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Since establishing this website last May of 2007, I have made many efforts to improve this site and provide some useful insights about our common link which is all about improving our equipment reliability and the way we do maintenance. Finally should you be interested to contribute to our articles section or share any comment or feedback, you may email me at Click Here !!!.
If for any reason you wish to unsubscribe from our newsletter, kindly send my a blank email with unsubscribe as the heading and we shall remove you from our mailing lists. Once again welcome to our December 2010 Edition of our Monthly Reliability Newsletter for this year 2010. It will just take you 5 to 10 minutes to read this and I do hope that you enjoy reading.
My Warm Regards,
Website : www.rsareliaiblity.com Inspired by Change . . . |
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RELIABILITY & MAINTENANCE CONSULTANCY FIRM
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Where the learning just never stops . . .
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RSA
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For our complete archive of previous reliability newsletter |
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Our newsletter will be sent out ones a month and provide you with quality issues and resources on our most common link which is all about reliability and maintenance, as well as regular updates about our site. I would like to personally invite you to regularly visit our website and check out updates on our articles and training courses. |
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Most failures start from small things that had been left unattended and neglected, AM emphasizes the importance of establishing these Basics on their equipment w/c includes cleaning, lubrication and completing bolts needed for the machine, once these simple basic condition had been addressed its impact will be felt . . . |
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By Rolly Angeles
I was quite busy during the first 3 months of this year, first refining and completing my training materials on Autonomous Maintenance which was recently requested by one of my client here in the Philippines. This client was not from a manufacturing sector but from a power plant. Autonomous Maintenance is one of the pillars of TPM with the biggest population which involves people who operate their equipment. TPM is originally designed for manufacturing plants and although not all industries can implement Autonomous Maintenance, there are non-manufacturing plants such as power plants that can benefit from its implemention. If Step 1 of Autonomous Maintenance can be performed, then rest assured that the remaining steps can also be done. So let me share with you this two part series of newsletter on Autonomous Maintenance for Manufacturing and Non-Manufacturing Plants.
In my training on World Class Maintenance Management - The 12 Disciplines, I asked people to group themselves into a team and select one of the 12 Disciplines that they would like to improve most in their plant. Top of the list is Autonomous Maintenance, meaning that operator should not just be operating the equipment but should accept the fact that maintenance is a shared responsibility for both parties. When an equipment is about to fail, it is the operator who will sense and witness the failure first and not the maintenance because these people are the ones who are closest to their asset during the time of failure or breakdown. The role of Autonomous Maintenance is to enhance the senses of operators so that they can easily detect problems, irregularities and abnormalities in their equipment by addressing the basics and accepting basic maintenance responsibilities which is keeping the equipment clean, completing the bolts, nuts, fasteners and applying the correct lubrication on the equipment.
During the first day of my training on Autonomous Maintenance with this power plant industry, I was a bit surprise that no one from the delegates show any sign of resistance on the concept of AM. In fact, an operator even provided me with a surprising remark that they know how to do minor repairs and would love to accept simple work such as tightening any loose bolt that they can spot, but their remark states that when maintenance see us doing this kind of work, they told us to stop doing it because it is not our job to perform. Their job description and responsibilities forbid them on doing those kinds of work. In my years of experience with industries, I was totally convince that maintenance people are the good guys while operations are the villains, but in this situation, my mind had been totally reversed, perhaps just perhaps in power plants, it is the operations that are the good guys and maintenance the villains or simply this is just a classic case of a one of a kind.
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Issue No. 44 – December 2010 |
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If we trace back history on why operations and maintenance are separated, it all started from the concept of Fredrick Taylor. According to Fredrick Taylor, the best way to manage an organization was to standardize the activity into simple repetitive tasks and then closely supervise them into doing it. In effect, management people do all the thinking as well as the decisions, while the supervisors act as the watchers making sure that the decision is followed to the letter. Workers are focused on doing what they are told to do and just follow instructions until they get bored to death because of their routine work. While the western countries focused more on producing big volumes, capacity and production, the Japanese people learned that the best way to run an organization is to focused more on the voices of their people by allowing them to make decisions in order to perform their work better |
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Looks like a ship in a distance but this is actually a coal fired power plant |
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Western countries slowly realized that they are being beaten badly by their Japanese competitors but many industries are still stubborn and remain trapped into the old Taylor paradigm. Because of this, most American and western style factory management, clearly separated the roles of the production and maintenance departments. Managers were convinced that this style was the most effective way to utilize human resources. Operators concentrate on production with little or no knowledge on the structure and function of their equipment while maintenance received work orders and perform repairs on their equipment. As a result, both operations and maintenance went their own separate ways instead of following the path to mutual cooperation and shared responsibility. That is why today feud is pretty much alive on both sides. Much worst is the lack of communication between operators and maintenance when a breakdown occurs operators tend to disappear after calling the maintenance. On the other hand, the traditional mechanics would love the smell of breakdown. They know that they have become indispensable specialists of the trade. Maintenance think that they are assured of a stable job every time a repair is needed on their machines, not to mention that maintenance love to work overtime because of the added pay. And this vicious cycle goes on in which the aftermath is an immense amount of waste in man-hours, production time, lost of opportunity, and ballooning of spares and maintenance expense.
