What Is In and Out In 2018: The Maintenance and Reliability Edition

As James Kovacevic and I sat around and talked about trends in Maintenance and Reliability going into 2018 we noticed that we could see some elements that had fallen out of favor in 2017 (at least in North America) and others that have become the hot new thing. Out of that became the list you see above. Many of the decisions have been driven by the return of manufacturing demand and the need to meet customer orders. For example, many organizations have lost focus on Mean Time Between Failure and have instead decided to focus on Mean Time To Repair. In other words, they are focused on getting the asset back up and running quickly and not preventing the failure from happening to start with or preventing it from reoccurring. Others have given up on truly planning jobs and PM task and instead are just guessing at a schedule or “filling” the hours available. Many organizations are driving toward the more reactive choices “in order to meet demand.” With the exception of the items with an asterisk above, the items on both sides are the right choices if they are applied at the right time. You need all of them working in concert as part of a comprehensive plan to increase up time, reliability, and throughput. If you would like help building a plan for your organization reach out to us and let us show you how others are progressing with all of the elements in the right order and at the right time and avoiding the temptation to chase the shiny new silver bullet.

Paying for the Sins of the Past: Your Improvement Initiative is Not Magical.

Today is a dose of reality, a tantalizing tenet of truth, a point to ponder, if you will. The point is you have to pay for the sins of the past whether you are talking about your health or the reliability of your facility. Said differently, you can't smoke for 25 years and expect to have the lungs of a track star the day you quit.
Now I know this seems obvious, but if it truly were obvious then companies would not expect wholesale change in an organization instantaneously upon implementation of a new improvement strategy.
For example, I recently visited a site that has made great strides in their facility implementing things like Planning and Scheduling, Precision Maintenance, Root Causes Analysis, Reliability Centered Maintenance, and the Predictive Technologies, but yet they were being described by some as ineffective and the efforts as a waste because the assets were still failing. Let me clearly state, if your site has been installing bearings with a hammer and a punch or aligning motor with string and a strait edge for the last 25 years then implementing precision maintenance will not fix all your problems overnight. Every defect that have been introduced to the asset base over the last 25 years will have to be detected and removed through replacement before you can comfortably say that the assets are healthy and precision is the norm. Now most of us can't afford to replace all the components damaged by our past sins so we look at the risk and the cost and we develop a plan that is perceived as having a reasonable chance of success. This will include some failures. Hopefully less of them will be a surprise as we mature into more predictive maintenance application but they will still appear.
If you are implementing any improvement strategies at your site, make sure that as part of your communication plan you let people know of the success that you expect of course and also of the sins of the past that will still need to be worked through. If we set this expectation early then the transparency will drive the change forward. Remember, you can't drive like a drunk in a rental car jumping ditches, change the oil and expect it to be a new car again.
What have you done to acknowledge and mitigate the risk of your past reliability sins?  

Understanding And Complying With ISO 55001: Part 3 in a 3 Part Series

Planning Part 3 in a 3 part series by Darrin Wikoff

Asset Management Plans are documents that translate the Asset Management Policy into actions or tasks, including resource requirements and timelines, for a specific asset in order to mitigate identified risks and achieve the stated value and stakeholder defined objectives. Section 6 – Planning – of ISO 55001 lists the requirements associated with defining asset management objectives and, planning to achieve the asset management objectives.
When defining your asset management objectives, the focus should be on four equal but unique business categories, Finance, Customers, Community and Employees, relative to your stakeholder requirements.  Objectives should be balanced in order to drive performance improvement in two equal directions, the financial health of the business and overall image of the business.
 Financial growth is based on the organization’s ability to reduce the cost of operating through focused improvements in overhead, maintenance and material costs. Financial growth is also reliant on the business’s ability to improve capacity through higher levels of availability, production rate and quality. These capacity improvements must be balanced by customer demand.
 Image growth, on the other hand, is based on the organization’s ability to develop intellectual capital within its own business through training, strength-based organizational structures and performance management, and the business’s ability to expand its license to operate within the community based on environmental, health and safety performance.
Demonstrate that risk-based methodologies are used when planning the design, implementation, operation, support and improvement of the asset management system.  Risk refers to stakeholder requirements and the impact that the asset management system has on these objectives, such as resource utilization and cost.
Demonstrate that each and every business function within the asset management system has specific and verifiable asset management objectives that align to the overall Strategic Asset Management Plan and stakeholder objectives.
Demonstrate that each asset management plan is derived from a risk-based methodology and specifies the type of task needing to be performed, the individual skill or competency required to complete the task, the frequency at which the task will be performed and the method of determining if a completed task complies with the intended outcomes.
Demonstrate that financial risks considered during the design and implementation of asset management plans include life cycle costs and residual risks at the end of the life cycle period.

