19:19-06:00

You’ve heard the catch phrases. You’ve read the success stories. You’ve seen the return on investment (ROI) calculations and the positive trending that reliability engineers bring. You’ve even lobbied upper management. Your argument has been so convincing that you’ve secured approval in this year’s budget to hire a reliability engineer. The hiring process has begun, and you can’t wait for the results: more reliable equipment, fewer failures and increased availability and production.

If only it were that easy. Building a reliability program led by competent professionals takes work. It requires setting expectations properly. Most of all, it requires time. How do you accelerate the process to ensure the maximum benefit in the shortest time? Avoiding these top five time wasters could help.

Lack of Vision

No, we aren’t talking about whether your reliability engineer could have been a fighter pilot or whether

Defining the Role of a Maintenance Planner

2012-01-03T08:46:09-06:00

Organizations should have a clear work description of what a planner’s role is. The role may vary between organizations, mainly due to plant size. Some organizations have combined planners/supervisors. Some have dedicated planners for shutdowns/turnarounds. Many have people with a planner’s title but no planning.

So how do we figure out a planner’s role? The first step is to decide if you (as a plant) want to have planning. In my opinion, it would be a huge mistake to decide against planning, but if you do, you might as well get rid of planners and/or the role of planning. Most of us will decide we should have planning.

We can’t figure out a clear role unless we first have a clear, agreed-upon workflow that describes in which order we are going to pass on information, to whom and who is responsible. Therefore, the first step is to design clear, agreed-upon workflows (business processes) for our daily work, shutdown work, etc. Once we have the work

Improve Performance with a Storeroom Makeover

2011-12-28T09:35:54-06:00

If you’ve ever watched the TV show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” you may have gotten a little teary-eyed as the narrator tells the story of the family’s plight. Perhaps your eyes got a little misty again at the end of the show as the bus moves forward and everyone cheers when the family sees their new home filled with features they need to improve their lives.

It would be understandable for managers or corporate leaders to get a little emotional when they realize the excess and waste in their maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) storeroom and operating practices. Reviewing the waste in a single storeroom can be chilling. If there are multiple storerooms, the investment and waste can be staggering. In a recent survey of Grainger Industrial Supply’s clients, respondents indicated that 73 percent of customers believe they have too much inventory, 87 percent see substantial cost-savings opportunities in their storeroom inventory “makeov

How to Achieve Effective Maintenance Planning

2011-12-27T09:21:25-06:00

As Sisyphus well knew, pushing things up mountains is difficult, and the uphill struggle from the reactive to the proactive maintenance world is often a frustrating “three steps forward, two steps back” process. That’s a major reason why so many slide back into the familiar, ugly, day-to-day, survival morass at the bottom.

One of those steps on the way up is where preventive maintenance inspections are getting done, we’re finding things that need to be fixed and we’re fixing them. However, we’re still not getting that much better. We’re constantly fixing the same things over and over.

The famous quote, “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it,” remains as true as always.

Granted, the “find it, fix it and move on” mode is a big step up from the “fix it when it breaks” mode, but it doesn’t look or feel like great improvement, so many get discouraged and tend to look for

Don't be the Grinch Who Resists Change

2011-12-21T08:40:30-06:00

It is starting to feel a lot like Christmas. The tree is decorated, stockings are hung over the fireplace, and Christmas carols fill the airwaves. This is all good and cheery, but what really makes it feel like Christmas is trying to memorize 15 songs for our Singing Christmas Tree this year, scheduling travel to see family, and Christmas shopping for my wife and three girls, including a 15-year-old who thinks that “any new car would be fine.” Needing something to cheer me up, I turn on “The Grinch” and realize two things: First, deep down, part of me secretly empathizes with him. Second, there is an important change message in the story.

As Christmas in Whoville approaches, our old buddy Mr. Grinch is exhibiting some resistant behavior – appearing supportive while engaging in active sabotage, co-opting others to resist (although I am not sure his dog was as helpful as expected) and numerous other nefarious activities. As we deal with resistance, it is

Maintenance Planning and Scheduling for Success

2011-12-19T10:23:24-06:00

While on a recent flight to Atlanta, I was leafing through a maintenance book when the person across the aisle struck up a conversation. Turns out, he worked as a veteran maintenance supervisor in a large mill where he has worked for the last two years. He spoke about how things were bad from a reactive standpoint and had gotten worse after the mill downsized. As part of the downsizing effort, they had removed some key players and replaced them with some not-so-key players. We talked about how their maintenance planning and scheduling activities were progressing, to which he was disappointed in the progress they had achieved.

It turns out that he had two maintenance planners/schedulers with a span of control of about 1:25, yet he was still doing a tremendous amount of planning and scheduling himself. He commented that the span of 1:25 fell within the best practices guidelines. In addition, he mentioned from previous training that he learned that a planner should be able to plan thr

Using Dynamic Electric Motor Monitoring to Identify Mechanical Issues

2011-12-14T08:50:54-06:00

Dynamic electric motor testing is often called on-line testing because it requires the motor to be running and generally assumes the motor is in its natural environment. Dynamic testing involves the connection of voltage probes and current transformers. Connecting dynamic test equipment is safe, quick and non-intrusive. Data is acquired and results are displayed in a summary format. The collected data is compared to the user-entered nameplate information and is presented in a pass/fail format with both current test data and trending logs displayed after each successive test.

The Need for Motor Testing

Every reliability technician knows that costs associated with motor failures can be devastating to any business operation. Finding that a motor is operating with conditions that create excessive heat or stress is a guide to the technician to make changes in the motor’s operation and to monitor its insulation. Knowing that a motor is in imminent dang

Discipline and Diligence Are Key for Root Cause Analysis

2011-12-12T09:31:43-06:00

OK, so now you have put up these fancy (or so you think fancy) check sheets and charts for standard work, expecting the improvements to happen. Things go well for the first couple of days or weeks – if you are lucky. Everyone is abuzz with this focus of action, but then it begins to degrade. What is happening?

Diligence and discipline of execution are important underlying details of root cause analysis. The new methods are oftentimes person dependent rather than process dependent. So, we find that the owner maintaining this new system goes on vacation, and the team finds itself quickly back where they started – frustrated and not knowing where to head next. These new methods fall to the side and are sometimes even removed in shame.

The important aspect of this improvement process is applying consistent performance through discipline. The team members must be able to apply the techniques in order to achieve the performance levels and results expected.

New Testing Methods Can Benefit Mechanical Systems

2011-12-07T15:45:59-06:00

Experimental modal analysis (EMA) and operating deflection shape (ODS) analysis are new techniques used to animate the dynamic response of mechanical systems. An EMA provides mode shapes associated with natural frequencies of a mechanical system. An ODS offers an animation of the deformation characteristics of a vibrating mechanical system during operation.

The animations can be extremely helpful in defining areas of structural weakness or identifying areas of mechanical “looseness.” In cases of resonant excitation, the animation techniques can be used to evaluate the potential benefit of structural and/or mechanical modifications.

Experimental Modal Testing

Excitation of a natural frequency, referred to as resonance, is one of the most common reasons for excessive vibration of machines and supporting structures and foundations. In some cases, the source of the dynamic force that excites the resonance can be identified and removed. However,

5 Keys to Maintain Equipment Reliability

2011-12-05T08:55:44-06:00

There is so much similarity in all that we do within the maintenance planning and scheduling world that compares to other separate and distinct functions. Let me explain. Borrowing from root cause analysis process methods, I trust you are familiar with Ishikawa diagrams (also called fishbone diagrams or cause-and-effect diagrams). These diagrams are one method that is used for product design, quality defect avoidance or variation, or to identify factors that lead to some event, hence the use in root cause analysis.

