Is Your Predictive Maintenance Program a Rifle or a Shotgun Approach?

Is your predictive maintenance program setup like a rifle or a shotgun? Would you say it is well thought out and directed at  a specific failure mode of a known risk or is it more of a shoot and scatter and see what I can hit approach?
Over the last few years I have seen more sites that are the later more than the former. They hand out PdM tools to untrained or minimally trained technicians, electricians, and mechanics and they tell them to just look for problems. In some cases there is no consideration for criticality of the asset, or the type of failures we should expect. They are literally just looking for any "hot spot" or "noisy bearing" in the area. They don't understand IR's emissivity or UE's reflectivity or many of the other things that can lead to misdiagnosis and bad calls. What's even worse is they don't have the rest of the work execution process so they are missing planning and proper scheduling so everything is handled as a reactive repair even when identified with PdM. The  problem with these programs is they fail and then the site say things like "We tried PdM and it did not work here." or "PdM does not work on our equipment, we are different"
Your PdM program must take on the traits of a rifle. It needs to be directed at identified failure modes of a level of risk to the facility that they are justified. PdM needs to feed your work control process so that it builds backlog that can then be planned and scheduled for execution.  This reduces maintenance cost substantially. If you are really going to attempt a PdM implementation, then expect to train extensively a core group of users that services the whole facility. And one last more controversial thought, start with multiple technologies that work together and learn to walk before before you run by using route based tools before you dive into IIOT and Industry 4.0.
PdM is not a point and squeeze effort take time to plan, strategize and fire that one precise shot that improves reliability in your site.

Predictive Maintenance, Preventive Medicine and How Are You Feeling? Guest Post by Allen Canaday

Many procedures doctors are able to perform today are almost miraculous.  Science and technology have advanced at such a rapid pace over the last few decades.  Through integration of these new technologies with existing medical science, doctors are developing new procedures and medicines, when combined, allow for early intervention and even prevention of some diseases.  Culturally, preventive medicine has improved quality of life, provides greater longevity and lowers overall medical costs.
Much of the science and technology utilized in the medical profession has also found a home in the maintenance and reliability profession.  Today we have a myriad of proven technological tools available to diagnose asset health problems. Everything from ultrasonic and vibration to infrared and oil analysis,  these tools, when corrected applied, enable asset problems to be identified early on the failure curve, before the increasing costs of repair and potential catastrophic failure occurs.  Maintenance has evolved.  Maintenance is now the integration of science, technology, and training. 
Preventive medicine is firmly ingrained in our culture.  It works. Our confidence level is high and the experts tell us it is slowing the rate of costs increases for medical care.  It’s not uncommon to hear co-workers compare their “numbers”, it’s almost like a competition!  However, predictive maintenance is not nearly as culturally ingrained in the maintenance and reliability profession. Even though the science and technologies are proven many sites skip their appointment and miss the benefits. 
So why are the preventive/predictive technologies not advancing in maintenance and reliability profession at a more rapid pace?  Leave us your thoughts in the comments below.
Many companies can’t advance these technologies quickly enough while others continue to miss out on this competitive advantage.  If you are not utilizing the latest technologies in your facility start your business case now, before both yours’ and your assets’ health begin to diminish.
By the way, how have you been feeling?  It may be time for you and your maintenance strategies to have a check-up.  

Back To The Future ... But Stuck In The Past

Click here to see an inspiring message from Doc Brown himself: The future has finally arrived
Here are some thoughts on the matter from our lead coach Brandon Weil:

Well folks we made it (despite what the Mayans had to say about the matter), today is the day that Marty McFly and “Doc” Brown traveled to the future, October 21st 2015. As I sat in traffic this morning, on my way to work and unleashed a fury of 4 letter expletives, I also cursed the movie for the broken promise of delivering on those flying cars by now (although with the way people drive around here maybe a bunch of flying death machines would only lead to fiery shrapnel raining from the skies during rush hour).
While it’s easy to focus on all the things that haven’t come to pass as of yet, it’s incredible to look at all the things that have. Futuristic headsets? Just look at the Oculus VR headset or Microsoft Hololens. Video Conferencing? Skype and Apple’s Facetime enable remote face-to-face conversations and is a favorite of many grandparents and families that aren’t in close proximity.
Things that seemed like pure science fiction are now integrated into many aspects of our everyday life. As I look back at all of the advancements in technology I still get the feeling that maintenance and reliability programs as a whole are more than a few steps behind. It’s not to say that there haven’t been advancements in reliability related technology, there certainly has, the issue seems to be with our adoption rate and integration of these technologies to advance our programs.

