RSA Reliability and Maintenance Consultancy Firm
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Issue No. 47 -  March 2011
Text Box: Top 10 Problems Experienced on Preventive Maintenance - Revisited

     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. 

    

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Maintenance must understand that Infant Mortality failures are introduce during overhauls when the equipment is not properly put back together. Overhauls and replacement should be done by skilled craftspeople with the right tools.  If you have the slightest doubt in putting the equipment back again in one piece, think twice before dismantling it . . .
Text Box: By Rolly Angeles Last May 2008, I have written this newsletter based on a survey conducted with a few people from maintenance. 15 people responded to this survey to be exact. Instructions were to select at least three problems from the list that they think that they experience most on Preventive Maintenance. Survey conducted was random and the results however did not established some trend after all. I continued this survey on some of my courses and I think at this point of writing, we can now see a trend as to what the real problems we face right now on Preventive Maintenance and I would like to share with the readers the result of that survey. To begin with let me again lists the Top 10 problems on Preventive Maintenance with a brief explanation on what the problem is all about. 1) Add on PM Checklists Syndrome When your equipment was new and your vendors/contractors had completed commissioning your equipment on the plant, they left you with some activities on maintenance that needs to be performed regularly from time to time on the equipment. These activities includes some basic inspection, parts replacements, periodic or scheduled overhauls that needs to be done on a scheduled and timely fashion. But even if you comply religiously on these activities, unexpected and unplanned breakdowns happen all the time and when the boss attention was finally caught down by these breakdowns, his only question to you is, Son, is this included in your Preventive Maintenance activities? And when you replied “NO”, then the Boss make sure that you add them up to your unending list of PM activities. In short, when starting out with your maintenance activities when the machine was newly commissioned, there were just around 15 activities to be done but as time passed by more and more activities had been added up and today, there are more than 100 activities added and the list never seems to stop. The lamest excuse of them all is when a breakdown occurs add this to your PM activities. 2) Introduction of Infant Mortality Failures Infant Mortality Failures are failures that simply occurs right after a major maintenance intervention on the equipment. Others refer this to commissioning failures, starting-up failures and so on. Mostly this problem is experienced right after a maintenance intervention or Preventive Maintenance performed on the equipment or asset. Here are some excerpt from books by different authors for your reflection. It is also borne out by the machine operator who says that “every time maintenance works on it over the weekend, it takes up to Wednesday to get it going again. From page 43 of RCMII by John Moubray In summary, we should be very careful about selecting overhaul PM tasks because our equipment may not have an age-reliability pattern that justify such tasks. In addition, due to human errors, overhauls are likely to cause more problems than they prevent if aging regions are not present. From page 61, RCM – Gateway to World Class Maintenance by Anthony Smith One of the underlying assumptions of maintenance theory has always been that there is a fundamental cause and effect relationship between scheduled maintenance and operating reliability. This assumption was based on the intuitive belief that because mechanical parts wear out, the reliability of any equipment is directly related to its operating age. It therefore followed that the more frequently equipment was overhauled, the better protected it was against the likelihood of failure. Over the years, however, it was found that many types of failures could not be prevented no matter how intensive the maintenance activities. From the Original Manuscript Document by Stanley Nowlan and Howard Heap, Chapter 1, page 2 They began to understand that preserving critical equipment functions rather than randomly and arbitrarily tearing an entire aircraft apart was the key to reliability. They also found out that indiscriminately overhauling equipment actually had a reverse negative effect on reliability because the probability of failure of the newly replaced equipment increased due to premature failures and infant mortality. From page 9 to 10, Reliability-Centered Maintenance Implementation Made Simple by Neil Bloom In Tagalog: Sira na naman ba? OO, kasi bagong PM, Ginalaw pa kasi eh, malamang kung hindi ginalaw yan, maayos ang takbo nitong makina ngayon. Translated in English: Out of order again? No wonder they PM it. Maybe if the PM group did not touch this equipment, I’m pretty sure this will still be running smoothly! From page 115 on World Class Maintenance Management - The 12 Disciplines by Rolly Angeles 3) Replacement of Parts Just to Conform to PM Specs Preventive Maintenance utilizes the concept of JIC, JIT means just in time, hence, JIC simply means “Just in Case”. Most of the sentiments of maintenance people is that when a machine is open or being overhauled, that is the only time they have on this world to replace the parts they think is on the verge of failing and that needs to replaced because their thinking is that if this part fails and the boss question you if you replaced this part last outage and you answer no, then you are in a lot of trouble. Maintenance mostly assumed that the parts they replaced are nearing its rupture but most of the time the parts they replaced are still in working and good condition. This is partly what makes our maintenance costly, because most of the assumptions made are not right in the first place. When a part is still in working condition, then it should remain in service in the first place. 4) The Case of Random Failures Random Failures are failures that occur on any given period. It simply means that the probability that an item will fail in any one period is the same as it is in any other period. In short, the part eventually have no life and can fail at any given time. One characteristic of random failure is that a wear out age is not identifiable and that the failure can occur at any given time or period. When failures that are occurring is random in nature, this is when Preventive Maintenance is at its weakest point. In simple terms PM is not a recommended option and other tasks to use will either be a Run to Fail only when the consequences of failure is low, Condition-Based Maintenance or Modification. Samples of random failures includes electronic boards and parts, bulbs, ball-bearings, seals, hydraulics etc.,. Most industries think that Preventive Maintenance can address random failures by doing some form of maintenance activities on them, such as regular replacement and overhauls. Doing these activities will just induce more infant mortality failures. 