Understanding And Complying With ISO 55001: Part 2 in a 3 Part Series

Leadership Part 2 in a 3 part series by Darrin Wikoff

The Asset Management System translates organizational objectives, relative to value, into technical and financial decisions by way of:
-    Policies,
-    Plans,
-    Processes,
-    Organizational structures, and
-    Resources.

Asset Management Policies formally express “Top Management’s” intentions and direction within an organization as governing principles or guidelines by which the asset management system should be administered. Top Management refers to those individuals or roles that have the power to delegate authority and provide the necessary resources within the management system.
Asset Management Plans are documents that translate policy into actions or tasks, including resource requirements and timelines, for a specific asset in order to achieve the stated value and organizational objectives.
After establishing the organizational context for asset management, ISO 55001 defines the Leadership requirements. Leadership and culture are determining factors when considering the organization’s ability to administer the asset management system and achieve the organizational objectives, relative to value. Leadership activities include, but are not limited to:
-    Defining roles, responsibilities and authorities,
-    Allocating resources,
-    Ensuring stakeholders are aware, competent and empowered, and
-    Aligning the asset management system with stakeholder requirements.

Demonstrate by way of formal meeting agendas and communication schedules the means by which Top Management integrates the asset management system with other management systems within the organization.
Demonstrate through documented processes that Top Management is required to participate in setting policies and making decisions that impact asset management objectives. A documented Asset Management Policy should exist that is formally endorsed or authorized by Top Management.  This policy should be governed and administered similar to other organizational policies.  The policy includes core asset management principles, role descriptions, decision making frameworks, risk management frameworks and governance structures, including the date and frequency of a formal policy review.
Demonstrate that the necessary level of responsibility and authority has been assigned to the asset management system.  Responsibility refers to the accountability of an individual for a specific outcome, and authority refers to the legitimacy of an individual to manage or govern within a function of the asset management system. The Asset Management Policy should include an organizational chart and "RASI" or "RACI" that clearly illustrates which individuals are responsible and have the authority for each function within the asset management system.

Understanding And Complying With ISO 55001: Part 1 in a 3 Part Series

Context of the Organization (Part one of three) by Darrin Wikoff

Asset Management provides assurance that assets will fulfill their required purpose relative to the stated value defined by the business’ stakeholders.  Therefore, asset management can be defined as the coordinated activity of an organization to protect, optimize or realize value from assets during the period of accountability. Methods of assuring value include:
-    Balancing cost,
-    Controlling risk, and
-    Monitoring performance of both assets and the asset management system.

The first set of asset management system requirements communicated by ISO 55001 deals with the manner in which Asset Managers have defined the “stated value” of assets and the relationship of the system architecture to other decision making, governance and management systems utilized by the business’ stakeholders. These requirements are defined in Section 4 – Context of the Organization.
Demonstrate that your organization has considered internal and external risk factors that have the potential to influence business outcomes when determining the objectives of your asset management system.  Internal risk refers to gaps in internal processes, and external risk refers to political, economic, regulatory or other factors beyond the local organization's control.
Demonstrate that your organization has identified both the stakeholder and their requirements when determining asset management objectives, and provide evidence that the stakeholder is integrated in decision making processes.  Stakeholders may be external to the organization, including government agencies, shareholders and customers.
Demonstrate that the identification of "Assets" within the asset management system is consistent with the Asset Management Policy and other management systems, if applicable. “Assets” exist within an organization to provide value to the organization and its stakeholders. Assets, by this definition are:
-    Any item that has a potential value within an organization,
-    Any item that has an actual value to an organization,
-    A group of items that has a potential or actual value, regardless of the individual item value (e.g. Asset System),
-    A group of items that have a common characteristic that translates into value, regardless of the individual item value (e.g. Asset Type).

Value is defined by the organization that has accountability for the asset during a specific period within the asset life cycle. Value can be:
-    Tangible or intangible,
-    Financial or non-financial,
-    Equity or liability (gains or losses), and
-    Risk or benefit.

Both value and the period of asset accountability may change throughout the asset life cycle, which begins at asset creation and ends when the asset no longer has value to any single organization.
Document within the Strategic Asset Management Plan those assets that are or will be governed by the asset management system, and the rational for determining applicability and scope relative to stakeholder expectations.  Demonstrate the link between asset management decisions and other management systems, if applicable.

And Then There Was A Standard: ISO publishes ISO 55000, ISO 55001, and 55002 for Asset Management

News: And Then There Was A Standard: ISO publishes ISO 55000, ISO 55001, and 55002 for Asset Management
The  new standard addresses asset management, its principles and terminology, and the expected benefits from adopting asset management and can be applied to all types of assets and by all types and sizes of organizations.