Operators must understand that maintenance is a shared responsibility for both parties. There are maintenance activities that must be done by the operators themselves. Maintenance must understand that Autonomous Maintenance can only work if they teach operators about their equipment in the first place. Maintenance should be the ones to make the first move. But most importantly, for Autonomous Maintenance to work industry needs to change from the traditional I operate you fix syndrome into a paradigm in which we operators and maintenance are both responsible in taking care of our equipment.” Blaming and finger pointing have to be stopped and culture needs to be changed, otherwise forget implementing Autonomous Maintenance because this simply cannot be forced on operators.
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Autonomous Maintenance is the activities in which each worker performs daily inspection, lubrication and cleaning, minor repairs and troubleshooting, accuracy checks and so forth on one own’s equipment which aims in keeping their equipment in healthy and good operating condition. Big problems are just simply an accumulation of small problems that are often times left unattended. Training and nurturing operators with strong equipment skills can develop operators to detect early signs of problems before they can become serious enough to cause catastrophic failures.
One feature of Autonomous Maintenance is to develop a checklist for operators which will include cleaning, lubrication and inspection to be done on the equipment. In short operators will develop their own standards and checklist. |
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Autonomous Maintenance in 7 Steps
Autonomous Maintenance is done in a standard 7 Step approach and might differ in details from one industry to another depending on the type of industry as well as how TPM consultants approach them. Hence, let me discuss here the standard and generic 7 Step approach which will begin with Step 0. The goal of Autonomous Maintenance is to develop a self-directed and empowered operator which aims on improving the performance of their equipment and assets.
Step 0 : Preparatory Stage
Before going through Step 1 of Autonomous Maintenance, it is important to start with this preparatory step which is Step 0. The basic concept of Step 0 is to organize a small group of operators who will compose the pilot team. Selection is critical and should compose 100% pure operators, maintenance should not be part of the team as they have their own TPM pillar to cover with. The role of maintenance is to act as a coach and training partner for operators. If your plant works on a shifting basis, decide if the team will be a vertical set-up (members will include operators from A shift, B shift and C shift) or the team will be a horizontal set-up (members will include operators from A shift only, B shift only or C shift only to start with). Both will have their pros and cons but based from experience vertical set-up will be more difficult but will provide an edge as all people within the shift are fully aware on the activities to be done by the team. Select a pilot equipment, process, component or system to start with. Selection should be made on the worst and critical equipment of the plant which is currently being used by operations. Note: Do not select good or brand new equipment since the output of the team will be useless as there will be very little or nothing to improve on the equipment selected.
In this preparatory step, maintenance should train operators on the basic function of their equipment and more importantly on the safety of the equipment. Never perform Step 1, Initial Cleaning if operators are not trained on the safety of the equipment. If someone accidentally gets injured during the cleaning process then that will be the end of your Autonomous Maintenance. Important activities to cover on this step is to requisition all the cleaning materials and tools needed for Step 1 and schedule the time to perform Step 1. For power plants, this can be scheduled during their PM or scheduled outage.
Step 1 : Perform Initial Cleaning
During Step 1, operators clean their equipment thoroughly as planned from the preparatory stage. Each member are assigned on a specific place on the equipment. When they clean their equipment, they are actually inspecting it. Inspection will allow operators to touch their equipment and will reveal problems, irregularities and abnormalities. Operators use their senses to detect looseness, wear, cracks, leaks on their equipment and tag them. These tags are place near as possible on the abnormality found. Tags will only be removed once they had been address completely. Take all necessary safety precautions prior to starting your cleaning activities. Review the cleaning map from Step 0. Frame a cleaning plan as to what parts needs to be clean. Clean thoroughly to remove dirt and dust accumulated over many years Open covers and lids that have never been seen and clean it thoroughly. Clean dirt not only on the equipment itself but also on transfer equipment, electrical boxes, fluid tanks and other auxiliary equipment Operators need to understand why they need to keep their machine clean and what is the harm of not doing it. Abnormalities found by operators should be corrected by the operators themselves, for those which will require job orders to restore, they will be passed on to the maintenance. But the golden rule in this step is that if the operator can correct the slight abnormality found then they should correct it themselves. At this step, the operators will experience areas on the equipment that are hard to access or hard to clean and will take note of it to be addressed in the next step of Autonomous Maintenance. Initial cleaning time to be done on the equipment may vary on the size of the equipment to be cleaned and the amount of dirt, dust, grime, scales, debris to be removed on the equipment. Hence, do not rush this activity. This will be the start of the learning process for the operators.