The categories typically include:

Man (people)
Methods: How the process is performed and the specific requirements to perform the tasks, including time estimates
Machines: Any equipment, tools, etc., needed to do the job
Materials: Consumables, parts required
Measurements: Data generated from the process

All of these items combine together to create some output or event. In

Using Thermography to Uncover Hidden Problems

2011-11-30T11:10:19-06:00

Thermography can be used to identify and analyze thermal anomalies for the purposes of condition monitoring of machines. These thermal anomalies are usually caused by such mechanisms as operation, improper lubrication, misalignment, worn components or mechanical loading anomalies.

Infrared thermography is based on measuring the distribution of radiant thermal energy (heat) emitted from a target surface and converting this to a surface temperature map or thermogram. Thermal energy is present with the operation of all machines. It can be in the form of friction losses within machines, energy losses within machines, as a characteristic of the process media or any combination thereof. As a result, temperature can be a key parameter for monitoring the performance of machines, the condition of machines and the diagnostics of machine problems. Temperature is also one of the key causes and symptoms of lubricant degradation and loss of lubrication function within a machine.

Infra

Implementing Solutions to Root Causes

2011-11-28T08:53:16-06:00

Root cause analysis and root cause failure analysis are commonly used terms, but I have always felt that they are somewhat misguided.

First, there is not really such a thing as a “root cause” to a problem. If you try to find a definition for “root cause,” you will discover a mix of homegrown attempts, but all of them are general or unclear in nature. Here is an example: “A root cause is an initiating cause of a causal chain which leads to an outcome or effect of interest.” Aside from being wrong, it is quite a bunch of incomprehensive verbiage.

The problem with definitions such as these is that in the real world it is never possible to prove a single event that solely initiates a whole chain of other events. That is because there are always other events before the so-called “root cause event.” This may seem like semantics, but for problem-solvers, it is important to keep in mind that there never is a silver-bullet answer.

Identifying Mechanical Faults with Motor Current Signature Analysis

2011-11-23T08:39:41-06:00

Motor current signature analysis (MCSA) has proven to be a highly valuable predictive maintenance tool. Although it is a relatively young, rarely utilized technology, it is rapidly gaining acceptance in industry today. Mechanical faults related to belts, couplers, alignment and more are easily found through the use of a demodulated current spectrum.

MCSA is simply the process by which motor current readings are recorded and analyzed in the frequency domain. It has been around since 1985 and proven itself well over the years in locating rotor faults and air gap problems in motors.

The motor current signature is recorded in a time domain format. The current is represented in a graph form with the amplitude shown on the “Y” axis and the time on the “X” axis. The result is a typical current sinewave shown in Figure 1.

In order to analyze the data, a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is

3 Common Excuses for Not Performing Root Cause Analysis

2011-11-21T11:18:09-06:00

Most people know what is good for them. We know it is better to eat vegetables than cookies and chips. We know it is healthier to exercise than watch TV. How come the cookies and chips are flying off shelves while the veggies whither? How come the average person spends 20-some hours in front of the TV while we struggle to get one single hour of exercise in a week? The answer is that we don’t do what is best for us. We more often do what we feel like and what is easy.

The same logic applies to plants and mills. For example, most everyone agrees that we should fix the root causes of problems rather than the symptoms. However, most of us don’t fix the root causes of problems. We keep repairing breakdowns and patching problems with temporary solutions year in and year out. How come? There are a million excuses, but none of those make any sense if we look at what is best for a company over time. Let’s look at the most common excuses.

1. “There is no t

How to Implement an Effective Chain-wear Monitoring Program

2011-11-16T09:34:54-06:00

Chain-wear monitoring has been a part of equipment reliability programs since the first link was forged. It is such an integral part of an organization’s reliability program that it has become part of industry slang as in the phrase, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.”

Chains are a part of almost every industrial process. They are found in a plant’s material-handling transportation system, key components in the operation of hoists and cranes, or as a part of the connection that controls a safety stop device.

Regardless of its function, the failure of any component that makes up a chain is costly to the owner, if not disastrous. Even though we would all agree that a chain failure is undesirable, modern industry’s chain-wear monitoring has remained varied in its approach and frequency.

Typically, chain reliability inspections are applied through a periodic inspection sampling procedure or replacement schedule. Visual in

Why Execution is Key for Business Strategies

2011-11-14T10:54:15-06:00

Business strategies developed by companies are often useless. A business strategy is basically a plan for what the company should focus on in the future. It is a promise and guideline to steer a company in the right direction. It’s not too different from your personal New Year’s resolution.

Most people’s New Year’s resolutions include things such as losing weight, exercising more, drinking less and improving their marriage in some form. The universal formula for change in any personal-improvement book or business book is to:

Understand what to do
Understand how to do it
Execute

Let us compare a business strategy with our beloved New Year’s resolution. We know what the problem is, right? We are fat, unhappy, stressed, whatever. We usually know how to improve (drink less, exercise, spend time with the wife), but we fail to execute.

The hard truth is that we try a little. We s

6 Techniques to Error-proof Your Plant

2011-11-10T08:59:05-06:00

When faced with the task of improving plant efficiency, the average plant manager breaks the task down by the five or six existing "departmental silos." Each silo leader subdivides responsibility, repeating the mistake, and passes it on to individuals. As a result, we see young, intelligent engineers overwhelmed by the task handed to them of "get out there and improve maintenance." The situation is not so bad for the less intelligent or those who have become automatons; they just keep repeating what has gone on forever and collect another paycheck.

What the plant manager needs is a better way to visualize his situation, a method that will allow him to develop a new strategy. The following insights are based on work done at MIT and by many other professors in "human error" at international centers of learning. The "Error Pyramid" is unique, but the remaining techniques and technologies have been established for 15 years or more.

When Are OEM Recommendations Not Enough?

2011-11-09T08:40:07-06:00

This is a commonly posed question in industry and is sometimes inversely worded as, “Are OEM recommendations enough?” It quite simply boils down to an evaluation of two underlying issues. First, what do you get from original equipment manufacturer (OEM) recommendations? Second, what do you consider to be enough or meeting the need? The knee-jerk response by many might be to challenge the validity of OEM recommendations for any and everything, but that leaves us to wonder how effective the alternatives might be and under what circumstances it makes sense to employ them.

What OEM Recommendations Provide

It is fairly commonplace to receive assets with an accompanying set of operating and maintenance manuals. The operating manual generally covers guidelines around the design-intended operating parameters (dos) and the limits or restrictions to operation (don’ts). The maintenance manual, on the other hand, often provides the user with the schedules for nec

How to Reap the Benefits of Parts Standardization

2011-11-07T10:49:04-06:00

Nothing leverages your parts and training budgets like standardization. It is one of the key areas of the 5-S process. The more you can standardize, the fewer parts you need to maintain and the further your training goes.

Some plants have dozens of manufacturers represented on their production floor with the subsequent glut of critical spares in the storeroom, shelves full of manuals and lost time while technicians re-familiarize themselves with troubleshooting procedures. It can also mean extra money spent on special tools, calibrators and handheld programmers, as well as maintaining extra vendors on file with the insurance, credit and shipping requirements that go with them. It takes some time and effort up front to establish standards, but the payoff can be continuous. The flavor of the month may be sexy and/or cheaper at the time of purchase, but you will probably pay for it later.