The standard should be available here in the coming days.
http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_tc_browse.htm?commid=604321#!
You can check back to this page for additional information or follow the update feed on Twitter @iso55ooo

Critical Factors to Determining Criticality of Your Asset Base

Today, thanks to a conversation I was having yesterday with a client here in the United Kingdom, I thought I would pontificate on the science of criticality. Here are three quick points to think about when you are setting up your equipment criticality process.
First ABC or 123 is not enough.
The idea for criticality is that you are listing your assets in order of importance to your business goals. The more granularity you provide then the easier it becomes to use the list for things like:
Planning, sequencing, and scheduling (order of job plan development and level of plan detail etc.)
Materials stocking and spares (critical equipment may have critical parts or spares)
Equipment maintenance plan development (level of detail and techniques applied)
If all of your assets are in three or five "buckets" of criticality you can run into issues. For example lets say you have 1000 assets and five levels of criticality, but in the mind of your facility staff you have a process driven plant with assets in series so almost nothing is unimportant. Because of this, your team scores few low criticality assets in the 1 (lowest) criticality. Now you have say 970 assets in four levels of criticality with most of them on the upper end but you reserved the highest level for safety or environmental assets. Now you have 920 assets spread across 3 levels. Even if they are spread evenly you will have 30 percent of your assets in each category. This is just not good enough to facilitate good business decisions. So what can you do? Try at least a 100 level criticality and better case is that you use a 1000 point scale. The idea is to get the assets spread apart across the range so that when you use criticality in decision making it does not give you buckets of assets but instead just a few assets at each level.
The second thought is that your criticality criterial must disperse the assets out across the range. You should have at least 10 criteria. They should include things like:
Redundancy
Spare parts availability
Historical reliability
Importance to the process
Safety, health, and environmental effect
And others.
Third, this was an interesting though provided by the client who was studying their spare parts supply chain, you should take the spare part availability to the next level and think about supply chain risk. As many countries close down and off shore the manufacture of spare parts and equipment your risk can go up.  For example ten years ago here in England if you needed a spare part for a mill there might be three suppliers here in country that could manufacture and provide that part with in a few weeks maximum. Now it is only made and stocked in India or Japan and the local manufactures are gone. Think about the earthquakes and tsunamis that have effected Japan and the wars that have effected other supplier regions. This puts the facility at risk raising the criticality of that asset because if it breaks and the only spares are in an unstable part of the world. It could be months or even years before that part is available. Because of this risk we may want a factor to raise criticality to the point that critical spares are kept onsite for this machine.
So there are three things to think about as you ponder the set up of your criticality process. I'm sure you will think of others.

Four -isms That Might Be Killing Your Reliability

Lets talk today about the four -isms that may be running around in your plant and limiting your ability to improve up-time, quality and reliability.  The first step is to recognize that they exist and then we can determine a plan to mitigate or eliminate it. Below I have given you the four as well as a sound bite and possible mitigation strategies. It is best if you can prevent them from rearing their ugly heads through good risk and communication planning but today we will look at a reactive response.

Negativism: The disposition to project the worst case scenario.
Sounds like: "This CMMS is horrible it takes 16 screen to do what I could do in one in the old system."
Mitigation: Focus on the positive and don't let meeting become bashing sessions. Celebrate the little successes or steps from your project plans.

Criticism: The disposition to be preoccupied with incomplete or imperfect.
Sounds like: "This new process is not good enough to roll out. Let's continue to work on it."
Mitigation: Create a pilot area where it is OK to fail and trial the processes there with a mind for continuous improvement. These safe zones clear the way and the fear of failure and allow for progress not paralysis.

Skepticism: The disposition to always question but never commit.
Sounds like: "I'm not sure we have enough data to show that this will work. Let's collect more.or That will never work here. We are too different. "
Mitigation: Show case studies from similar sites that have succeeded. We call them "real world examples" in our training. Visit sites or invite sites to visit you once they have had success. Let you negative folks mix with their positive ones.

Cynicism: The disposition to view every human enterprise as selfishly motivated.
Sounds like: "Maintenance just wants us to do autonomous maintenance so we can do their work for them"
Mitigation: Communicate fully the intent of the initiative and how it affects each individual. Cynicism loves to attack the ill informed.

What are you doing in your site to address the -isms?

Is Your Production Line a Race Car or a Minivan? Process Thinking for Maximum Output

So during a recent conversation with Duane Siemen, a reliability engineering manager and classic "tweaker", we were discussing process improvement. Duane was sharing some of the work that he had done in the past to improve system reliability and throughput by focusing on the controls, communication, and tweaking how each machine in the system interacts with the system as a whole. I could not help but to compare the work that he did to the work of some of the great car tuners like Hennessy, Stillen, Roush, and Lingenfelter. When you think about cars or process equipment a few things are true for both. When you buy a stock car or a production line it is tuned to be conservative and somewhat mediocre. The car is not tweaked for the way you drive or where you drive from an environmental stand point and it is always "value engineered" to control production cost. It is set up to more or less work everywhere but excel nowhere. This means that without tuning and an understanding of operating context you leave a lot of performance on the table. Your production line is ordered with equipment from different manufactures that may or may not be set up to communicate with each other and may or may not like to run at the system rate. Many of the elements of the system may have been just dropped into the line without any concern for the up and down stream equipment in the system. Designers some time work under the philosophy of "will it work"not "will it work best." Did that designer know all the specifics of your widget packaging process or did they just create a packaging line?
So what if you wanted to tune your production line like Hennessy tunes a Viper.
The first step would be to understand operating context. A drag car is completely different from a track car.