Using the figure to the right we can trace the origin of many existing PM and Reliability Programs, however, the trouble is that many existing programs are still stuck somewhere between the green and blue sections (or even as far back as the orange!). There are so many existing technologies that we ought to be leveraging, but in all honesty, are basically just tinkering with or have deployed on a very limited basis including vibration analysis, oil analysis, infrared, ultrasound, motor circuit analysis, and laser alignment, just to name a few. We need to take a hard look at our existing programs and ask ourselves, "Is there a PdM technology that I could be using to find the failure earlier on the P-F curve and minimize the introduction of defects from invasive inspections? Is there a technology I should be leveraging such as laser alignment that will extend the time between when I install/repair the equipment and when the first noticeable defect is detected? Am I certifying defects found with technologies have been properly corrected with the same technologies after repairs are completed?" If you are deploying these technologies what percentage of your assets are currently on a route and have no identifiable defects? It used to be that cost was the entry barrier for many of these technologies but, with advancements and price drops, it’s costing you money NOT to fully embrace them.
To the future!
We’ve harped enough on the present, but what about the future? What does this look like? With emerging technologies such as Augmented Reality, there are some real opportunities to take things like job plans and reliability education to the next level. We’re not too far off from the scene in Back to the Future 2 where “Jaws 19” comes out of the screen and eats Marty. Imagine learning about the inside of a motor when a 3D animated image pops out of a 2D card right on your smart phone. Think this is something from the future? Think again (see image below). Imagine scanning a component on an asset and seeing an overlay of critical job plan steps appear and guide the technician to improve the consistency of how the job is executed....This can be done! Imagine single point lessons on various reliability topics that pop out of an image and can be accessed on demand to refresh concepts or share with others…It’s here!
Change the present, shape the Future!
While I'm still holding out for that sweet hoverboard, I haven't lost sight of what's available today. My fear is that the M and R community will continue to lag behind with the adoption of technology while we ought to be on the cutting edge. It’s very clear that we’re under-utilizing existing technologies and are not embracing new ones quickly enough. With a large influx of Millennial age workers entering the M and R field that grew up and thrive on technology, it would be foolhardy to ignore the power of both existing and emerging opportunities. Don't wait until 2045 to implement things available in 2015.

Now hurry up with that flying car!

 Here is a quick look at Eruditio's Augmented Reliability taken from an iPhone.

3 Things You Could Learn From Your Doctor About Reliability.

So when you go to the doctor you expect your problem will be addressed quickly, thoroughly, and at the lowest cost to you. You don't want to spend hours of downtime in the "waiting room." You want a root cause understanding of the problem and a strategy and the drugs to resolves the problem. You want to pay a standard amount deductible and get no surprise bills after the treatment. Operations and Shareholders should expect no less from the maintenance and reliability organization. We should use condition based tools and proactive methods to identify issues early before operations experiences downtime. We should use problem solving tools like root cause analysis to understand the cause of the pain and prevent re-occurrence. Shareholders would prefer that all work be planned and scheduled so that it can be performed at the lowest total cost.
Here are three more things that the doctor does that we should do as well.
When you arrive, the doctor seeks to understand any changes in your life. He checks your vitals and the basic details like weight. He looks for what has changed. When you arrive at a failed piece of equipment you should perform the root cause method called change analysis. You would look at what things have changed. It can fall into categories:

• What has changed (product mix, load etc)
• Who might have changed (new operators or maintainers, different conditions etc)
• How might have it changed (weather etc.)
• When did it change (run at a new time, different shift etc.)
• Why did it change (operations strategy etc.)