Step 2 : Eliminate Sources of Contamination and Hard to Clean Areas
After completing Step 1, Autonomous Maintenance team realizes that dirt tends to accumulate after some time on their equipment. The team also discuss problems on areas and parts of the equipment which they find difficult to access and clean. AM team brainstorm on ways to eliminate or reduce sources of contamination and think of simple specialized cleaning tools required for hard to reach or difficult to clean areas. The Autonomous Maintenance team share their experiences in performing Step 1 Initial Cleaning to the group and initiate simple improvement activities to address their problems experienced during the initial cleaning process. AM team begin with a goal of eliminating or reducing sources of contamination that makes the equipment or critical parts of the equipment dirty once again. Another important activity on this step is to reduce cleaning time by preparing cleaning charts, reducing contamination sources, making hard to clean places more accessible and introducing visual control on the equipment. Team also become aware of hard to reach or clean areas and feel obliged to think about improving their accessibility. The goal of Step 2 is to reduce the time it takes for the team to clean their equipment. Measures to control hard to access areas are taken by improving places where cleaning and inspecting are difficult and time-consuming so that cleaning and inspection can be performed easily
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Match marks to spot bolts that easily loose |
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Pointer just needs to be in between the green mark |
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Apply color coding for grease guns to avoid chances of mixing lubricants and human errors |
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Introduction of Visual Control to make inspection simply |
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Step 3 : Establish Tentative Equipment Standards
The goal of this step is to lock in place the gains and benefits of Step 1 and 2 to ensure maintenance of Basic Equipment Condition and to keep the equipment in peak operating condition. During Step 1 Initial Cleaning activities, team put a tremendous effort in cleaning, correcting minor flaws and establishing Basic Equipment Standards. In Step 2 they reduce the time required for this tasks by addressing sources of contamination making cleaning, inspection and lubrication more easy to perform. During Step 3, the team prepares a tentative standards and establish checkpoints for cleaning, inspection and lubrication. Operators with the help of maintenance try to understand why these task are important and what harm it can do on their equipment if it is neglected. These standards specify what needs to be done. What parts on the equipment needs to be clean, lubricated and inspected.
Many industries have already these standards in place but very few operators follow them thoroughly because the people who set the standards are seldom the once who apply them and operators might not understand the importance of doing it in the first place. Before operators can perform these standards and inspection, maintenance must fully train operator on the importance of doing them. Remember that it is the operators who will witness the failure first and not the maintenance people. What is important is to let operators identify what needs to be inspected on the equipment, the role of the maintenance is merely to guide them. This step provides a solid partnership for both operators and maintenance.
Step 4 : Develop General Equipment Procedures and Training
In Step’s 1 to 3 the operator had experience performing initial cleaning detecting abnormalities, identify hard to clean areas, generate lubricating, cleaning standards as well as basic knowledge about safety and machine function. In Step 4, maintenance conduct training for the operators to understand the fundamental and basic theory as well as its principles. Example, an operator may detect that a bolt is not properly tightened or loose but what the operator do not know is the correct amount of torque needed to apply on the bolt and what happens when we over apply the torque in the bolt. An operator may know that the level of the oil is below the minimum so the operator makes decision to tap oil into the equipment, but what is the correct viscosity suited for this application? If we speak about grease, what are the different types of grease and up to what corresponding temperatures can they be used. In this step fundamentals of machine elements, hydraulics, pneumatics, lubrication, bolts, nuts, fasteners, electrical, power transmission, rotating machine elements are learned by operators so that operators can find confidence in themselves in performing the standards generated on lubrication, cleaning and inspection. Step 4 focuses more on training that the operators will need to further advance in the Steps of Autonomous Maintenance. This will be the longest step in the AM journey and Planned Maintenance should be prepared for this step as they will be the ones to conduct these trainings. (To be continued)
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RELIABILITY NEWSLETTER |
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RSA |
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Inspired by change |
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• 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 |
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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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Select the courses of your choice and it can be made available in CD . Click Here ! |
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We are very much flattered and humbled by your feedback and testimonies. Your messages are the main reason for allowing us to stay in this business. With all humility we say thank you and rest assure that we are continuously improving. Without your support in our training there won’t be us. Read More ! |
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• Registration at this forum is done through administration only. Should you be interested to join send me an email and we will provide you with a user ID and password. Visit my discussion board and forum . .
• Share what you know. Come and join our RSA Maintenance Forum. Send me an email |
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• If your industry is interested to join and participate in any of our upcoming public training and workshop for this year 2012 you may send us an email or simply fill out the registration form provided on our schedule site. You may Click here to visit our schedule training for 2012 Schedule. |
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Our Reliability Newsletter will be provided once a month to our valued subscribers. It provides highlights as well as issues and lessons regarding our most common link which is all about improving the reliability of equipment. |
