RSA Reliability and Maintenance Consultancy Firm

Issue No. 48 - April 2011

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Operators can never be Maintenance customer in the first place .because operators and maintenance are both partners We must treat them as partners in doing business together. Therefore when a failure occurs instead on blaming on the maintenance side, both should sit down and work on the problem together . . . .

Text Box: By Rolly Angeles I often hear this statement from maintenance people that operators are their customers. and from the traditional saying which states that the customer is always right in the first place and when the customer is wrong, then you go back to the basic rule which states that the customer is always right after all. I would like to quote from the book of Anthony Smith, RCM - Gateway to World Class Maintenance page 16. Quote: View maintenance as a Profit Center. This suggest that the maintenance organization must be treated as a key element in your business strategy and plans for achieving profit targets. Maintenance, like any organization function (design, manufacturing, marketing) incurs cost in performing its routine tasks. But recognizes that routine (i.e., scheduled) maintenance tasks, when properly performed, have the capability to dramatically affect the ability to achieve or exceed targeted production output. This means, among other things, that Operations (Production) and Maintenance must be treated as equals. No longer should Operations dictate when Maintenance can or cannot do his job. Rather, there must be decisions made for the common good, and each must respect the other’s role in meeting the customers demands (i.e., the “real” customer , the one who pays your salaries) No longer should Maintenance feel that its one and only customer is Operations—it is not. Unquote I tend to agree 100% on what the author Anthony Smith is saying. Therefore if the policy or culture of your company follows the rule that operations and operators are maintenance customer then I believe they need to rethink and change course while there is still time otherwise, that industry is indeed in a lot of big trouble. Here are some reasons I believe on why I consider operations are not maintenance customers: 1) Maintenance is a Shared Responsibility for Both Operators and Maintenance First, operators must accept the fact that maintenance is not only for maintenance alone to perform. There are minor maintenance activities such as cleaning, inspection and basic lubrication that should be done by the operators themselves and not by maintenance. TPM refers to this as addressing the basic equipment condition. The logic is as simple as in the case of driving your car because if you own a car it is the operator or driver that checks if he or she still have fuel left to travel. The driver should also be monitoring if his engine temperature is normal or increasing when traveling. It is also the driver who needs to check if his or her tires have the right pressure or is inflated. The driver should also be the ones to check if his or her car contains water on their radiator. I can go on and on with this but all I am saying is that these activities I have just mentioned are activities that are not performed by the mechanics but rather by the operator or driver themselves. Second point as I have said many times is that it is believe that operators are the first line of defense on any failure that can occur in the equipment since they are the people closest to the asset during the time of failure. They will be the once who will encounter the failure first before the maintenance arrive at the scene. With this maintenance can only advance to any continuous improvement effort and advancement if operator accept the responsibility that they should play a major part in establishing Basic Equipment Condition which aims at keeping the equipment clean, correct lubrication and completing the bolts of the machine in the first place. Operators must provide a continuous communication with maintenance because it is important for the maintenance people to understand what eventually happen prior to the failure itself. If there is some sort of noise, smell or any thing that the operator senses. One problem with traditional industries is that when the equipment breakdown and fails, operators call the maintenance and when maintenance arrive on the equipment the operators disappear or take a break, in short communication is lost between the two. Both TPM and RCM agree that maintenance is a shared responsibility for both operators and maintenance. TPM do this by adopting a structured and detailed 7 step approach on Autonomous Maintenance while RCM will require an operator as part of the RCM team since RCM believes that there are things to be learned from the operator most especially during the time of failure because these operators are the closest people to the asset during the time of failure 2) Maintenance Should Report to Maintenance and Not to Operations

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Text Box: World Class Maintenance Book (Now Available)

• Gallery: New pictures for 2011 added from the gallery portion.

• Newsletter: Aug. 2011 Edition finally released to our subscribers. Email me if you want to subscribe to our Newsletter.

• 2012 Training Schedule: If you are interested to attend in any of our public workshop and master class for 2012. Send us an email or register online.

• WCM Book: If you’re interested in buying the book on World Class Maintenance, The 12 Disciplines. Send me an email to reserve. WCM Book is now available. Get your copy now.