• What are you using the line to do?

Second, learn all the equipment in the line. Without a full understanding of the dynamics and capability of the components then you can not begin to tweak. Roush would never take a car they had never studied and start changing ECU settings. They take the time to understand the parts before they tune the whole.

• What is the full capability of the equipment and parts in the production line?

Third, we focus on getting the system unified through communication. We want each piece of equipment in the line to have solid communication with the others so that each can tell the other parts what is needed to push performance. Some parts of the line may actually slow down to improve quality and this in turn will increase overall output but only if they can communicate their need to us or the system. In racing they say, "you have to slow down to go fast" that is what we want to be able to do with the equipment.

•  Are the parts talking reliably with the whole? Are they using that information to improve system output?

 Forth, we begin to problem solve and truly tune. We change a parameter and ensure we get the response we predicted. Does it effect the whole positively. We then use root cause to understand when it does not.

• Do the changes give the results we expected?

Lastly, we focus on sustaining the changes. As you tune and increase performance tolerances get tighter. Precision become more important. Operating context needs to be stable or at least understood. Because of these factors you may need more built in checks and possibly more preventive task to keep the equipment in spec and operating at peak performance. You may have to go so far as to build a daily management plan to maintain the levels you expect to produce the performance you want. 

So in the end you need to understand your conditions, capability and components to get from  minivan performance to race day ready production.

Processes and Technology Not Processes or Technology

Many of us in the reliability world love to implement new technology in our plants. It might be a condition monitoring tool or a new piece of software like a EAM or CMMS. Today I wanted to share with you a study and graphic that shows the return on investment of both technology and process as well as the two together. In the beginning you start in the red box and you implement new toys and technology and you end up in the yellow box with a negative 7 percent return on investment from your new tools in old processes. So what if we went after better business processes first. By re-engineering our business processes and removing the waste we are able to generate a 27 percent return on investment and arrive in the blue box. Not a bad return but, if we combined our new processes with our new technology we are able to get a return on investment that is very respectable 75 percent and land in the orange square. It is the "synergy of and" versus the "tyranny of or." In the end for the most success we need both in our strategies. You need the processes to start the improvements and then the tools to support the processes for efficiency.

Best Practice Metrics Performance Requires Best Practices...

Over the years I have worked with many sites all over the world specifically to help them with assessments of their "As is" state. These were in preparation for their reliability, safety, and operations improvement initiative that will help them attain their "to be" state and the performance gain that is associated with that improvement.
The assessment process has many different variations depending on the site and the topic but all of them should have three things in common. The three are:

• a metrics or key performance indicator review

• practices and documentation review

• interaction with as many of the affected and involved individuals as possible to understand application, culture, and norms 

If you are lucky then all three will tell a similar story and you can begin to plot a course to the "to be" state and the value of that progression. This does not always happen. Sometimes two will agree but one does not support the others. It is a bit like looking down at the dash of the car and seeing that your oil pressure is low and you are idling at 500 RPMs but your speedometers says you are traveling at 145 MPH. This indicated disconnect is concerning. Let me give you two industry examples. In the first example, let us say you are assessing a facility and you find well documented business processes but mediocre metrics performance and when you go to the plant floor and speak with the crafts, operators, and the supervisors you realize they don't know anything about the processes or the metrics. Or another possibility, maybe you find that the metrics show great performance but there are no or very limited business process and from the discussions with the site personnel you discover the site culture does not support the current level of metric performance or suggested reliability. This is where the improvement process can bog down. In the first example you would need to investigate to truly understand, but it appears on the surface that the business processes may have come from somewhere else and were never embraced or lost support for what ever reason. In the second example, the metrics may have been "optimized" over time which can cause them to get to a point where the math that is used to make them look so good is beyond science. I worked in one facility many years ago that regularly ran with an overall equipment effectiveness or OEE of 115. They ran a 115 with mediocre practices so there was still room for improvement. If they got it all right, there was potential to see 125 on a 100 scale metric but alas it did not happen as far as I know. Maybe they decided to change the math.
My point is that if the three areas of focus do not match you may want to use some root cause analysis tools to find the underlying causes. Once these are found then you can explain the disconnect between the three areas. The second step is to help the site see the mismatch in metrics, practices, application and culture. I like to use our maturity matrices which you can get here to help with this element. The site has to understand that world class performance on metrics has to be supported by world class performance in business process, culture, and application. Once they are comfortable with this then they can begin to embrace the true "as is" and discover the true potential that they can capture in the gap.
Have you experience the mis-match?