Here are some simple guidelines to get you started. These are just a few places to loo

Unleash the Power of Your CMMS

2011-11-02T09:30:46-05:00

A properly configured and utilized computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is a foundational element of every successful maintenance and reliability program. However, implementing this technology by itself will not ensure that users will achieve greater efficiencies or maximum value from their investment. Trying to obtain value from technology alone is like trying to stand on a three-legged stool that is missing two legs. The other two critical items (legs to this stool) are well-designed work processes and engaged people.

We as a maintenance and reliability community need to educate our management and co-workers on the benefits and potential value a CMMS brings to the entire organization, not just the maintenance department. Empowering and encouraging the plant staff to learn how to use this critical tool can pay huge dividends in improving plant performance and increasing the efficiency of maintenance and reliability programs. Through better analysis of asset failures,

How to Keep Maintenance in a Proactive Mode

2011-10-31T08:38:36-05:00

I stumbled across some music trivia lately, that the old rock band Chicago finally had its album “Stone of Sisyphus” released a few years ago. One of the more famous “lost” albums, it was originally recorded in the early 1990s but had languished for years, available only in illegal bootleg copies.

That reminded me of when I used to use the story of Sisyphus in maintenance training sessions.

I never encountered a great number of serious Greek mythology students in those sessions, but was always amazed how mythology suddenly grasped attendees’ attention when I started telling about Sisyphus showing up in an episode of the TV series “Xena: Warrior Princess.” A statuesque, obviously very strong gal who always wore a brief, Roman-style leather outfit, Xena

The Hidden Costs of Manual Tool Tracking

2011-10-26T08:27:48-05:00

I recently had a fascinating discussion with a friend who performs materials inspections for one of the world’s largest suppliers of aircraft parts and assemblies. His company had just switched from manual materials tracking to radio-frequency identification (RFID)-based tracking, and he calculated that the changeover had already saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars — maybe more.

Before they adopted RFID, materials frequently left his inspection facility and failed to make it to their intended destinations. Sometimes they were tracked down, and other times orders valued at as much as $300,000 vanished forever. RFID has entirely solved this problem.

This is an excellent example of the savings RFID can bring to a large operation. Although his story relates to materials inventory, tool tracking offers similar opportunities to reduce losses.

Material losses are easier to measure. When one-third of a million dollars’ worth of composite fabr

Improve Equipment Effectiveness by Targeting 11 Major Losses

2011-10-24T08:30:38-05:00

Everyone wants a silver bullet to address the competitive environment pressuring profits and, ultimately, jobs in North America. Having transitioned from a controls engineer to a maintenance manager to an operations manager, I can attest to the quest for that silver bullet. The reality is that few levers exist for you to pull that will radically improve the profitability of your organization. With global markets and price supports, commodity costs are generally fixed. The same applies to prices received for your company’s products or services. Labor markets and costs are somewhat fixed as well. With the exception of fuel surcharges, logistics costs are generally set.

As a maintenance or operations manager, your span of control is bound by the four walls of your site. With energy prices, some opportunities exist for cost reduction in pursuing energy audits and savings activities. The largest opportunity is focusing your efforts on improving equipment effectiveness by targeting

Strategies for Overcoming Resistance to Change

2011-10-18T16:25:16-05:00

Will Rogers was one of the most revered public figures in the early 1900s, and much of his popularity was due to his tremendous understanding of and connection with people. As a keen student of human nature, Rogers unsurprisingly identified a fundamental key to successful change in his statement: “It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble; it’s what we know that ain’t so.”

How many changes have been hampered by individuals who rigidly hold onto the current state because of something they “know” that ain’t so? For example, when U.S. auto manufacturers first observed lean production, they refused to believe their own eyes. “You can’t build cars that way — not enough inventory.” They struggled to understand a world that didn’t fit into their view of reality even when faced with clear evidence.

Our collection of deep-seated beliefs and assumptions create our view of the world. Often t

Keep Maintenance Simple: Use Senses and Sensibility

2011-10-17T09:05:59-05:00

What good is it to have advanced maintenance techniques if they have no real benefit over simple basic maintenance? Now I am not saying go and throw away all of your fancy toys. What I am saying is that you don’t have to have advanced tools for every maintenance task. I have seen many maintenance groups that have adopted certain maintenance techniques and, in turn, overuse them on everything they can be used on. The point is, why use them if they are not cost effective?

There are many cases in which a failure can be detected with an operator’s or technician’s built-in test equipment that takes no special training to use. This equipment is his or her senses — sight, sound, feel and taste (not recommended). These are all skills that should be taken into account when performing any kind of maintenance analysis. In many cases, a technician or operator can detect a potential failure in adequate time to mitigate the consequences of a functional failure.

How Proper Training Can Increase Reliability

2011-10-12T09:24:45-05:00

I recently had the opportunity to make a first visit to a new client’s site. As you would expect, upon arrival I was required to attend the contractor/vendor safety orientation training before I could be set loose in the site facilities. This client site was in the Deep South, and our instructor for the training was the site safety coordinator, a local gentleman who had been employed in or around the area all his life. With his Southern drawl, he said everything about three times. (I could never quite figure out if he wanted to make sure we “got it,” or if he just liked saying everything at least three times.) I recall that the training was very good and to the point, and everyone in the training session was fully aware of all the safety rules and all the potential hazards of the site.

Why was this safety orientation training required by the client site? First, there is an OSHA requirement that everyone be trained in the real and potential hazards of the sit

Maintaining a Predictive Maintenance Program

2011-10-10T08:10:23-05:00

“I finally have a predictive maintenance program off the ground. What do I need to do to keep it running? How do I build ‘trust’???”

Now that you have finished your lists, the work begins.

You have outlined the equipment you want to check, using Excel or some other program where you can create lists that are easily edited. With input from you conversations with the area experts, ask them the criticality of the equipment in their area that is on your list. This information will provide a starting point for the infrared, vibration, ultrasonic, etc., routes that you will develop.
You have taken those lists you created - in which you have broken out your high-priority items - for a second reading by the area experts. Ask if the lists fit their vision. If they do, ask them where they are having problems, and highlight those on your list.
You have realized this equipment becomes the critical components in

3 Keys to Create and Sustain Major Change

2011-10-06T08:53:19-05:00

“…there is nothing more difficult and dangerous, or more doubtful of success, than an attempt to introduce a new order of things…” – Niccolo Machiavelli, “The Prince”

Considered by many as the father of modern political science, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote “The Prince” as practical, if not morally ambiguous, advice on what is necessary for a new prince to establish stable rule — in other words, how to create and sustain major change. The following excerpt from his book demonstrates Machiavelli’s awareness of the difficulty of change and the resistance it can provoke.

“Hence it is that, whenever the opponents of the new order of things have the opportunity to attack it, they will do it with the zeal of partisans, whilst the others defend it but feebly, so that it is dangerous to rely upon the latter.” — Niccolo Machiavelli

This statement says that those who opp

How to Set Frequencies for PM Inspections

2011-10-03T09:10:04-05:00

For those of you who want to indulge in the details of setting preventive maintenance (PM) inspections, let’s begin with defining what I mean by inspections. Inspections include all objective inspections (we measure something) using an instrument – for example, a vibration analyzer, an infrared camera, a volt meter, a flow meter or ultrasonic equipment. Inspections also include all subjective inspections (look-listen-feel-smell). In order to set inspection frequencies, we need to understand what a failure-developing period is.