If you answer these questions then you can begin to understand the causal chains and root causes.
When you go to the doctor they don't just run one test with one technology. We should use multiple technologies to understand the health of our assets. We might use vibration, infrared themography, oil analysis, Airborne ultrasound as well as others. Using these tools together gives you a full picture of the health of the equipment just like the doctor's test gives him a picture of your health.
The last point I want to note is that the doctor or surgeon uses checklist for procedures. Many sites do not have nor want to create good procedures or checklist. These sites have told me that they do not need them because their craftsmen are skilled and experienced. My point is that the doctor has done common procedures hundreds of times and yet he, a skilled doctor, still uses a checklist. These checklist do not tell him how to tie a stitch but it does point out key measures commonly forgotten steps and verifies that all of his equipment that is used is returned.

Next time you are at your doctor think about what you see him do and how you can use that to professionalize our field.

Data Collectors or Dust Collectors: Three Ways to Knock the Dust Off

We all love shiny new reliability toys, right?
Well I am spending the week in the middle of a conference center full of beautiful shiny new condition monitoring/ predictive maintenance tools in Bahrain at the Maintcon conference. I know that the IMC-2012 International Maintenance Conference is kicking off as you read this in Florida as well. So, literally thousands of people will be in a sea of shiny new equipment this week. They will check out the newest in touch screen technology, they will ogle at the cool wireless features and they may even lust after the robustness of these new super industrialized models.
But let me share a dirty secret, many of them are not looking at data collectors they are actually looking at future dust collectors.
While sitting around with many of the leaders of the companies that provide these incredible technologies they have all lamented with sad eyes about the cool tools that have never made it into regular use in some facilities. One vendor said it makes him want to cry when he sees "his equipment setting on the top shelf with a layer of dust on it." They are proud of their work and they want to see it used to improve facilities reliability. Below are some of the actual excuses mumbled by maintenance folks in facilities globally for why there is dust on their technology:

• "No time to get trained on the unit" Training issue
• "No one does anything when I identify a fault" Communication, Process, and Training Issue
• "No budget left for training class" Training Issue
• "To busy fighting fires" Process issue
• "The other maintenance guys don't trust the technology" Training issue
• "Operations will not give me the down time" Process issue
• "The old way was easier" Training issue
• "I can't get the time to mount the sensors" Process and Priority issue
• "I didn't order it. I wanted the other one." hmmmm.... Attitude issue? OK, how about change management issue

So what can we do? Here are three thoughts that might help you avoid your own set of dust collectors.
First, don't buy technology if you don't have the basic business processes in place. Good technology with bad processes just makes bad things happen faster. Think about how you are going to use the technology. How will you plan and then schedule the resolutions of the findings? If you can not plan and schedule the repairs then you are merely refining your run to failure strategy and continuing to make repairs at 5 times the cost.
Second, package the training into the purchase price of the unit and issue one purchase order. Don't try to "buy it in bits" Get it all at once or wait until you can. You will want to capitalize on the fact that it is new to get folks to engage in the training and apply the technology in the field. Of course you should train your users to operate it but don't forget to create awareness training for those that will be affected like your craftsmen who will make the repairs based on the technology and your planners who will use the findings to plan the work.
Third, plan the time to set it up right. Develop your equipment list, routes, and alarms right from the start. Going back after the fact is gruesome and frustrating and working in a bad database just makes an analyst mad.
What things have you done at your site to prevent your data collectors from becoming dust collectors?
Please feel free to share below.

Have a great week

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.

Are Your Reliability Efforts Haunted by the Lack of an Effective Plan?

So many facilities struggle with timely results and expected return on investments within their reliability improvement efforts. One of the demons that continuously shows it's face is the sequencing within the improvement plan.
Sites tend to want to pursue the exciting and fun things and forget many of the foundational elements that support the shiny stuff.  For example a site will purchase technology in the form of software or predictive tools before developing work flow process. Without understanding the work management process you don't have the data needed for the software to analyze nor the ability to execute the work identified with the predictive tools. This just leads to the exciting new tools being underutilized and then eventually put on a shelf to gather dust.
When you are looking at your initiative and planning your strategy, take a look at what is required to support the pieces that you desire. Be honest about your maturity in these support elements and build your base before your tower. Towers are great to look at and show others but foundations are where a smart man spends his time.
Some of the common issues I see include:

