March 15, 2007
First Steps In Starting Your Maintenance Program
President, SUCCESS by DESIGN
Starting your Maintenance Program
One of the most challenging parts to the initiation of your new maintenance program is to figure out where to begin. Depending on who you talk to, which consultant, which individual within your company, or outside your company, there are often different answers. However, when these people provide you with their opinions, make sure to take a look past the discussion and into their organization to see whether or not it is successful.
The most common errors in the application of a program include, but are not limited to:
1) Selecting a maintenance methodology because others are doing it. The reality is that your company is most likely different and will require a different set of rules and steps. There are generic steps that must be considered, but how you get through them will most likely be different. There is no Holy Grail of programs and settling on ‘cookie-cutter’ solutions is a very bad idea.
2) Trying to start the program without developing the ground work. For instance, in the motor management KPI’s, before you can even start the motor management program, you have to have a fairly robust electrical maintenance program in place.
3) Know what you own. Even if it is for a pilot location, many companies do not understand all of the assets that they are responsible for. This can be a bad mistake, and may result in leaving out critical assets. I often use the story of the printing plant that my team entered in order to perform a motor survey. When we priced the survey, we asked the customer how many motors they had in-plant. They said that they had about 800. When we were finished, the number was well over 1700.
4) Doing it all! I have never seen a successful program implemented that took on every division, department or site all at once. In fact, it can be generally stated that taking it all on will guarantee failure. This also relates to equipment. There are machines that can just plain be run to failure, which means that the focus should be on critical equipment.
5) Parallel equipment does not require condition-based monitoring. This is a common and huge error. The incorrect impression is that having equipment in parallel guarantees 100% reliability. However, there are two reasons for parallel equipment. The first is to provide a backup to the system. The second is to allow one machine to operate while the other is being maintained in order to prevent an interruption in operations during the maintenance tasks.
6) No review of the existing program. Even when companies implement programs such as RCM, they will implement a rigorous front-end, implement the front end and walk away. In reality, a continuous improvement program needs to be put in place.
So, where do you begin your program? As I have stated in the past: At the beginning. A good program will follow these basic steps:
1. Know what you own: Perform an Asset Census
2. Determine what systems are critical: Develop a critical equipment list
3. Determine the condition of the critical systems
4. Review the existing maintenance on all equipment and eliminate unnecessary maintenance, develop a good maintenance strategy using a process such as RCM
5. Develop best practices in performing the maintenance tasks
6. Continuous improvement using tools such as the Maintenance Effectiveness Review
We will be continuing this discussion in our Penrose Lecture Series™ Podcast, this newsletter and other sources.
