Maintworld Magazine 3/2021

RELIABILITY
in this area is the real issue holding back
performance. Without understanding these
root causes how will you know if reliability
will succeed in the culture of this area?
If you don’t dive into these problem areas,
like we mentioned in the planning section
above, and understand the real reasons
for underperformance then these very issues
could be the reason your maintenance
improvement initiative fails in the future.
When I suggest starting early with root
cause analysis, I am not suggesting you train
everyone in the plant, but I do believe you
need a few great facilitators to support you
early on in your initiative. They will serve
you well and lower your stress as you begin
the change initiative.
Building a real planning and
scheduling organization
And finally, without maintenance planning,
your reliability improvement is
doomed. That may seem like hyperbole
maybe, but my observations suggest
that it is not. I have seen some great
maintenance improvement initiatives
stall out because of this element. It is
that important. It is the one point in the
process where everything flows and if it
is not effective, it reduces all the results
associated with it. It is a challenging
element that takes a lot of focus, desire,
and grit to succeed. I equate it to a leg
workout at the gym, everybody knows
that they need to do it but very few people
want to or enjoy doing it. Regardless,
planning has to be done just like your
leg day or you will be weak at your very
foundation.
Good planning improves
safety, efficiency, and
effectiveness
So, what is good planning? It is identifying
the work that needs to be done
and building a job plan that improves
safety, efficiency, and effectiveness for
the executing party. It is building a job
plan library where you can save, and
reuse job plans so that more of the work
that is executed is done with a plan and
with precision. It is creating job kits that
contain all the parts required to perform
the repair.
IMPLEMENTATION TEAMS WILL
LOOK TO THE LEADERS FOR THIS
AND IF THEY DON’T SEE IT THEN
THEY WILL START TO WANDER
IN THE WRONG DIRECTIONS.
Why should we plan? It reduces the
introduction of defects during maintenance
repairs, while also reducing the
time required to complete the work.
This affects the amount of downtime required
and the amount of maintenance
craft hours required for the job. Many
companies are struggling to find skilled
maintenance technicians to meet the
needs of the site. Planning can reduce
the number of technicians required and
provide the precision maintenance information
they need to excel beyond their
skill level.
It is not as simple as just creating the job
plan of course, you have to have the supervision
and change management in place
to require the use of the job plans as well.
The supervisors must drive continuous
improvement by getting feedback from the
technicians to the planners to refine the job
plans over time and of course the planners
must be expected to edit the job plans and
carefully store them in the job plan library
until they can be used again.
If this element is done correctly though
it will be a game changer for the organization.
The use of these planned jobs can
reduce your cost to execute the work by five
to seven times. That will allow you to do
more with the resources you have allowing
for greater success for the maintenance improvement
strategy.
So, has your organization embedded all
five of these foundational pieces into your
reliability improvement strategy? What
are you missing? What issues can you see
that could be connected to those missing
elements? How can you incorporate them
into your strategy moving forward? As you
are thinking about making changes to your
current strategy don’t forget element one:
change management and the communication
of the change to the strategy. If you
would like to discuss your specific situation,
do not hesitate to reach out and we can talk
through your specific challenges and refine
your master plan for your success with reliability
and maintenance improvement and
at the higher level the generation of a more
profitable site and company.
D
34 maintworld 3/2021