The failure-developing period (FDP), also called the Pf Curve by some, is the time period from when it is possible to detect a failure until we have a breakdown. A failure is when a system or piece of equipment is operating correctly within given parameters, but it shows signs of problems. For example, a centrifugal pump may be cavitating, but it is still providing the required flow for the operation. We have a failure but not a breakdown. The cav

The Value of Risk-based Asset Management

2011-09-28T09:41:52-05:00

With the forming of ISO Technical Committee 251, it’s clear that asset management will soon have a standard. Now is the time to educate ourselves about the value that optimized asset management creates. Based on the release of ISO 9001, Quality Management Systems – Requirements, there is a valid expectation of hype, confusion and a large outpouring of funds as companies work to achieve compliance. Luckily, like quality management, asset management is about identifying, mitigating and eliminating risk.

Formalizing, documenting and validating our asset management plan seem like a significant undertaking. Since the planning committee is using BSI PAS 55 as a starting place, it is likely that the core of the specification will remain valid. Part 2 of this specification provides the guidelines for application and also includes seven items that can be reviewed by an organization to see how they compare to the key 28 elements of part 1. Using LCE’s Reliability Excellence

PdM Program Success Starts with Hard Work

2011-09-26T14:44:00-05:00

When you have developed a network of people — either through conference attendance or training classrooms, or through more informal avenues like blogs and predictive maintenance forums — you have a real sounding board for developing your PdM program. In my experience, though, the only way you are going to develop a true program for any of the disciplines (infrared, vibration, motor testing, ultrasound, etc.) is to put in some hard work yourself. You must determine what should be included and not included in the program and make some decisions on what the criteria will be to determine that.

This may or may not be a difficult task, but it is one that must be done. There is no simple way to do this. You will make some mistakes. These will not be earth-shattering ones — jus

Finding the Hidden Teachers in Your Organization

2011-09-21T08:22:01-05:00

The only true competitive advantage a company has is its employees’ ability to learn, grow and change so they can discover, improve, innovate and meet the challenges of a dynamic marketplace. Today’s agile companies know that learning and continuous improvement is a priority. Training Magazine’s 2009 industry report published that the average organization spent approximately $484,000 on training-based investments per year.

Formal instruction, online or in the classroom, is critical to developing talent in your organization. However, formal training is a piece of the learning process. Learning professionals largely agree that 80 percent of learning happens outside of a formal classroom. Some learning leaders think that the amount of informal learning (unstructured learning that happens outside the traditional learning events) drives the percentage even higher.

With so much learning happening every day between leaders, managers, employees a

Quick Guide to PM Development and Execution

2011-09-19T09:18:41-05:00

In many organizations, groups are often trying to chase the latest buzzwords of the day and yet have never established the foundation required to support those efforts. PM development and execution are classic examples. For this discussion, when I refer to PMs, I am talking about both preventive maintenance and condition-based maintenance tasks. This is by no means an exhaustive explanation of all of the considerations necessary for a comprehensive PM program. It is intended as a rough guide to foster continued discussion into the topic.

Stop doing non-value added PMs or task steps within the PM. We can never seem to find time to update or correct the PM tasks or frequencies but can always find time to continue doing the wrong work (go figure! ).
Assuming that you already have a PM program in place, start with the equipment where you are bleeding or hemorrhaging the most. This is often not your most critical assets.
Identify the failu

How Kitting Can Enhance Reliability

2011-09-14T08:13:15-05:00

In the world of manufacturing, we are looking for better, more efficient ways to improve our production uptime and quality, reduce the cost per unit, improve human capital utilization and create a higher quality of work life for our personnel. Kitting for maintenance crafts to perform their tasks is one of the easier and more effective ways to allow quality completion of the job with minimal productivity impact, especially when accompanied by a well-planned and functionally scheduled job.

Understanding the value of kitting in relation to the value of the time lost requires asking and honestly answering some questions:

Does the job have to be done now or can it wait to be planned and scheduled at a time that minimizes production loss? Will we be able to schedule it at a time that will reduce the amount of product lost through the equipment downtime for the repair?
What materials should be kitted for the job(s)?
Is there a

Using Ultrasound for Condition Monitoring

2011-09-12T08:19:52-05:00

In the past decade, the capabilities of many condition-based assessment tools, sometimes called predictive technologies, have significantly expanded. The hardware has become more compact, more rugged and much easier to use. The companion software applications have become more powerful with exponentially increasing capabilities. Additionally, the software tools have become more mainstream with much less reliance on proprietary protocol and programming. This situation has led to expanded use of these sophisticated tools to monitor and assess equipment health. We have seen vibration analysis, oil analysis, infrared, motor circuit analysis and many other non-destructive tools become very popular. Many organizations now stress their use as a prominent part of the maintenance and reliability programs.

As Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) theory points out, it is important for an organization to use multiple predictive technologies in a program. The type and how much of each predicti

How to Improve Communication within Your Organization

2011-09-07T08:32:55-05:00

The communication blitz is a proven approach to communicating key messages effectively throughout an organization. Individuals looking to improve communication within their organization and enhance employee engagement can adopt the easy-to-use process introduced in this article.

During a large project, when many things are changing, there is an increased need for ongoing communication to all employees. When implementing a continuous-improvement initiative, effectively communicating the changes is essential to success. Change management during a big project is just that — managing the change itself. The communication blitz provides proactive messages to help manage the change within an organization.

A large project like an implementation of reliability excellence requires a master plan that includes major tasks and milestones, and a well-designed change-management plan. The change-management plan needs to include a comprehensive communication plan. The c

How to Create Detailed Inspection and Detection Strategies

2011-09-06T09:45:08-05:00

Detailed inspections require the right type of person with the right mind-set, attitude and training. Most mills/mines/plants have some type of inspection program, but unfortunately the inspections are often ineffective.

There may be many reasons why inspections often aren’t effective, but one reason is that inspections are not done detailed enough to find problems. Many inspectors simply walk by equipment, making sure it wasn’t stolen last night, and if they are in a good mood, they may make sure it hums.

Let’s look at a few examples.

Example 1: A typical pump and motor coupling configuration in a paper mill

This plant has an inspection system in place,

Identifying Risks Through Asset Management

2011-08-31T09:23:15-05:00

Findings from recent catastrophic events, such as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, have revealed that information relating to asset health was readily available but not properly managed. Analysis of the Gulf of Mexico event indicated that there were conditions in critical assets that could have impaired performance prior to and after the accident. A routine testing and maintenance program should have detected these conditions. This is an easy statement to make after a catastrophic event occurs. What is much more difficult is to navigate the overwhelming number of specifications and standards available to corporations on management systems and develop an asset management model that provides the transparency to asset health.

The first step is developing a management system standard that adequately addresses six key elements:

Policy
Planning
Implementation and operation
Performance assessment
Improveme

Justifying a Predictive Maintenance Program

2011-08-29T16:18:53-05:00

“How do I quantify my PdM finds? Where do I go to establish my credibility?”

Grow a thick skin, fast. You have to develop some way of bringing some sense to the finds you have made in your predictive maintenance program.

Now that trust has been established and your routes are being executed, you wonder if the work you are doing is worthwhile. Are there any finds to report on to show you are doing a good job? How do you quantify the finds that have been reported and put a dollar sign to the finds to prove the system is working to the benefit of the company or department? How do you show that you are saving money and that the trust you have been afforded is well founded?

Nobody teaches us how to do this. It is one of the most difficult processes you have to establish in your PdM program, but it’s essential to justify your program’s existence. My way of quantifying a good find is simply to use a delay avoidance process. I take the cost per

5 Key Elements of a Well-planned Work Order

2011-08-24T10:26:02-05:00

There are basically five areas that if addressed properly will result in a well-planned work order:

1) The Right People — This focuses on the correct skills required for the scope of work as well as how many and how long (labor estimates) it will take to complete.