• In-house Training :Should your industry be interested for in-house trainings we are now accepting regular schedules for in-house training for both local and international countries on courses that we currently offered. Contact us

World Class Maintenance Management - The Twelve Disciplines Book is now available here. This is not only about the technical jargon on reliability and maintenance, it is a book that makes every single maintenance proud that they belong to the maintenance function. If you have been living through the day to day pressures of doing maintenance then this is your story. If you are interested in this book, send me an email. Click Here !

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Text Box: Greatest Performer and Humanitarian of all times (1958-2009)

Text Box: This portion is dedicated not only to the greatest performer of all times but also to the greatest humanitarian the world had ever known, Michael Jackson. We bid you goodbye and we shall never forget you. In behalf of my family and my small firm RSA Reliability we salute you. Your music and your message lives on.

• I recall in one of my class on World Class Maintenance, one guy from the maintenance function, a very vocal guy raised a question about a simple case of oil leak that he wanted to address. I asked him why won’t you address such a small issue. He told me that if he will repair the leak then the whole plant will need to be shutdown for a while. And I asked him why don’t you schedule it in your PM outage, it is because operations keeps on waiving the equipment for PM. My last question to the person was to whom did he report and he said to the operations manager. And I guess that answers the question. Perhaps from a business point of view, operations people might be thinking that they are doing the right thing but from a maintenance point of view, big problems and catastrophic failures are just an accumulation of very small things.

3) Maintenance are Not Mechanics or Repair People

• The role maintenance play in an organization is diversified in nature, perhaps belonging to the maintenance function allows me to understand that the best positions an industry can have always belong to the maintenance section but in most organizations maintenance are merely treated as repair people that troubleshoot breakdowns. Maintenance should always be in the line and not on their offices so that when a breakdown occurs they can be called at once. Some even have a man to machine ratio that for every 1 maintenance his responsibility will be to look out for breakdowns on at least around 15 machines assigned to his responsibility. Others even worst, provide a record on what these people actually repaired in an hourly basis. If we survey on how many industries actually have some form of Predictive Maintenance or CMMS in place perhaps not all or even half can say that they have one but I am pretty much sure that each of these industries have their plans of having them since the beginning of time but the problem is that every time they requisition or provide some P.R. (purchase requisition) regarding these instruments and software, they have always been denied by their management.

• When maintenance people are not visible at the production site or walking down the production aisle, then operations people needs to be happy simply because the line is operating smoothly. Maintenance are not mechanics and mechanics are simply not maintenance people, these two are different things. Mechanics are people that use their hands more often while a maintenance are people that uses his brain most of the time and less their hands in addressing the problem. There are many doors on maintenance that still remain closed on industries because they want their maintenance to be just mere mechanics that troubleshoot and repair the problem all the time, and when maintenance get the hang of repairing fault, they are less inclined to learn what the best practices on maintenance for fear of loosing their job in the first place. Lubrication is one of them. And this subject is taken very lightly or shallow. In fact if we speak about hydraulics for example, more than 80% of hydraulic system failures are caused by oil contamination or unwanted foreign object on the oil.

• Let me give you a common example: every single PM Checklists has a form of lubrication activity that is being performed in a timely fashion which states something like this :

- What : Apply lubrication on bearing on the motor

- When : Quarterly

- Who : Preventive Maintenance

• If you have an exact activity like this then this is the start of a bigger problem. This is actually where chaos and confusion begins. To start with, as to what specific lubricant to be used is unknown, because the PM states only to apply lubrication. Note that both oil and grease are lubricants. Let us say that grease will be used then the next question is what corresponding NLGI number must be used for this application? At what specific brand and type of grease to be used? How many shots or pump is needed or when do I know when to stop pumping the grease gun? How many grams of grease is required for this application and do you have any means of measuring it? And most of the time, when failure struck us, we blame it on the lubricant and not on the way we perform lubrication. This means that different grease guns contains different pumping capacity, and grease should never be mixed which means that if a grease gun contains calcium grease and you place some silicon grease on the same grease gun then you are building up incompatibility issues on the grease. This means that you are not only shortening the life of the grease but also the component that you will apply the grease.

• I believe in the saying that when your people becomes good at fixing failures, then your plant have a big problem since the problem keeps on repeating itself. In today’s fierce competition on industries, what we need are people who can analyze and address the root cause of the problem, and these is only not even half the role of maintenance is all about. I hope that there comes a time where industry begins to mature and understand the role maintenance play in their organization so that they can transition from a firefighting stage to a more robust and structured approach on maintenance besides the Shout and Scare Tactic that most operations people are doing and that there is a better way of doing things on maintenance rather than repairing the problem and pressuring maintenance all the time.

