April 06, 2007
Kick Starting Your Motor Management Program
Over the past months, we have wandered through a variety of editorials on reliability and maintenance throughout a variety of industries. In this newsletter, however, we are going to bring our focus back to electric motor systems in a basic discussion on figuring out where and how to start your program. Why? The main reason is that the question started as an occasional whisper and has now grown to a massive crescendo of voices asking that same question: “How do I kick start my motors program (can also be ‘maintenance’ program)?” Usually followed by: “How do I convince management?” Then: “How do I sustain it?”
Over the past months, we have wandered through a variety of editorials on reliability and maintenance throughout a variety of industries. In this newsletter, however, we are going to bring our focus back to electric motor systems in a basic discussion on figuring out where and how to start your program. Why? The main reason is that the question started as an occasional whisper and has now grown to a massive crescendo of voices asking that same question: “How do I kick start my motors program (can also be ‘maintenance’ program)?” Usually followed by: “How do I convince management?” Then: “How do I sustain it?”
I have heard several excuses as to why a motor management program has not been attempted. The first is that there is not enough manpower and the second is that there has not been sufficient training. To answer the first one, quite simply: You do not have enough manpower NOT to perform motor management. The very fact that you recognize that you do not have enough personnel to complete all of the tasks that you have been assigned acknowledges that you need to review and optimize your maintenance tasks. Chances are you are wasting over half your time performing tasks that have no impact on critical equipment health and, instead, are just maintaining equipment that has no impact on safety, regulatory issues, production, cost of the equipment or other functions deemed necessary to the mission of the company. I have witnessed a situation where planners focused on the replacement of water fountain filters versus critical systems because they could end up with a higher PM completion rate each month. Critical production equipment ended up receiving a significantly lower status for work plus manpower was wasted on drinking fountains resulting in incomplete critical equipment maintenance.
The training question has also fascinated me. In particular, I have found it to be an excuse not to pick up equipment and start using it. Often an overview of operation with a company representative, or a good manual, will allow users to give instrumentation a test run. This allows the user a chance to generate questions for when they do attend training. In some cases, it will turn out that no training is required.
Now, how is a program started. You have heard me state in the past that you need to start from the beginning. Well, let’s explore that a little. The first thing you will want to do is determine that you are going to start a program, find a champion and find locations within your facility that volunteer to be pilots for the program. While you will probably have a team overseeing the complete program, a motor management program driven by committee will generally not succeed. It requires one leader to take charge and the committee/team to support and move things forward. A survey of the motors within the pilot locations must be performed and the motors identified in some way, such as with brass tags. The motors must be reviewed for criticality and it is recommended that motors that meet the criteria are the ones that are tested. The existing maintenance functions performed on these machines must be reviewed and optimized.
A review of the history, if any, of the machines must be reviewed and a maintenance program developed based upon history and reasonable potential issues. Once determined, any condition-based testing should be performed in order to set a baseline. This information, as well as any new records, root-cause-analysis reports, new technologies, etc. are periodically reviewed and the maintenance practices updated through a maintenance effectiveness review.
We are continuing to develop recommendations related to the development of your program. Much of the instructions and steps can be applied to other parts of your maintenance program. In this newsletter, we will be discussing a new report (The Trillion Dollar Report), motor management KPI’s and more, to help you in kicking off your program.
For more information on the development of your program, contact us through http://www.motordoc.net.
Sincerely,
Howard W Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP
President, SUCCESS by DESIGN