2) The Right Place — You should have an accurate identification of the process, equipment and location to reduce travel, investigation and setup times.

3) The Right Time – This should include windows of opportunity to gain access, along with operations’ expectation of starting or completing the work. This will assist the scheduling process.

4) The Right Parts, Tools and Equipment – All repair parts should be identified, ordered and on-hand before scheduling. Arrangements are made for additional specialty tools and equipment.

5) The Specifications, Permits, Hazards, Work Inst

How to Implement Modern Condition Monitoring Systems

2011-08-22T13:36:13-05:00

To be more competitive, efficient and cost-effective, more and more companies are implementing automation and remote condition monitoring systems, sensors, alarms, PLCs, accelerometers, human-machine interface panels, etc. Now many are implementing wireless networks to monitor equipment globally at remote monitoring systems.

These modern systems are truly technological marvels and amaze even the most jaded technophiles. But we must be careful because the solutions we implement today are going to lead to the problems we must grapple with tomorrow.

Back 15 years ago when I first got active in the maintenance management industry, managers did not know what was going on in their business because they did not have any reports other than manual entries. Then we implemented a CMMS system, and they did not know what was going on in their business because they had more than 600 reports and over 200 computer-generated graphs.

Now forensic engineers, those who research m

Why Reliability Excellence is Imperative for Safety

2011-08-16T08:20:22-05:00

We tend to speak about financial issues more than moral issues in the business world. Safety is an issue that has significant ramifications from both moral and financial perspectives.

Safety is a financial imperative in today’s business world. According to a 2010 Liberty Mutual study, the annual documented direct and indirect industry cost of U.S. workplace accidents totaled $240 billion per year. The average cost to industry for a fatal accident ranges from a low estimate by the National Safety Council of $1.27 million to the enormous average of $8.6 million per fatality paid out by BP after its refinery explosion.

According to an Air Force study, the average cost of a permanent disability is $1.3 million, while a partial disability costs $210,000. Workers’ compensation premiums, which correlate directly to your accident and incident rate, amount to millions of dollars per year in even a modest-sized company. Any way you look at it, accidents are expensive.

The 10-second Measure of Maintenance Effectiveness

2011-08-15T16:09:17-05:00

Two decades ago, I worked in the Florida citrus industry. Near the end of each growing season, the fruit became softer. This promoted increased damage during handling, especially in the bins where the fruit was temporarily stored during testing.

This, of course, wasted money, as juice literally went down the drain.

We built and automated a system that would allow us to bypass these storage bins while still allowing us to meet all of the necessary testing requirements. But this system came with its own costs and risks, so it was only economical to operate late in the season when fruit quality was diminished.

Our company had sophisticated measurements in place, including comparative values across the state. We could use these measures to determine at what point in each season we should convert to this system.

But, we didn’t need those comparisons.

My engineering office was on one side of those elevated fruit bins. The business offices

Let Risk and Your Equipment Determine Your Maintenance Strategy

2011-08-11T14:38:02-05:00

When I attend conferences and workshops and read articles on maintenance and reliability, more and more I hear people touting that preventive maintenance is more costly and not the right approach. When we talk about preventive maintenance, we are primarily talking about time-based inspections, but it can include overhauls/rebuilds as well. But before we take statements like these as the gospel and apply them carte blanche to all of our equipment, we need to understand the basis for that reasoning and when to apply it.

From the Reliability-Centered Maintenance side, we know that we can’t apply the single bathtub curve to all equipment failures. We recognize that six separate failure curves exist, and greater than 80 percent of all failures occur outside the infant mortality or end-of-life wear-out zones, meaning the failures are totally random in nature. No doubt that condition-based monitoring using various tools like vibration or temperature monitoring is better and a less c

3 Effective Ways to Manage for Change

2011-08-09T10:36:33-05:00

On May 11, 1996, 34 people attempted to summit Mount Everest. In what came to be the deadliest single day on Mount Everest, eight people lost their lives. Numerous factors led to the tragedy – most notably a late-day storm that trapped many on the peak. One of the climbers, a journalist by the name of Jon Krakauer, captured his experience that day in his book “Into Thin Air” and in it identified another more subtle, but just as significant factor in the tragedy. Krakauer was one of the first climbers to reach the summit on that day, and during the descent he became increasingly concerned about the other climbers’ singular focus on reaching the summit. The basis for his concern was his knowledge that reaching the summit was only half the challenge. The descent from the peak is as difficult and exhausting as the ascent. By focusing so much effort on reaching the summit, the climbers risked not reserving both time and energy to make the demanding descent. When the storm h

Turn Around Your Company by Following a Lean Model

2011-08-09T09:54:13-05:00

Is anything working? Are you in trouble yet? Is it you, or is it the economy? The fact of the matter is, IT’S YOU! Why? You are the one that has to survive. It is your responsibility. Without change, things will stay the same. So, how do you go about initiating change?

On a recent Business901 podcast, I discussed with Bob Weiner, CEO of PAS Technologies, how his company climbed from near the bottom of industry rankings to the top. What significant change did he make to leapfrog the competition? He invested the first week of his leadership in lean training.

Most professionals today have not been involved in a turnaround. They do not realize that turnarounds require a different set of skills and management techniques. My methods do not work for all and are just one way of doing it. You must decide on your course of action. I have been involved in several ventures, and failed at one of them. The results that I had were all different. I broke companies apart, sold some

What Plants Have Failed to Learn in 25 Years

2011-08-04T16:54:44-05:00

Twenty-five years ago, I left the U.S. Navy nuclear submarine program.

As I gained experience in civilian industry, I began to appreciate the Navy’s aplomb for reliable engineering, exceptional training and consistent operations. Their penchant for comprehensive preventive maintenance programs also impressed me.

What I found in industry 25 years ago was quite different.

There was almost no redundancy in design; the failure of a single small pump could shut down an entire plant. Sanitary systems had been modified over time, introducing unsanitary attributes. Many components were chosen solely on initial cost, not reliability or life cycle cost.

Operator training was limited to “hit the green button in the morning, the red button at night, and call mainte

Important Considerations for CMMS Data Entry

2011-08-04T16:43:09-05:00

When implementing a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) into a facility, one of the largest tasks involved is entering the data into the system. This is a two-part task that first requires the one-time entry of the initial data that has been gathered. The second task is the entry of the ongoing information required to use the CMMS to its full potential.

Initial data entry is a large task, but making a good commitment to the initial data gathering will make the job easier.

There is a massive amount of work required between gathering and entering this initial data. After all, there will be equipment data such as model number, serial number, equipment ID, purchase date, installation date, warranty, etc. Included in the data should be information on preventive maintenance on each asset (what needs to be done, how often work should be performed, etc.). There will also be inventory parts information including part number, description, location and reorder point.

The Maintenance Supervisor Enigma

2011-08-04T16:32:12-05:00

In my pre-retired life, I managed the development of maintenance procedures, PM programs, methods and service tools for all deployed equipment within the U.S. Postal Service. We also monitored our maintenance procedures manuals which incorporated support policies for the maintenance management information system. Any local changes were to be approved on a trial basis by my shop.