Failure curves and P-F intervals linked and explained: Tying the two most important reliability engineering curves together to generate a better picture of failure

During the early development of what would become Reliability Centered Maintenance, Nowlan and Heap gave us six failure curves to the left. When folks first see that sixty eight percent fall into the infant mortality curve then the doubt fairy tends to show up. "Sixty eight percent of the failures in my facility are not instant or early on start up." With this thought they then discount the incredibly important failure mode data provided to us from these studies. What they are missing is the connection to the P-F curve below.

So if the failure curves show the probability of defects introduced over time based on an individual failure mode then the P-F shows the resistance to failure over time once the failure defect has occurred. Nolan and Heap did not say that sixty-eight percent of your assets will catastrophically fail on or near startup they said that sixty-eight percent will have a defect introduced that will then travel down the curve of the P-F becoming more prone to functional and catastrophic failure. This trip down the curve may take 5 days, 5 weeks, or 5 years depending on the failure mode and operating context. This means they don’t fail instantly, but they do fail prematurely because of the defects introduced during or shortly thereafter maintenance activities. So think of the six failure curves as the probability of introduction of a defect and the P-F as the path of that defect to functional and catastrophic failure. I hope this helps you send the doubt fairy packing and you can begin to better understand both curves and the additional knowledge they can provide.

A Culture of Reliability: Some Just Do Not Get it and it is Costing Them Big

Over the last few years companies continue to make the news for poor maintenance performance. We have heard from oil and gas companies that have had safety and environmental issues due to poor maintenance practices and cruise liners who have been delayed at sea due to continual maintenance issues. Some of these companies have made the news multiple times in past years with similar issues causing continual problems. At some point one has to begin to evaluate the root causes of the problem. I have reviewed much of the publicly available data and at least in two of the cases I feel very comfortable in saying that those companies do not have an asset management or reliability culture. I am not even sure they understand the concept! This lack of organizational understanding is a latent root that allows for many of the problems that have surfaced to continue. It is costing these companies millions of dollars both for the problems that have been made public as well as the ones that have been swept under the rug.
So what do they need to do?
The first step is of course to admit you have a problem and then you can assess your current state versus the best practices and understand your problem. Once you understand the gaps you can quantify the level of performance your organization needs to be successful, the work that it will take to get there, and the return on effort you will get for making the change.
Next you will need to create a reliability vision and develop the guiding principles the organization is going to use to change the way you do business. Communication and empowerment now come into play as you share with others the goals, the rules, and the boundaries so that they can then begin to attack the focus areas and gaps. This is not easy and it will be demanding on the organization as a whole as you battle to keep the focus and the drive to be successful but in the end the reward is worth the challenge and for many of these companies this challenge may be the only way that they can survive.
Does your organization have a reliability culture? For those that don't, what is it costing you? For those that have created this new culture what are you celebrating?

Nine "Ps" for Profitable Plant Reliability Improvement Efforts

So if you could sum up the common areas of focus during reliability improvement efforts what would they be? 

The thought behind this blog post was if someone ask us what we are doing or what all is involved in a reliability improvement effort, how can we give them the scope in a concise, and memorable way. This could be used early on in the discovery or kick off phase to outline without overwhelming. 

I have listed nine things that I would focus on and they all start with P for ease of remembering.

Predictive Maintenance

Using technology to understand equipment condition in a noninvasive way before the functional failure occurs

Example: Vibration, Ultrasonic, Infrared 

Preventive Maintenance

Traditional and more invasive time based inspections which should be failure mode based

Example: Visual Inspection of gears in a gear box 

Precision Maintenance

Doing the maintenance craft to the best in class standards to prevent infant mortality

Example: Alignment, Balancing, Bolt Torquing   

Process

Clear series of steps to identify, prioritize, plan, schedule, execute, and capture history with who is responsible for each

Example: Work Identification Process, Root Cause Process. Work Completion Process

Problem Solving

The process for understanding the real causes of problems and using business case thinking to select solutions  that reduce or eliminate the chance of recurrence

Example: Root Cause Analysis, Fault Tree, Sequence of Events 

Prioritizing of Work

The process of determining sequences of work as well as level of effort using tools like equipment criticality and work order type

Example: RIME index 

Parts

These are the processes required to have the right part at the right time in the right condition at the right place for the right cost

Example: Cycle counting process, proper storage procedures, kitting process  

Planned Execution

This piece is about taking the identified work and building the work instructions, work package and collecting the required parts and then scheduling the execution.

Example: Job Packages, Schedules, Gantt Charts 

People

This is where we deal with the change management and leadership portion which is required in order to true make a change to the organization 

Example: Situational Leadership, Communication Planning, Risk Identification, Training

So here are my nine "Ps"  that you can share as early communication to get your organization on board with your reliability efforts and develop the Profit we all want. 

What would you add? 