1. Scheduling work without planning first. How can you have an accurate schedule when you have not had a planner break down the job into small enough parts to accurately estimate time required?
2. Predictive tools applied without work process to execute the findings prior to point F on the P-F curve.
3. Software such as EAM and CMMS without standard work process to make them work.
4. Software for engineering analysis without data from FRACAS or failure coding to input for analysis. 
5. Initiatives like lean and six sigma applied before with maintenance induced variation and waste is reduced. 
6. Reliability engineering tools applied before maintenance engineering tools. When you have a pure reliability engineer working on the future in a fully reactive facility it becomes a lot like rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. You need the maintenance engineer to introduce procedures, precision maintenance and failure mode based maintenance to stop the the sinking and then we can focus on the next cruise. 

If you want to keep the gremlins out of your improvement strategy then focus on the processes first then apply the tools, software and shiny stuff.

Are You Doing PM Right: 5 Things to Keep You in Flight

So earlier this week I had the opportunity to fly the helicopter shown to the right in for its 100 hour Preventive Maintenance Inspection, which led to many of the thoughts in this post. Private or General  Aviation as it is known is really at about the same place as many of us on the reliability maturity scale. You might say they are "not quite best practice". Now for those of you that travel commercially don’t fret, that world tends to operate on a different level with a different mindset. While talking with the mechanic who was servicing the helicopter these points came to light. 
1. They could really remove a lot of non-value added step in the PM. Many of these have no discernible link to actual failure modes. Some of them looked more like an exercise by the vendor in selling parts and satisfying lawyers. As an aside someone should explain the basic tenets of RCM and the failure curves to lawyers so that they understand new does not equal reliable. Statistically, the most dangerous plane a private pilot can fly is one that just went through an overhaul and it is full of new bits.
2. If a skilled pilot or a skilled operator can perform the check then teach them and let them do these as part of a pre-flight or walk down inspection. This will lower maintenance cost and increase the organizations understanding and ability to identify failures early allowing for planning and scheduling of the repair work.
On the helicopter the rear drive pulley was worn and the damage was visible without tools or removal of guards but on the preflight checklist all it says is “check the pulley” and most pilots don’t know what the failure modes of the pulley are so they only check the most obvious and catastrophic. If a pilot noted the defect on the pulley during their inspection then the parts could have been ordered in advance and the ship would have been out of operation much less time and could have been  generating additional revenue and making the business more profitable.
3. Simply put, use Predictive Maintenance (PdM) technologies where you can to replace invasive Preventive Maintenance (PM) task that require downtime and can induce failures.
If you can check the equipment while it is running then you have less downtime and many times less maintenance cost not to mention you catch the failure much earlier allowing for the proper parts to be ordered and shipped in for your downtime windows.
4. PMs and check list should be quantifiable and repeatable. Each step should give tolerances or operating ranges that allow each operator or mechanic to do it the same way each time. One step in the Helicopter PM job plan ask the technician to use a screwdriver to pry against a valve and check for movement. This is quite ubiquitous. The mechanic and I both were left with questions like:
How big of a screwdriver? How much force should we apply? How much movement is acceptable?
In the end the mechanic shared with me that he does not follow the PM for that step because he has no idea what is “good”. He has opted for a different method that he was taught by others.
5. Lastly, If you see the phrase “As needed” or” As necessary” then you know you have a problem. Most of us do not know what these phrases mean therefor we need additional detail to be successful.
In the end, whether you are hanging on for dear life under a set of spinning blades or running a packaging line in a manufacturing facility you need to do great PMs to get great results and hopefully these suggestions might help you look at things in a new way.

10 Things We Learned about Asset Health Management from Domtar

Special joint blog post with the fine folks from the Ludeca Blog:

Domtar Espanola from Ontario, Canada won Uptime Magazine’s Best Asset Health Management Program. Their goal was “Go from Reactive Maintenance to Proactive”.

To achieve this goal, they put together a plan including several proactive actions and PdM technologies integrated with an Asset Performance Management Software which allow them to closely monitor equipment health.

