James Reyes-Picknell — Active Contributor

Business processes are often talked about, yet not well understood. The big problem with them is that too few people know what the whole process actually should be. Whenever you are following a set of steps to achieve some goal you are following a process. Sometimes various people follow different steps to achieve the same goal. You rely on processes in order to deliver results.  If they are ill-conceived or inefficient, then things move slowly and results are more expensive to obtain than they need to be. Well designed, efficient, and consistent processes that integrate with other related business processes keep things running smoothly, costs down, and help to keep people motivated.

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Maintenance and Reliability improvement are keys to Operational Excellence – without them, you’ll suffer high costs and reduced outputs. This interview by Ryan Chan of UpKeep gives insight into what Uptime is, how it works towards Maintenance and Reliability improvement. The value it can deliver is high, how it does it is straight-forward, and leaders are needed to make it happen.

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Emerging stronger from crisis – that’s our current challenge. We know we can do it. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Our businesses can emerge stronger too, but that won’t happen without leadership and choice.

Capital asset-intensive industries that have had a chance to pause have been wise if they used the opportunity to catch up on deferred maintenance and review their proactive maintenance programs for effectiveness. They will emerge stronger. Better maintained equipment will run better, longer, and last longer, producing more and doing so with lower levels of risk.

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There’s an old saying that, “two heads are better than one”.  Teamwork has been proven time and again to produce superior results.  It is the basis for many successful methods like RCM-R, PMR/O, RCFA, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and various quality improvement programs like Six Sigma. The various methods that help us while Choosing Excellence depend on a foundation of teamwork. Beyond facilitated teamwork, self-organized teams are even more effective. 

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You can wait for something to break, then fix it, or you can be proactive and manage the failure before it causes you problems. Being proactive is all about managing failures and their consequences before they occur. The failure itself, in some cases, is unavoidable, but how you manage consequences is entirely within your control.

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Computerized data gathering and information management systems are indispensable tools for business. Just remember the last power failure you experienced and you’ll understand. Technology continues to develop and become more complex. The array of available business applications is astounding and more are added daily.

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Most of us wouldn’t argue that if you can measure it, you can improve it. Performance measures do indeed drive results, both good and bad. Knowing where you are now and what you want to achieve by some point in the future do help you to outline your path towards your objective. Once you know your path, you then need a way to make sure you are still on it. And once you’ve past way-points, you also need to know that what you’ve achieved so far, continues to be sustained. 

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Materials management for maintenance purposes is often a big mess. When I visit operations (doesn’t matter what industry) I often hear complaints from maintainers that they cannot get the parts they need, when they need them. Sometimes, their supply chain (warehouse, inventory, and purchasing management) are indeed a mess, but more often than not maintenance planning is also a mess, and there is usually (almost always) a lack of integration between planning and supply chain.

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Like the human body, our plant and mobile equipment will break down if it’s not looked after. If we exercise and push ourselves harder, we gain strength. Unlike our biological bodies that can self-repair, our physical plants and mobile equipment do NOT strengthen if we overload them.  Yes, they will tolerate some abuse but not for long. Machinery, unlike biological organisms, can not recover from damage on its own. It needs a bit of basic care. Basic care is all about taking care of our physical assets so they continue to do what we need them to do. Take care of their fluids (e.g.: oils, coolants), keep them from running hot (e.g.: clean heat transfer surfaces like cooling fins), and keep them free of contaminants that damage their insides (e.g.: keep moisture and dirt out). In the “Uptime Pyramid of Excellence,” the pinnacle is “Choosing Excellence”. That choice implies an active application of all of the model’s components. It’s a journey, not a destination.

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There are two things you must do in a successful maintenance program: be good at doing your work, and only do the right work. Both are needed to deliver asset reliability – the cornerstone of sustainable, safe and quality production levels. In chasing reliability many turn to programs for defining the right work, yet many of those efforts will fail. Why? Poor or ineffective planning. The greatest benefits come from defining the right maintenance program using RCM and then implementing with quality work and on schedule.

Failure of reliability improvement programs can be from poor execution of RCM, but more often it is the result of something more basic. They are stuck in a culture of unreliability. [Read more…]

Uptime Insights – 3 – Work Management

Reliability depends on the right maintenance being done the right way, and at the right times. At the core of making that happen is the work management process. It is a six step process that’s fairly simple, but often not followed very well.  Without, workforce deployment becomes reactive to emergencies and maintenance costs are high.  Work done in those reactive situations is anywhere from 1.5 to 3 times as expensive as work that is fully planned and executed on schedule.  In some industries the cost of emergency work is even higher.  [Read more…]

All organizations are made up of individuals. Invariably they reflect each other – the organization reflects the choices of its people, and vice versa. For any organization to thrive and achieve, so too must its people. Without them you’re dead. [Read more…]

Reliable operations are far less expensive to maintain and operate and they produce more consistently. Yet most industrial operations are far from achieving high reliability. Getting there will require effort and that effort goes well beyond the maintenance department alone. They will need to change from reactive, break it then fix it thinking and un-informed cost-cutting measures that undermine reliability. They will need leadership, not management. Leadership is all about making change and taking your organization in new directions.  It will be disruptive, or it won’t be much of a change. Leaders are the ones who rock the boat, managers will keep it stable.  In choosing excellence you’ll be choosing a path of constant change and improvement. Leadership is needed – it’s about strategy, effective execution, and it’s about your people – without whom you will accomplish very little.  If you want excellence, it begins with leadership. [Read more…]

Entropy and economics, like entropy and maintenance, are related. In part 1 there is a simple 3 legged stool model: design, maintenance, and operations being its 3 legs. It can deliver high performance at low cost and risk – i.e.: high productivity. It is important to keep the legs balanced and indeed intact! Doing so requires a bit of investment. In thermodynamic terms, we need to put some energy into the system to keep the entropy from growing. That energy is an investment in maintenance and the payoff comes in the form of steady, predictable revenues with a high margin for profit. Those words should be music to accountants’ ears. [Read more…]

Entropy fundamentals for more Uptime can help us understand maintenance and reliability a little bit better. Reliability requires good execution of the right maintenance (energy), otherwise we will see reactive maintenance (entropy and chaos) increase. Engineers are familiar with the concept of “entropy” and the laws of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of an isolated system always increases over time. It can remain constant in ideal cases where the system is at a steady-state or undergoing a reversible process. So what does that mean for us in the world of asset management and maintenance? [Read more…]