Walk down: It's Not Just Exercise Any More

Do you know how many assets you have to maintain? Do you know what equipment types they are? If you need a part do you know enough about the equipment to place the order without a trip to see it? Do you have a perfect General Ledger that does not list assets that no longer exist?
If you answered no to any of these questions then you may need to go on a walk down.
Walk down is the process step that starts the path toward more reliable assets. During the walk down you collect things like equipment name plate data, equipment type, components, configuration, parts, as well as other details required for a good maintenance plan.
The data collected during the walk down will be used to build things like:
The hierarchy of equipment
The predictive maintenance database
The Bill of Materials or BOM for each asset It will facilitate discussions during the equipment criticality step of the process. Specifically when we dive into the question of redundancies and use. It will also be used by planners when they plan and accountants when the account for the assets on the books.
With all of these uses it becomes clear that  it is worth the effort to collect equipment data. So how do we get started? The way I see it you have two options. The first and undoubtably the best is to dedicate teams to each area of he facility and provide them with a walk down tool or database to collect the data. If you use this methodology you get better results faster than the alternative, however it comes at a cost. But hey like they always say, there is good, fast and cheap but you can only pick two. The second option is to collect as you go with a data collection form assigned to each work order the first time it is issued against the system of assets in an area. The form is completed and collected for entry into the CMMS and other databases. In this approach you spread out and some what lower the cost but at the the sake of speed. In most organizations time is money and unreliability never takes a break so in the end the best way is to dedicate resources and build quickly and then update future field changes with the form. If you have questions about databases or how long it should take a team to collect the data then shoot me an email or give me a call and we can discuss you facility and our past experiences.
Are you happy with your criticality or do you need to go for a walk?

Keeping Good Parts Good

When it comes to inventory availability, it’s important to have the right parts in like-new condition to best support maintenance operations. The standard used by many is the same method that the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM’s) and distributors use to store spare parts.
The location where some spare parts are stored is critical to meeting the “ready to use” requirement. Minimizing the effects of temperature and humidity is basic, but the protection of parts against the effects of handling during cycle counts and normal store room movements is also a contributor. When possible, it is favorable to have vendors keep the spare parts on their shelves and use a “Just In Time” delivery agreement for access. When not possible, precautions must be taken. Parts that are not in prime condition for use are just as detrimental as no parts at all.
Table 1 shows several types of parts kept in most warehouses or unit locations that need special attention and the category of environmental hazard for these parts.


Electrical Parts.
For many electrical parts, particularly parts with circuit boards, the three main environmental hazards that need to be guarded against are temperature, humidity and Electro Static Discharge (ESD).
During the last twenty years, the nature of electronics used in running a manufacturing plant has changed through the use of more advanced computer controlled equipment.  This equipment relies on the use of printed circuit boards that require a low humidity environment with little fluctuation in temperature.  Changes in temperature and humidity can cause the micro connections between the components and the printed circuit board to separate or warp.  These components are also subject to short circuits from small amounts of voltage, the source of which can be as small as a micro-discharge from the person holding the part.  For this reason, these electronic parts must be kept in their special ESD packages, usually a black bag made of non-conductive material originally supplied by the manufacturer.  These parts can be so sensitive that even when ESD parts are removed from their special package, the handling person should be grounded using a specially designed ground strap to avoid ESD damage.
Figure 1 is a picture of a typical electrical assembly properly packaged in an ESD bag and enclosed in a custom fit foam container. All employees should be alerted to “black-bag” parts and the caution required to keep them functional.

Belts and Hoses.
Belts and hoses are subject to degradation over time from the affects of UV light, heat, cold and humidity.  Unfortunately, there are no black or silver EDC bags to alert users of belts and few plants accurately date or rotate belts and hoses when aging occurs. Since many of the hoses and belts kept in a store room are an insurance spare, these parts may not have a high turnover.  When possible, it is best to allow the part supplier to keep these in their environmentally controlled warehouse.  This will ensure fresh parts are available for use when needed.  If not possible to keep the parts at the distributors’ warehouse, belts and hoses should be stored in an environment that is air conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter and not in direct sunlight. The store room should apply First In, First Out (FIFO) stocking practices so that the oldest parts are used first. In extreme cases, a lifecycle approach may recommend discarding and replacing dated belts and hoses after x number of years. We also recommends the use of flat storage wherever possible and hanging storage only with appropriate fully supportive fixtures.
Figure 2 shows properly stored gaskets.


