High Precision Maintenance - 10 steps to reliable precision maintenance
While many factors contribute to lost opportunities for today’s manufacturers, equipment failure and breakdowns continue to be near the top of the list. Real data from 200 facilities show that maintenance induced defects overwhelmingly contribute to stalled improvement efforts to gain back control. Much of the data indicates roughly 25% are common assembly errors, 25% are from imbalance, 25% are common lubrication mistakes and 25% are from poor alignment, inadequate alignment specs and a general lack of leadership expectation and follow-up. The plain truth is most crafts people entrusted to maintain millions of dollars of production equipment have never been taught the necessary precision skills and how to apply them correctly. As the saying goes ‘Do it Once, Do it Right! To further complicate the issue, most managers and supervisors do not understand nor set and enforce the necessary standards for maintaining rotating equipment in a precise manner.
Programma
10 Steps to Precision Maintenance Reliability Success:
- Trends and Critical Skills Shortage
- The Birth of Precision Maintenance
- Precision Maintenance Skills Assessment
- Senior Management Sponsorship and Leadership
- Direction: Processes, Communication and Standards
- Training Implementation
- Application of Skills
- Measuring Results – KPI’s
- Progress Review and Mentorship
- Achieving Sustainability
This tailored workshop will provide an overview of these basic steps and share tangible results when adding a precision maintenance approach for reliability. Utilizing real operating simulators to show actual results that has been achieved.
1. Trends and Critical Skills Shortage
As stated in many research reports, over 40% of employers say they cannot find the skilled workers they need. Exacerbating this even more is that manufacturers expect to lose thousands of experience workers due to retirement within the baby boom generation. Specific roles needed to fill this talent shortage are most acutely in skilled maintenance, such as mechanics and technicians. Gaining a better understanding of the precision skills gap will help organizations to effectively address it.
2. The Birth of Precision Maintenance
The first evidence of precision maintenance skills and techniques were pioneered at NASA by Dr. Werner van Braun and his team of genuine rocket scientists in the 1960’s. Through hours of testing, they discovered that for every 20% vibration is decreased, the life of the bearing is doubled. Further reductions produce exponential increases in bearing life and other expensive components that usually get damaged during bearing failure. Additionally, unscheduled downtime is eliminated and there is a drastic reduction in maintenance costs.
3. Precision Maintenance Skills Assessment
The skills gap is the difference between the skills required to perform a specified job and the actual skills that employees possess. Conducting a skills assessment provides an objective measurement of a craft, for example a mechanic’s knowledge and understanding of precision maintenance skills, how they are applied and the strategic value they can mean to the company’s improvement initiatives.
4. Senior Management Sponsorship and Leadership
Achieving precision maintenance implementation, success and sustainability requires the full sponsorship and advocacy of senior leadership, as well as supervisory and manager roles. There should be a clear focus on setting written expectations for mechanics, engineers, planners, and all contributing roles, including operating in accordance with improvement objectives.
5. Direction, Processes, Communication and Standards
Maintenance management and all contributing roles must understand how they each contribute to moving this improvement work forward, including job plans, field documentation, planning and scheduling precision work and setting the expectation. The battle cry is: Do not Just Fix It, Improve IT.
6. Training Implementation
One of the key learning points is how the results of the Precision Maintenance Skills Assessment (step 3) can be utilized to build a skills development training plan in which participants could learn the principles of defect elimination and how they are achieved by the application of precision skills and methods. Participants perform hands-on, step-by-step exercises on simulators that replicate real-world, operating equipment. They learn precision skills, eliminate defects, demonstrate ability, and achieve precision maintenance.
7. Application of Skills
With their new skills, knowledge, tools and improvement work orders, mechanics can immediately begin to transform poor, high risk of failure machines into improved, reliable machines that are operating as intended with increased resistance to failure.
8. Measuring Results – KPI’s
The most effective way to measure results of implementing precision maintenance standards is with key performance indicators (KPI’s). Some examples are:
- Number of improvement work orders completed monthly
- Reduced vibration levels
- Increased MTBF’s
- Reduced energy consumption
9. Progress Review and Mentorship
Conducting a progress review three to six months from the implementation can provide maintenance management with valuable continuous improvement recommendations because it shows where success is being achieved and validates that skills are being applied. Supervisors should establish a process of field monitoring to assist the mechanic’s team with the necessary recommendations to move improvement forward efficiently and effectively.
10. Achieving Sustainability
All the previous steps are proven best practices and essential in achieving a standardized reliability precision maintenance process. As the culture begins to change in the precise direction you seek, the written procedures and standards will become a solid foundation and mechanics will expect to have good written procedures, specifications, and job details. Those that have remaining diligent to precision maintenance work standards are no longer deploying their mechanic’s teams to relentless, failure-based work. Now, their focus is on improvement-based work. It is a paradigm shift in strategy, principles, and tactics. What does your organization need to do to be part of the change to Precision Maintenance Reliability?
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