At that time, we were scratching our heads on how to get the supervisors out of their desks and out on the floor for more face time with the craft employees. I received a call from a plant maintenance manager requesting to stop recording the employees’ work order time on the daily work schedule forms. This was accomplished at the end of each shift by the supervisors from completed work orders. Each supervisor spent

10 Questions to Attain Reliability at the Lowest Cost

2011-08-04T16:16:52-05:00

If you want to ensure equipment reliability at the lowest possible cost, you have to plan for it. With any asset, you need to address the following questions:

What is the equipment function? The primary function? The secondary function?

What is the desired performance?

How long do you plan on it operating (i.e. service life)?

What will the operating context be (i.e. 24/7/365, tropical or frigid climate, abrasive process)?

What are the consequences of failure? How will you mitigate the consequences?

Have you identified the failure modes through failure modes and effects analysis (i.e. the Blow Out Preventer [BOP] with 260 failure modes)?

What is the probability of failure with any of those failure modes?

How will you find those prior to failure during the failure detection window?

What will be the mode of restoration (i.e. repair in place, replace, rebuild

Monitoring the Performance of Your Asset Management System

2011-08-03T15:13:38-05:00

All reliability-centered continuous improvement programs must include both a process that effectively assesses the condition of the plant’s capital assets and a monitoring process. The British Standard Institution’s Publically Available Specification (PAS-55) states, “The organization shall establish, implement and maintain process(es) and/or procedure(s) to monitor and measure the performance of the asset management system and the performance and/or condition of assets and/or asset systems.”

The specification indicates your Asset Management System (AMS) must address both reactive and proactive monitoring.

Reactive Monitoring

A reactive monitoring process identifies past or existing nonconformities in the asset management system as well as any asset-related deterioration, failures or incidents. This sounds straightforward, but how do you cost effectively monitor or measure nonconformities in either t

An Effective PM Program Requires a Solid Foundation

2011-08-01T14:43:58-05:00

From previous surveys and depending on the audience responding, either everyone (upward of 90 percent) or a minority (less than 40 percent) has an effective preventive maintenance (PM) program. With the range so broad, let’s dig a little deeper to determine what it takes to have an effective PM program. For the purposes of this article, I also am including condition-based monitoring activities such as inspection.

What is the strategic and business case for your PM activities? Why are you doing the PM activities, and how did you come to choose those activities? Did you just pull them from the equipment manual? What value is the program providing you? No, I’m not talking about the “perceived” value. What is the measured value that you can prove to your partners? If they stop operating the equipment to give you a window to do PM activities (condition-based inspections and so forth, not necessarily component replacement activities), what do they get in return?

How Do You Create a High-Performance Team?

2011-07-28T16:22:45-05:00

An effective work team is a group of engaged individuals. In “The Toyota Way,” Jeffrey Liker tells us, “The center of TPS (Toyota Production System) is people. A common phrase heard around Toyota is 'Before we build cars, we build people.'”

You can have the best tools, most productive processes and the biggest bank account, but none of this will produce results unless you have people. The research has been done, and the results are clear. People engaged in a common goal will trump advantages in resources, processes and capital. Just read the business best-sellers or search “employee engagement” if you need to see the business case for developing engaged employees. If you are reading this article, I assume you’re already convinced.

A work group consists of individual people. To achieve high-performing teams, you must treat them as individual people. Individuals are engaged when they feel like their effort and opinions are

Quintessential Asset Management: The Road to Reliability-centered Maintenance

2011-07-13T14:24:10-05:00

Asset-management programs and software are getting a lot of press these days. Every maintenance engineer and his site manager are writing a white paper and/or book about the value of asset management to a company’s bottom line. There are measuring tools and concepts galore, all intended to provide an instantly successful maintenance process. Much of this content makes achieving reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) and condition-based maintenance (CBM) sound relatively easy and commonplace. This fosters a misguided concept that RCM and CBM are commodities that can be purchased and implemented in short order.

In order to explain how to gauge where a company’s maintenance program stands and where its goals need to ultimately lie, we need another catch phrase that is all encompassing of the total maintenance-management-process approach and ultimate goal. How does Quintessential Asset Management (QAM) sound?

In this article, I’ll outline the five levels of

Condition Monitoring on Drilling Platforms: A Case Study

2011-06-30T09:39:39-05:00

There are many types of drilling platforms used across the world. Figure 1 is an example of the different types of platforms that are used for oil or gas extraction.

Figure 1 – Types of Drilling Platforms

A typical oil production platform is self-sufficient in its energy and water needs, housing electrical generation, water declinators and all of the equipment necessary to process oil and gas such that it can be either delivered directly onshore by pipeline or to a floating storage unit and/or tanker loading facility.

Extraction of volatile substances under extreme pressure in a hostile e

Industrial Facilities and Processes: Are You Winning on Both Fronts?

2011-06-22T10:35:56-05:00

Problem: At peak production, a plant is turning out enough product to fill a 120,000-square-foot warehouse, but the existing 80,000-square-foot warehouse was built to meet the inventory requirement of the average production volume.

Facilities Solution: Invest millions of dollars to expand the warehouse to 120,000 square feet.

But what if there was a solution that required zero capital investment and optimized both the facility and the processes associated with it? In this case there is: a revised production and inventory changeover strategy that makes more effective use of working capital and existing space.

“Aha!”

Data-driven Team Decisions

Effective solutions such as this are more likely to be identified when all stakeholders collaborate in strategic master planning based on analysis of historic production and demand data.

As i

AS&E Keeps Lean With Sequence Software

2011-06-22T09:49:45-05:00

As the demand for new homeland-security technologies continues to increase, so too does the competition among private companies vying for a piece of the market. Accommodating customer demands for fast delivery times often is the key to success – or failure.

One company thriving in the fast-changing homeland-security market is American Science and Engineering, Inc. (AS&E). The company manufactures sophisticated X-ray products used to inspect parcels, baggage, vehicles, pallets, cargo containers and people.

In 2008, AS&E initiated a lean manufacturing initiative that continues to focus on increasing factory output and revenue while improving operational efficiency.

Doug Capri, AS&E’s manufacturing engineering manager, says the lean initiative looks at every aspect of the manufacturing process. One of the low-hanging fruits identified as needing immediate attention was the way the company documented its manufacturing processes. Capri decid

Reliable Plant 2011 Highlights

2011-06-14T12:26:46-05:00

Noria’s 12th annual Reliable Plant Conference and Exhibition, held from April 19 to 21 at Columbus, Ohio, was considered a big success by many of the more than 1,100 participants who took part this year.

Video Highlights

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The international conference is the premier event for plant management, lubrication and reliability professionals. The conference showcased a broad coverage of products and services for attendees, along w

Automotive industry pursuing new technology, techniques

2011-04-05T09:44:06-05:00

New BioPreferred Label released by USDA

2011-04-01T09:01:38-05:00

Label Will Help Boost Demand for Products Made From Renewable Commodities and Support Rural Jobs

GLENWILLOW, Ohio, March 31, 2011 – Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan on Friday unveiled the first 60 products that consumers will soon see in stores throughout the country bearing the new USDA BioPreferred product label for certified biobased products.

The new BioPreferred label designates biobased products that are composed wholly or significantly of agricultural ingredients – renewable plant, animal, marine or forestry materials. This new label indicates that the product has been independently certified to meet USDA BioPreferred program standards for biobased content. Biobased products help add value to commodities, create jobs in rural communities, increase U.S. energy independence by reducing the use of petroleum in manufactured products and may also reduce the introduction of fossil carbon into the atmosphere, thus mitigatin

How do you justify the investment made in PdM?

2011-03-09T09:45:14-06:00

"How do I quantify my PdM finds? Where do I go to establish my credibility?"