Electric Motors.
Electric motors offer another possibility for degradation due to humidity, temperature extremes and vibration.  All motors should be kept in the same low humidity and stable temperature environment as belts and hoses, but they also require regular shaft turning to avoid low spots on the armature and coils and damage to the bearings from false Brinelling.  Motor turning can be managed through the use of tags attached to each motor that show the last turn date similar to the inspection date on a fire extinguisher.  Electric motors with horsepower greater than 25 should be kept heated through the use of electric heaters. This will prevent shrinkage and expansion from the effects of cold and heat on any metal parts that have different coefficients of shrinkage during temperature fluctuations.
Figure 3 displays an electric motor stored in a low humidity, heated and cooled warehouse.  Note the numbers on the motor used to align and indicate position on the shaft key way after rotation.  The date and position of rotation is also noted on the blue tag affixed to the motor.  The motor is bolted to a wooden skid to lessen area vibrations and ease movement

Summary.
It is important to recognize many of the parts kept in a maintenance store room can be subject to degradation and damage from the effects of the environment and improper handling or storage techniques.  Keeping unknown defective parts on the shelf for emergencies will compound a break down when the defective part is installed and subsequently removed/replaced because of improper storage.  Whenever possible, the use of the distributor’s stock should be used as this stock is turned over more frequently than the plants’ stores stock.  Typically, distributors and manufacturers are more likely to keep parts in their stores under tight environmental and handling controls.
If keeping parts on-site, keep them on-site correctly! Hidden damage is worse than known damage and will cost the site more in the log run.

Wrapping Up The Year In Reliability With A Challenge

2012 has been a very interesting year. We have seen increased national focus on manufacturing and some additional focus on engineering as well. We have seen some industries began to gain strength and production demand while others are not so patiently waiting for their own increase.
From an asset management standpoint, efforts continue to increase as the new ISO 55000 standards gets closer to reality. You should see more and more discussion on this topic in the new year. I will feature some here at ReliabilityNow.com
In general reliability improvement efforts seem to be stable and possibly showing the beginnings of increased focus for next year. Many industries are hesitant to dive in until the beginning of the year when "things will be clearer." If you are trying to get your organization to move forward you may hear many excuses for the delay but they tend to fall into two categories. Below I have listed the two and a few simple thoughts on how best to help each group pull the trigger on reliability.
Group 1. We are too busy to take on reliability at the moment...
Goal you create: More uptime through reliability
For these folks I would suggest that you might want to help them to see all of the production losses they are facing and showing them how to support the reliability improvements efforts without affecting current production demands. One way to do this is through a reduction in non value added activities and the associated downtime. One example would be having a small group eliminate non value adding preventive maintenance task. This effort will increase uptime of the equipment by reducing the downtime required for PM activities and free up resources to work on other improvement task by reducing the maintenance work load. The site might use the freed up labor to work with planners and improve job plans and incorporate precision maintenance. This would eliminate more maintenance downtime and build the improvements. By the end of the year these sites should be making more product and more profit because of their reliability improvements. 
Challenge: This group may try to delay the improvement for tomorrow because they are just too busy making the production for today. You have to break that cycle by creating a burning platform and a reason for change.
Group 2. We are not busy enough to take on reliability at the moment...
Goal you create: Lower manufacturing cost through reliability
Interestingly, the tactics here are similar to the previous group in that we want to reduce non value added task but the goal is completely different. This time we don't always want more production since the demand is low but we want to produce what we need at the lowest cost possible. This can be the perfect time to attack long standing reliability issues because the work can be done at a much lower cost by planning it out and scheduling it using the down time provided by lower demand. Since production downtime cost is the biggest part of the spend for many improvements this makes it easier to do during a slowdown. Now we need to free up money and labor to pay for the reliability improvements and one way that we can do that is through refining your equipment maintenance plans to remove unnecessary part expense and labor cost. The quickest way can be a combination of RCM and PM review and RCA done to prevent failures, stop re-occurrence and remove any item that does not address a known and likely failure mode. By reducing activity for activities sake you reduce material cost and contractor cost while also reducing infant mortality.
Challenge: In this group the fear of failure is high due to economic pressures and this fear can stop the organization from being able to make the changes that lead to the improvements. Master the elements of change management to ease the transition.
Now there are many other ways to go about addressing both of these situations but they are both situation specific and a function of the sites maturity. You may even find that both of these situations exist in your site.  Feel free to reach out and we can discuss your specific details and craft a plan directed at your needs.

I wish you a great year of reliability in 2013 and I challenge you to attack unreliability in 2013 where it lives, in the minds of your organization. Create Desire, Educate, Apply, Sustain!