5) Ageing workforce - nearing retirement When good maintenance people retires or simply said when the industry retire these people, most of the time, their experience goes with them. Industry will now work on hiring newly fresh graduate people with no experience on the asset whatsoever because they will be paid much less in terms of pay and benefits. And because the experience of these people where not captured nor documented, people tend to experiment on how to repair the failure and the cycle goes on for generations. These older people have experience most of the failures on the equipment since they have stayed with the plant long enough to witnessed the failures and most of the time industries do little or nothing to document on how they repair or troubleshoot the failures. 6) Lack of training on the maintenance function Many say that the people are the companies greatest asset. I totally disagree with this statement because the correct way of stating this is that the right people are the companies greatest asset, the wrong people are simply called liabilities. And we can only have the right people in maintenance if they have the right skills and knowledge to perform their jobs right and training will the foundation and backbone on any cultural change or initiative because this is where we acquire knowledge. But sad to note that when cost reduction is the name of the game industry play, then the number one department to be affected is their training. In my small firm, I often tell people that maintenance is not only a verb (action word) but maintenance is also a noun. Meaning maintenance are people in the first place. When we invest on the people then these people will do the right thing in their work. But sad to say, that maintenance is always busy caught up on repairing and troubleshooting their assets and equipment. I am also saddened to hear that when I conduct in-house training on their plants, many say that this is the first taste of training they have ever had on maintenance and these people have stayed with the plant for more that 15 to 20 years. 7) Still Reactive and lot of corrective maintenance even with a sound PM Program When I ask maintenance people from different industries if they are satisfied with their current Preventive Maintenance activities, almost all will say “NO”. Despite their most noble efforts they do and compliance with every single piece of PM activity listed, breakdowns and failures still happen. Every industry have their own way of doing Preventive Maintenance, yet most of them are not satisfied with the outcome of their PM. First, industries must understand that Preventive Maintenance include risks because there is always an assumption that everything dismantled will be put back in place in the first place. Hence, despite the best efforts and structure on Preventive Maintenance failures are still inevitable and will not be captured solely by doing PM. Zeroing out all breakdowns is like catching a lighting with a Polaroid Camera and why used a polariod camera if you can capture the lighting with a digital camera ? And why wont Preventive Maintenance capture all failures? Because typically only around 20% of component failures will wear out or are directly related to the age of the equipment, and around 80% or all failures will fit the random and infant mortality failures. And when the failure is random in nature then there is no amount of PM that can address this issue. 8) Frequent reorganization in the plant When an organization is dynamic, so are the people. People are transferred from one department to another in the plant as a result of a direct order from the Top. I have seen projects and ongoing improvements and modifications abandoned because the person had been transferred. When a new boss heads your department, a new system takes place and the culture also changes but the validity of that system only last when the boss is still around the corner, when the boss is once again transferred, a new system takes place because this is what the new boss wants. No disrespect mostly to those who are affected but when maintenance reports to operations people then your plant have a big problem most especially the person you report to is a non-technical person since his frame of mind is focused only on one thing and only one thing. “OUTPUT”. 9) Lack or poor documentation in PM Sometimes documentation in PM is not only lacking but is also faked. If you have around ten people from maintenance in your department handling more than a couple of 100 machines, then you have a lot of firefighting and troubleshooting going around then. In this case maintaining have simple no time documenting every single event that is happening on around him. What is important in PM documentation is documenting what is relevant and not. Maintenance make decisions based from these documents and if these documents are flawed, half-baked or faked in the first place then our decision on PM will be jeopardize and at times there will be repercussions. Documentation is important, hence let us do this not because we will be audited at times but let us do this for the right reasons. 10) PM is waived - Operations wont give equipment for PM to cope with production When the equipment is subject for a maintenance intervention or scheduled PM in short, operations often times deferred or waived the equipment because output is always the top priority and supersede them all. When the demand for your product is high or there are months where production is at its peak, then maintenance will find it very difficult to get the equipment for a scheduled PM activity. As a result, more unexpected failures occur and feud between operations and maintenance is high. Maintenance always ending up on the loosing end because operations decision always prevail. Operations will give the equipment to maintenance only when they want it to. There you have it, the top 10 problems industry faced on doing Preventive Maintenance with a brief explanation on each of the problem. And the result of the survey is tabulated below as follows : Text Box:

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Text Box: Change answers why industries cannot remain the same in the future . . . . .

Therefore, the Top 3 problems based on the survey on PM is;

• 1st - PM is waived by Operations

• 2nd - Lack of training for the maintenance function

• 3rd - Lack or poor documentation on PM

 

I am inclined to think that waiving PM is more of a solution rather than a problem.  Let me explain this by saying that if the reason for waiving PM is to minimize infant mortality failures experienced on the equipment, then this is the definitely the right thing to do.  But on the contrary, if waiving PM is done in order to give way to production and output then this is where we state this as a problem. 

 

Well I do hope that your sentiments in maintenance coincides with our survey on PM.  We shall update you once again on this survey perhaps in the next 3 years. 

 

 

 

 
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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.

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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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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.
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