Maintworld 3/2018

asset management
If you design a piece of equipment poorly,
BUild it cheaply, and install it hastily, you are not going
to have a world class asset on your hands.
Earlier we had the bright idea to prepare
the site with a vibration isolation pad,
but we ran out of money. And, the cooling
tower is a little under-sized, but it
is bound to work. We had two weeks
to install this unit, but the plant manager
decided to run six days into that.
Now we have eight days (one of those is
Thanksgiving).
For all our trouble, I—install falls
from 99 percent to 87 percent. I refer to
these values as the EDE rating or Equipment
Design Excellence rating.
Our calculation now stands at: .85
x .82 x .87 = 60.6 percent (a 60 percent
drop). Where did it all go wrong?
I want to deviate slightly from this
conversation to touch on the idea of running
at a high OEE (Overall Equipment
Effectiveness). Some consider 85 percent
to be the world-class number, but I
have also heard many arguments against
there even being a high-level metric. Regardless,
I’d like to point out that it might
be near impossible to hit a consistently
high OEE value with a machine that nets
a 60.6 percent potential for reliability the
minute you start it up in your plant. The
greater point is the machine was never
designed, built, and installed to hit an attractive
OEE. Throw all the money you
want or can at it, and it will be the nightmare
we know it is.
Much of this can be improved, and
indeed guarded against any decrease, by
having set processes and procedures for
capital projects and major repair projects
and sticking to those processes.
Also, we can give ourselves a better
chance of success by having set component
standards that we insist on. This
helps not only the equipment design
excellence effort, but the storeroom and
the maintenance group in delivering
maintainability. This process, as noted
earlier, is defined as parts standardization
and is one of thirty-two world-class
storeroom processes. Like most of the
storeroom processes, however, a great
deal of success is predicated on the
adherence and discipline of the maintenance
and engineering departments.
Have you ever had an engineer design
the ‘wrong’ part on a machine? That was
meant to be rhetorical.
There is a significant difference in
what it will cost and how many joules of
human energy will be needed to maintain
an asset that comes at us with a 97
percent EDE rating versus a 60.6 percent
EDE; it is 60 percent!
A note on where the numbers come
from. How do you determine if the design
is an 85 percent or a 90 percent?
This is a fairly open scoring system, but
one that does need to have some rules
around it. In fact, as part of the capital
and major repair process development, I
would suggest that the group engaged in
developing the processes further develop
an unambiguous scoring system that can
be used on all projects. The scale will
not change. It is carved in stone. This is
a system that is particular to you, your
organization, and your company.
Let us run a very quick exercise to
demonstrate the power of this number.
Give this exercise a try.
Write down the last capital project
or major modification conducted in
your facility:
On a scale from 0 percent to 100 percent,
give a value to each of the three
following categories:
Design:
Build:
Install:
Overall D x B x I =
Chances are, if the DBI number is 80 percent, it has been operating
fairly well, and not much of a burden. A
number that is in-between 60 percent
and 80 percent is common territory and
honestly the value we are likely to calculate
for the equipment in our facilities.
These ‘in-between’ assets will run fairly
well by our better operators. Lesser
skilled operators, or those with poor
attitudes will seem to have more issues
with these machines.
If you were conducting a post project
review, of the project you just evaluated,
what suggestions would you make to arrive
at a higher D x B x I value?
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