Looking Back for the Keys to Sustainability

From time to time I get to go back and visit plants and facilities that were clients of mine from years ago. This week happens to be one of those weeks. I find it so exciting to go back and see what they have held on to, what they have improved, and where they have slipped back and why. Interestingly I see different things in each site. Some sites progress with continued focus on reliability, others moving  into other initiatives like lean or six sigma and build off of their reliability results further building success and a third group lose focus and slides back toward the old norm and the reactive philosophies of the past. These sites have many reasons why they slip back including leadership changes, union issues, retirements, sudden changes in the market place.
The question for today’s blog is how do we lock it in? How do we sustain the cultural change that has been or is being completed?
The plants that have the most success have done these four things.
First they have moved past a champion model. Reliability for them is more than just one person’s vision. They do not have one single leader for the initiative that either charismatically leads the pack or forces compliance within the site. They have many folks who see the benefits of reliability and evangelize it consistently. Nearly all implementations start as a champion model with a key leader but the sustainable ones work this down into the organization and develop and army of like-minded drivers that demonstrate that reliability is the new way we do business.
Second, they communicated broadly as they implemented with a plan, consistent activity, and increasing site involvement. These groups start by going through a risk analysis of the transformational change. They look to understand what might go wrong and what they can do to mitigate that risk. They communicate at every stage of the process and the message and media changes based on the risk and the needs of the impacted. They focus on situational leadership and provide the individuals with what they need to help them progress through the change and then sustain.  In short they plan their communication and they work the plan increasing involvement and pushing toward the tipping point and increased likelihood of sustainability.
Third, they have a clear goal, vision, and business case and they reject things that go against that vision.  If the vision changes then that is fine but they work hard to communicate the changes. They evaluate all initiatives site wide and include only the ones that support the goals. Of those they select they sequence them in a way that supports and allows them to build. This means they may do a part of one initiative with the required resources and then complete a section of another selected improvement strategy knowing that they will build on each other and help improve overall site performance. If they take this approach then they build a system unique to them that can be developed without overloading the resources and provides for stable continuous improvement.
Fourth, they use metrics effectively. They don’t focus on every metric all the time they focus on the metrics that drive the behaviors that they need to change at that moment. Once the behavior is changed and becomes the new norm then they move their focus to other metrics and other behaviors.
There are other factors that come into play but these are some key success factors that seem to be present for success and sustainability.

Ignoring Alarms and Feeling the Fire

I find myself in the Middle East this week and while having lunch today the fire alarm went off in the hotel. The interesting thing is that no one moved or showed much concern for that matter. One guy in the distance did said 'If I do not see fire, smell fire, or feel fire then I am not moving." I have seen similar behavior all over the world. This all got me to thinking, how often do our assets give us alarms that we choose not to hear? How many of us ignore the early points on the P-F curve only to wait for the sight of fire or the smell of smoke. Once we smell the smoke or see the fire it is likely too late to execute a properly planned job and because we may not be able to get the repair done quick enough the chances are very high that a catastrophic failure is likely. When equipment suffers a catastrophic failure you are subject to higher cost from every angle. More parts cost due to additional damaged components, more shipping cost due to expedited spare parts, more labor cost due to overtime required to complete the unplanned repair,  more contractor cost for specialty repairs and support, and finally more operations losses that can cause the total bill for the repair to skyrocket. The most recent statistic that I have found states that the emergent repair will cost you nearly 5 times as much as the planned and properly executed job. So if we can look for the early alarms and heed their warning we can lower maintenance cost and increase production substantially. We can use the operational data like amp draw and differential pressure or we can use the condition based tools like vibration, ultrasound, and IR to give us these early indications. The key is to correctly set up the alarms so that we can trust the technology and not just sit and listen to it sound.
What early signals might you or your operators be ignoring that if caught could reduce repair cost and ancillary damage and increase production reliability?

Listen for the alarms do not wait for the fire
because at that point the situation is dire.

5 Reasons to be Thankful for Reliability

Many of you are advocating reliability improvement within your facility on a daily basis. If you want to increase your buy-in from the general population than one of the best things you can do is tell them what's in it for them.
Here are 5 reasons to be thankful for reliability if you have it and why you might want it if you don't:
5. Better relationships with co-workers
If you are not fighting about lack of access to the equipment, quality problems, over budget maintenance cost or not meeting customer deadlines than your coworker act less like evil trolls and more like people you might want to play golf with on the weekend.
4. Less stress about job stability
When a facility runs reliably then it can be a star within the division as opposed to the whipping boy in last place on the cost curve waiting for the other shoe to drop. Reliable plants are not immune to closures and cutbacks but statistically they outlive their peers.
3. Afternoons with your kids
When you enjoy employment in a reliable facility there is very little forced overtime. This is thanks to great job plans, low reactive behavior and schedules that people adhere to. This lack of forced overtime means you can make more time to spend with your kids playing ball, reading and preparing for the future.
2. Holidays with family
When you have reliable equipment you will have fewer calls to deal with plant issues during your family time because the plant is performing, the outages are executed efficiently, and the staff is trained to deal with the minor issues that arise from time to time. This all means you can eat turkey with your parents, family and friends with out pesky plant problems calling you away.
1. Safety at work
A reliable plant is a safe plant. Both Ron Moore in the book "Making Common Sense Common Practice" and a study that is currently being done at the University of Tennessee has demonstrated the statistics to prove reliability improves safety.  But if we just think about it logically for a minute, if you can plan and schedule the repair with the right tools and the right parts and the right people with the right expertise then surely it must be safer than an emergency repair done on forced overtime after a long exhausting day with tools that don't work quite right and parts that don't fit quite right all while an operations manager continuously rushes you to get it running one way or another.

Tell us why you are thankful for your reliability in the comments below.