Grow a thick skin, fast. You have to develop some way of bringing some sense to the finds you have made in your predictive maintenance program.

Now that trust has been established and your routes are being executed, you wonder if the work you are doing is worthwhile. Are there any finds to report on to show you are doing a good job? How do you quantify the finds that have been reported, and put a dollar sign to the finds, to prove the system is working to the benefit of the company or department? How do you show that you are saving money, and that the trust you have been afforded is well founded?

Nobody teaches us how to do this. It is one of the most difficult processes you have to establish in your PdM program. But, it's essential to justify your program's existence. My way of quantifying a good find is simply to use a delay avoidance process. I take the cost per h

Questions, comments and random thought triggers on maintenance

2011-03-09T09:10:38-06:00

I evaluate maintenance operations on the existence of effective PM programs, a working and meaningful work order and information system, effectiveness of the stockroom, and the processes in place to support the technician. Are there contingent processes in place for handling emergencies? Are there seasonal variations to specific processes?

Where are the resources to support the fixer: tools, documentation, past history, spares, technical support and management? Are they readily available when needed? Does the fixer shag parts or does the stockroom deliver for breakdowns? How about accessibility of documentation for the "fix"?

Are there processes in place which allow the operator and technician to make informed decisions, to work as suppliers/customers to each other, to participate in work design and provide information on performance to make

P-FIRST: Success in plant reliability is in the hands of the people

2011-03-07T08:51:04-06:00

Thermal scanning, automatic balancers and levelers, predictive equipment, fluid scans, ultrasonic testing, PM programs, reports and logs, more reports and logs, and yet even more reports and logs. These are all great ways to track, detect or predict possible real, and future failures. I know many companies that have these items, and a host of others have them at their disposal, but, yet, these companies do not run any more efficiently than the companies that may not have access to these resources. Why is that?

I believe that the key to success in plant reliability is not in the tools we use, nor in the methods with which we choose to measure performance. Success in plant reliability is in the hands of the people who actually do the work. Managers can tell their employees what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, but if the people do not take ownership in what they are doing, and if there is not a culture of "This is MY plant, I need to do whatever it takes to keep this plan

You need to take care of your customers, your operators and your techs!

2011-03-07T08:39:54-06:00

The customer is the end reason that the plant exists. However, the people who interact with the customer are employees. Management's focus must be on those interfaces. They cannot get to the customer otherwise. Therefore, I would direct management to focus on employee development, training, behavior, skills, etc. In the plant, it is the operators who make the product. That is the factory's reason for existence.

A supplier/customer relationship should exist between the operators and maintenance technicians. When the equipment is down, the most important employee in the plant may be the technician fixing it. At that point, all of the organization must focus on facilitating him or her. All of the processes must be designed to support this person.

Value-added maintenance is related to quantity and quality of plant production. S

Maintenance is not a cost: How to justify an investment in maintenance and reliability

2011-03-04T11:48:30-06:00

As many of us strive to improve the reliability of our plants, several comments bemoan how challenging that is to do in an era of continuous deep cost cutting. They say that in their operation, maintenance is seen as a cost, and is one of the first things to arbitrarily cut.

Some think their operations have cut too far! What they seek is a way to justify a strong maintenance capability.

I submit that one approach is to speak of maintenance as an "investment in capacity." Use the language that plant managers, controllers and senior management understands: capital investment and return on investment (ROI).

“When you substitute your own estimates, the resulting comparison will be different in the details, but it will almost always favor an approach that improves reliability.”

Before I continue, this article is NOT intended for factories with clearly wasteful practices. We do need to cut costs where doing so will

In the M&R business, good enough never is

2011-03-04T11:42:23-06:00

About 15 years ago, I was fortunate to attend a conference where the keynote speaker's focus was quality. This person was a successful entrepreneur and had built a top-flight company over the past two decades. The company's success was based on making the best-quality, best-tasting cookie in the U.S. The person's motto was "Good Enough Never Is." The company was Mrs. Fields Cookies and the speaker was Mrs. Fields.

According to the company's Web site, Debbi Fields was a young mother with no business experience when she opened her first cookie store in Palo Alto, Calif., in 1977. People said she was crazy. No business could survive just by selling cookies. From those humble beginnings, Mrs. Fields became a global celebrity and her company became the premier chain of cookie and baked goods stores.

More than a decade later, I still carry that simple motto, "Good Enough Never Is", with me in my daily work to improve maintenance and reliabil

The power of a clear, concise vision to improve M&R results

2011-03-04T11:30:22-06:00

One of the first responsibilities of leadership (of an organization, company, team or country) is to provide a simple, clear view of what the future can and should look like. Visionary leaders throughout history have done this in different ways. Many leaders that were effective used short, simple vision statements to allow people to clearly see what the future state can be. This provides huge momentum and propels the organization, country or team to aggressively pursue the vision.

Several examples are:

"Give me liberty or give me death."
- Patrick Henry, United States Revolutionary War leader, 1776

"We shall never surrender."
- Winston Churchill, England prime minister, 1941

"By the end of the decade, we will put a man on the moon."
- John F. Kennedy, United States president, 1962

"A computer on every desk and in every home."
- Bill G

Is there life after the death of predictive maintenance?

2011-03-04T11:15:25-06:00

It is sad how quickly a good predictive maintenance program dies, even though the program has gotten a manager promoted, convinced you and others that there is a lot of value in doing PdM to improve maintenance practices, saved money and gained credibility.

The demise of a good program is usually due to the loss of the program champion. He was promoted because he saved tons of money and improved his maintenance practices – just overall improved the company’s bottom line. With a new department manager, the program fundamentally has started from the beginning. The new leader may not have any experience in the PdM world and cannot identify the need for continuing the process; he just sees costs for new equipment, training, equipment calibration, equipment upgrades, etc. In today’s world, with such a severe downturn, this is even more prevalent. Cutting costs for everything is the rule – it’s a shortsighted rule, but it’s one that we live by today an

Notes on non-invasive inspections and properly written work orders

2011-03-04T10:56:10-06:00

There are standard operating procedures (SOP), preventive maintenance (PM) procedures, and predictive maintenance (PdM) procedures in which both maintenance and operations engage. The most basic is condition monitoring, or operator care, and involves both groups. The equipment owners/ maintainers (both maintenance and operations) clean to inspect, inspect to detect issues, and on detection, correct those issues. Consider that condition monitoring/operator care should be a daily procedure (SOP) from the standpoint of listening, feeling and smelling the equipment operating.

The primary distinction for PM procedures over SOPs is that they are time-based and occur on a given frequency. Some PMs are invasive, but we want to use other PMs as non-invasive inspection tools along with operator care to feed our computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) with work orders that allow us to properly plan, schedule and execute corrective invasive actions when the right parts/materials ar

Is the PM dying? Should we try to save it?

2011-03-03T14:19:57-06:00

I recently returned from a conference in the southeastern United States. As this conference is mainly dedicated to predictive (PdM) technologies, many companies that send people have more advanced maintenance programs in place. Based on industry type, PdM activities should be occurring on upward of 95 percent of all rotating equipment in the facility, not just critical equipment. It is recommended that only 20 to 25 percent of equipment be covered by traditional time-based, invasive preventive maintenance (PM) tasks. I emphasize the word “invasive” and challenge it.

In the maintenance world, we get hung up on a PM being invasive. I offer that the majority of PMs should be inspections, not a rebuild or corrective action.