4) Maintenance Should Not Be Blamed When Production is Not Met

• Again when we accept that operators is maintenance customer then operations will always have a lame excuse on why their production was not met for the day. Maintenance is always a scapegoat for every single problem that occurs on the equipment and this seems to be the trend happening in most industries that when unexpected breakdowns and failures occur on their assets and high cost of doing maintenance the blame virus prevails and maintenance is the answer to all evil not to mention the relationship operations people have on maintenance. Feud between operations and maintenance is pretty much alive, when production for the day is met all credit goes to operations but on the other side, if production for the day will not be met then all fingers points to the maintenance.

• Maintenance cannot simply just follow orders from operations who keeps on waiving the equipment for a Preventive Maintenance schedule. It the reason for delaying the PM is to reduce or minimize infant mortality failures experienced on the equipment, then I agree with operations for waiving the equipment but on the other hand, if the reason for deferring PM is to give way to production then maintenance should make a stand and not be dictated all the time by operations.

Maintenance : (In a soft tone) :

But boss this is the 5th time you

have said that

Operations : (In a shouting tone) How many times do I need to remind your thick skull that you cannot perform your PM right now. Got it !

• Maintenance should not be blame for every single equipment problems and downtime on the equipment or simply be held accountable because even if we point our fingers and blame maintenance about it, the equipment is still down. This is what happens when maintenance treat operations as their customers. What we need is for both parties, which is the operations and maintenance to finally work together in finding permanent solutions to problems.

To conclude this newsletter both operations and maintenance should work together to resolve problems instead of accusing each other all the time. When both departments sit down and lay their fingers down and start communicating instead of blaming, then that is a good start on moving forward. Remember that operations are not maintenance customers, because operators are simply maintenance partners. Our customers are the ones who buy our products and services because they are the once where we get our salaries in the first place.

Answer to February 2011 Issue : Is Zero Breakdowns Really Possible?

1) A (function loss means a failure in which the equipment totally stops)

2) A (this is when machine is still running but when listing the number of breakdowns, these can be omitted)

3) B (Scheduled PM or outage is not included as a breakdown)

4) A (although there is a redundancy in this case, the running pump eventually failed)

5) B (the system was not affected, hence, there is no breakdown on the system)

6) B (an assists is not a breakdown and cannot be considered as one)

7) A (breakdown of electronic parts that stop the equipment is considered as a breakdown)

8) A (infant mortality is a pattern of failure or failures that occur after a PM overhaul is performed)

9) A (this is considered as a breakdown)

10) A (breakdowns usually have operational consequences)

11) B (potential failure is a stage where a functional failure is about to occur)

12) A (this is considered as a breakdown)

13) A (software problems that stop the machine from running will be included as breakdown)

14) B (the activity of monitoring the equipment through Predictive Maintenance is not a breakdown)

15) B (these is the same as item 2 and called function reduction failures)

16) A (if we speak about the compressor, then there is a breakdown)

17) B (if we speak about the 100 pneumatic equipment there was downtime but no breakdown)

18) A (I consider this part of the breakdown which is waiting for the spare or part)

19) A (if a part or component is involved then there is a breakdown)

20) B (this is not a breakdown)

• When we speak of any industry organizational chart and hierarchy, oftentimes you cannot see maintenance function or it is often missing simply because they directly report to operations people. With this in mind, operations control and dictate what maintenance is going to do and not on the equipment. The worst thing that I can think of is that if the highest person in operations is a non-technical person, then all priority will end up on only one thing and that is output. This is one of the main reasons why maintenance people are treated slightly lower than operations in the first place. What I believe is that both operations and maintenance people should report to two different people. This means that the highest person on operations and the highest person on maintenance must be of equal level or with the same position and neither one reports to the other but reports to a much higher person which is perhaps the General Manager or Factory Manager. Although this is a sensitive issue to discuss, my experience tells me that if maintenance reports to operations then all hell breaks loose and pressure on maintenance is intense on keeping the equipment running despite operations waiving the equipment for a Preventive Maintenance schedule. And when the machine fails then operations people are behind or at the back of maintenance repairing the fault, keeping an eyes on maintenance and asking all the time when the machine will run. With this, I think maintenance should report to the head of the maintenance and not to operations themselves.