Kim Hunt shared some of their plan elements:

1. Implement a precision lubrication program and oil analysis
2. Skills training: Value your staff and empower them with training. From formal training to just watching Reliabilityweb Webinars together and afterwards eating cookies and holding discussions —great for team building!
3. Size your equipment properly
4. Use laser alignment and balancing for precise machine rebuilds and installs
5. Precise operator care
6. Maintain excellence in housekeeping
7. Equipment health monitoring. Use predictive tools including vibration analysis to baseline your equipment.
8. Root cause analysis and problem elimination
9. Plan and schedule your maintenance activities with effective standard operating procedures
10. Continuous improvement - you are never done!

What did they accomplish?
21% reduction in maintenance costs
30% increase in production efficiencies
Increased MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure)
A total average savings of US$450,000 per year without increasing actual/potential production loss.

Congratulations to Kim Hunt and her team for this award and a job well done.

The Basics of Reliability Series: Preventive, Predictive, and Precision Maintenance

 

 

With the Triple P M single point lesson, you can cover multiple topics with two diagrams. There are two key points to be driven home with these graphics: first, a solely time-based maintenance strategy is destined to leave you missing the performance mark; and two, precision maintenance concepts and craft skills are imperative to effective maintenance. Other points can be added as the audience allows.

The first diagram shows the six failure curves from the many Reliability Centered Maintenance texts. When you realize that only 11 percent of the failure modes tend toward time-based presentation, you quickly see why a maintenance strategy solely based on time-based preventive maintenance activities is flawed. You also see that doing everything right with precision maintenance is crucial if you want to reduce the number of infant mortality failures.

The second graphic to devote to memory is the I-P-F curve, which shows that the most effective downtime prevention tool is to postpone the failure with precision maintenance and the second most important downtime preventer is to catch the defect early enough using predictive tools to plan and schedule the repair. One more point to make that ties into a later single point lesson on materials is that if you do not store it properly and maintain it in stores, then point S (the point it is put in stores), point I, and point P can become one and the same.

On this single point lesson, you can also talk about how, based on recent studies of PM maintenance tasks, the following holds true for the average facility:

·         30% of the PM tasks add no value.

·         30% of the PM tasks in the average facility could be more effective and efficient if they were done with PdM tools.

·         30% of the PM tasks should be reengineered to address the failure modes of the asset.

·         10% of the PM tasks are fine the way they are.

This sheds a bit of light on another substantial area of waste that can be removed with a plan and some patience.

More Preventive is Not Necessarily the Answer

More is not necessarily better when it comes to preventive maintenance you have to find the right amount done right with the right tools.

Lets first talk in extremes, there are some facilities that are truly reactive in nature and only fix equipment when it breaks. This keeps them very busy and leaves little time to do preventive (PM) or predictive (PdM) maintenance. This can lead them into a death spiral of unreliability. Many of these sites believe that if they could just get a bunch of PMs, then they will escape the spiral.

On the other side there are also other facilities that over time or in response to an incident have created a large portion of their backlog that consist of PM work and again they face many breakdowns and unreliability. If PMs are good why might these facilities experience an increase in breakdowns and unreliability?

One answer is infant mortality. In other words by doing more invasive PM inspections, such as opening a gear box to inspect the teeth, they actually induce failures. These failures can come from dirt and debris that accidentally gets into the box while it is open or improper reassembly upon completion. In this example many of the PdM tools could eliminate this PM activity in most cases and in turn eliminate the infant mortality issue entirely.

So the second enemy in more PMs is the possible loss of effectiveness because of low quality procedure, or poor execution in the field due to labor overload or has a lack of training on the added task. Many facilities ramp up the number of PMs by getting suggested PMs from vendors or coping other facilities PM procedure. This leads to task that don’t address the failure modes and in many case may not even address the equipment in question. 

So if you want to increase your level of preventive maintenance and your reliability take these steps:

1. Create a plan of what equipment and when. This could be based off of criticality.
2. Generate solid craftsman reviewed PM task that are failure mode based and detailed to the right level. You can base them off of example if they are reviewed and verified prior to deployment.
3. Finally use the predictive maintenance tools to eliminate the invasive preventive maintenance that plagues you by adding defects to your system.

Grow a good program a little at a time as apposed to a bad program overnight.