Beyond my own experiences, I have talked with many maintenance managers and technicians that beg for either maintenance or operations personnel to simply inspect their equipment. A scheduled and properly executed PM (to a specification), eithe

Will you be the next BP?: How to avoid a catastrophe at your plant

2011-02-28T10:22:39-06:00

From news reports on the Congressional testimony, BP, Transocean, Halliburton and Cameron are all pointing fingers and trying to shift the blame for the blowout that set fire to Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. At some point, we may know the real root causes that created this disaster. As it should be, this disaster is destined to become another textbook case study that you will be hearing about for the next 15 years or more on the industrial front.

If you haven’t already begun to reflect on how a crisis situation could affect you, you had better start giving it some serious consideration. While you may not be at the level to testify at Congressional Hearings, if your CEO is forced into this situation, you best believe that you will be feeling the pressure down at your management level and beyond. Remember, the stuff always rolls downhill. For what may be years to come, all of these companies are and will be getting a lot of “help” from people th

Are you (like many) planning to be reactive?

2011-02-28T10:01:53-06:00

I was recently facilitating a "Maintenance and Reliability for Managers" four-part series course at a particular site when the subject of planning was raised by one of the supervisors attending. As part of the conversation, he commented “but gee, Jeff, I’m planning for my people now”. As it was Tuesday, I asked if he was planning for next week’s schedule or this week. His reply is like so many that I hear, “No, I’m planning for this week, actually two days from now.” Mind you, his site has a planner scheduler. I went on to ask, if the supervisor was doing the planning, who was doing the supervision – i.e. removing obstacles from jobs in progress, determining the development needs of the people, controlling time lost during and between jobs, etc. In the end, it wasn’t him. Turns out no one was performing that function. It begs the question, if the supervisor is doing the planning, what is the maintenance planner scheduler doing? T

Best practices for strategic talent management in manufacturing organizations

2011-01-19T09:57:47-06:00

Increasingly CEOs, boards and other executives are asking human resources leaders to help achieve corporate goals by addressing a number of talent management challenges. Within the manufacturing sector, many organizations have implemented programs such as the ISO 9001 quality management system in an effort to drive profitability and competitiveness. ISO standards require organizations to be able to identify skill sets and competencies for each job in order to maintain certification.

Do you know how much it costs to run that equipment?

2011-01-17T16:17:34-06:00

Decisions have to be made – to save energy, to save dollars. Having hard data on which to base those decisions removes the “guess factor” and ultimately has a positive effect on the bottom line. Can recording data, analyzing results and then making intelligent decisions really have that large of a dollar effect, though? The answer is “Absolutely yes!”

Equipment ownership for maintenance technicians

2011-01-17T16:10:05-06:00

As a maintenance technician, do you believe having responsibility for specific equipment is the best way to perform your job? By responsibility, you are the only one that conducts preventive maintenance tasks 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? This facet of maintenance is traditionally a struggle for many organizations.

The role of the UAW in the 21st century

2011-01-13T07:55:26-06:00

The following is the speech given by United Auto Workers president Bob King to the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit on January 12, 2011.

One snowstorm. Three leaders. One lesson in lean management.

2011-01-11T10:45:01-06:00

Lean bloggers and teachers often talk about the need to get out of the corner office and the conference room and get to the gemba as part of their standard work. That need is even greater in an emergency.

Michael Jordan ... change agent

2011-01-11T10:40:51-06:00

Michael Jordan is well known for his professional sports careers in both basketball and baseball, his success as a business man and his contribution to numerous charitable organizations. What often gets overlooked is his short but impactful work in the field of organizational change management. While still a rookie NBA player, he worked with coach Phil Jackson to transform the Chicago Bulls into a national championship team. At their first change management offsite meeting, Michael reminded the team that organizational change is based upon individual change – or as he so eloquently stated: “There is no ‘I’ in Team, but there is in Win!”

‘Pruning’ your inventory: Setting MRO stocking levels

2011-01-10T13:36:44-06:00

Is three widgets enough? Is six gizmos too many? Author Doug Wallace often get asked: “How do we determine the right stocking levels for our parts?” People want to know what the “magic formula” is. Unfortunately, the answer often is: “it depends.” Throughout this article, Doug will address some of the considerations involved in making these difficult decisions and then suggest one method for helping to determine the appropriate stocking levels for your own materials.

Making sense of electrical measurement

2011-01-10T13:13:41-06:00

Clamp meters really are the way to go in a wide range of measurement scenarios, especially if you’re working with higher amperages – or if you need a comprehensive motor test in one device.

Tools enable energy savings throughout Owens Corning

2011-01-10T13:07:04-06:00

Sustainability projects across Owens Corning’s operations have yielded valuable findings related to energy efficiency project planning and implementation, and have allowed the company to achieve substantial energy and cost savings.

Bearing protection rings help cement plant boost uptime

2011-01-10T12:56:21-06:00

It seemed as though nothing could stop the squealing. Not that the Monarch Cement Company’s huge ball mill wasn’t already loud. Powered by a 5,000-horsepower motor, it pulverizes 100 tons of clinker per hour. But the squealing was not what Randy Riebel wanted to hear. As electrical supervisor at Monarch’s plant in Humboldt, Kan., he knew the noise meant the motor’s bearings were going – again. What was the solution? Read this case study to find out.

Kanbans link the supply chain together

2011-01-05T14:57:57-06:00

Kanbans are signals which automate the replenishment of repetitively used materials and supplies from internal or external suppliers to the buffer inventories. Kanbans reduce outages and shortages of materials and supplies, which improves customer service levels. Kanbans support “pull production” and continuous flow, since material is not produced at the supplier until a signal to replenish material is received from the customer. Using this approach, kanbans will reduce overall inventory levels (30 percent reduction on average).

How to create and lead high-performing teams

2011-01-05T14:39:25-06:00

Working in teams is often considered contrary to the American culture. However, building and leading an organizational culture around a successful team concept is considered a critical leadership competency. The challenges are that in any team environment people must work closely together to achieve results. Read this article for advice on how to achieve this.

Mannington Mills tackles sub-metering system issues

2011-01-05T14:21:41-06:00

Richard Miller, corporate energy manager at Mannington Mills, tackles the following question: “I work as a facilities engineer for a mid-sized manufacturing firm and recently assumed the unofficial title of energy manager for our production unit. Lately, we have been experiencing communication gateway issues within our sub-metering system. What challenges has your company faced with its sub-metering system, and how can we capitalize on this experience at our facility?”

Tips on maintaining the maintenance spare parts database

2011-01-05T14:10:50-06:00

Groups really struggle with managing their spare parts data due to years of neglect and lack of ownership. On the initial CMMS implementation, the data may have been properly described with a noun/qualifier/qualifier approach for the short text description. As time passes, people move on and someone else takes over the database. They may not receive training or understand the naming concepts. Soon, the users of the data can’t find the parts housed in the storeroom due to the way items have been named. The storeroom inventory value goes up, too, as parts become duplicated since no one could find the stocked item. How do you straighten this mess out?

Common sense may be the key to entrepreneurial success

2011-01-04T13:28:50-06:00

A study co-authored by American University professor underscores the value of common-sense, hands-on experience and goals.

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Top 10 project management trends for 2011: Leadership skills tops the list

2011-01-04T13:01:54-06:00

On January 4, ESI International, the world’s leading project management learning company, revealed its Top 10 Global Project Management Trends for 2011. Key themes include building the project manager’s (PM) influence, accelerating new leadership and communication skills, and increased use of informal learning approaches such as social media and experiential training. A global panel of consultants and senior executives assembled by ESI identified the trends.