February 28, 2008
Business Practices and R&M - Editorial
President, SUCCESS by DESIGN
Member, National Writers Union (UAW Local 1981)
Part of the confusion between corporate management and the R&M community is that the methods used to operate both types of management are drastically different… A comment that I have often heard, but is actually incorrect. One of the primary reasons that we have problems with the implementation of corporate business strategies related to R&M is that we often think that we are somehow significantly different. Even more interesting is that an organization within a company that takes up an average of 40% of the operating budget has so few controls and is often left to succeed or fail on its own. Yes, I know the response about budget controls, etc. but those are not the business controls that I am talking about.
How often does senior management (ownership/boardroom) build a business strategy that includes the maintenance of equipment, availability, and other R&M practices and measures to ensure capacity? Instead, you will often find that plans and strategies are made that take into account poor maintenance practices, a much smaller capacity than the equipment is capable of, or decisions to utilize equipment beyond capacity without considerations of the impact on that equipment.
However, the issue that I am bringing up has to do with the selection of the correct business tools for the job. For instance, in the book “The Goal” by Eliyahu Goldratt, the Third Edition, the author outlines the application of the Theory of Constraints within an organization. An outstanding novel used to teach managers how to improve business practices and instill a continuous improvement program. However, one of the examples given in the back related to aircraft and helicopters (OK, so they are also aircraft). In this case, study, the theory of constraints was applied to the business practice of overhauling the equipment, which had a long turnaround time and excessive backlog. They were able to do things with the supply chain and other business related practices so that they were able to reduce the time to perform the maintenance practices and get the equipment back into service. However, there was no investigation into which maintenance practices were necessary, required, or performed correctly in the first place.
What would the correct tool for the job have been? A number of years after the Third Edition of ‘The Goal,’ Nancy Reagan, an RCM expert not the former First Lady, performed RCM analysis of helicopters and was able to eliminate, add, and correct a large number of maintenance-related issues increasing the reliability of the helicopters that she evaluated while providing the evidence of what maintenance was actually required. In effect, a combination of the Theory of Constraints and a properly selected tool like RCM has a much greater impact than just one or the other.
However, we tend to use the tools that we are comfortable with. You know the old adage that if all you have is a hammer, every screw is a nail. Or, if the TV or computer isn’t working right… well, I keep my sledgehammer right here.
I discuss a number of these issues in ‘Physical Asset Management for the Executive,’ a business book meant to identify the business impact of R&M in a company (see below).
In the meantime, we have to consider the following Rule: The purpose of R&M tools, such as RCM, are not to reduce the maintenance budget, but to tell us what the maintenance budget needs to be. In effect, what maintenance actually needs to be performed, what are the maintenance continuous improvement processes, and then how do we manage the business aspect of the correct maintenance.
Often times, companies confuse maintenance as a different animal because of its complexity. In most production environments, the processes can be broken down as an individual process of job shop, batch processing, assembly, and continuous flow. Each of these has its own production rules for scheduling and forecasting. However, maintenance practices are a combination of all four of these processes: Job Shop = Corrective Maintenance/Reactive Maintenance; Batch Processing = Preventive Maintenance/PdM/CBM; Assembly Line = PdM/CBM; and, Continuous Flow = PdM/CBM. Each are based on how they are scheduled.
Where I run into challenges with how some companies will bring in accounting-based firms to review the costs associated with maintenance with little to no understanding of the maintenance process. This is pretty much the same thinking as having RCM facilitators, or other maintenance process consultants, that have no experience with the process that they are reviewing. There are rules that go back over 2500 years that relate to winning war, and trust me; business is war just as we need our maintenance revolution. One of these rules is: The general who knows himself and not the enemy will win only 50% of the time; The general who knows the enemy but not himself will win only 50% of the time; The general who knows both the enemy and himself will win almost every time. The use of a facilitator who knows only his process will not provide the gains that are needed in a company, even if it is a maintenance process. The facilitator or consultant who knows nothing of the maintenance organization nor maintenance process improvements will fail virtually every time.
