I first became interested in manufacturing reliability nearly twenty years ago working as a maintenance mechanic who had a personal interest in improving the reliability of individual assets by searching through our maintenance history for areas where we were spending the most time and money in regard to emergency/demand work orders. Using the history we had in our database we used the 80/20 approach to identify the 20% of our assets where we spent nearly 80% of our maintenance budget. Once we identified a system or asset to work on we would use a cause-map or root cause analysis to identify the potential causes of our equipment failures, understanding these causes we would then look to identify potential redesigns to eliminate or reduce the frequency of equipment failures. [Read more…]

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The Coach: The Maintenance Supervisor

The Roles & Responsibilities of the Maintenance Supervisor

The Maintenance Supervisor is known as the coach of the maintenance department. But what if they are pre-occupied with other tasks and unable to coach the technicians? It has the potential to increase overtime, increase rework and increase Mean Time to Repair. That is why this series continues with the Maintenance Supervisor. With the Supervisor clear on their roles and responsibilities, the technicians get the coaching they need to succeed. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini 4 Comments

Equipment and Plant Layout for Improved Maintenance

7 Consideration for Equipment and Plant Layout for Improved Maintenance

Equipment reliability studies show that the likelihood of failure increases the more often machinery is disturbed. The chance of something being done wrong rises every time an item of plant is worked on. Nothing may go wrong the first time or the second time but with each additional disruption there is an increasing possibility that an error will be made.

Simple, fast and uncomplicated access to individual items of plant and equipment means higher plant availability and longer time between failures. [Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette 4 Comments

10 Signs of Not Understanding Equipment Reliability

10 Sure Signs Your Company Just Doesn’t Understand Equipment Reliability!

In honor of the fast approaching holiday season, let’s start the week off with a laugh or two, I have listed some of the sure-fire signs that your company may not be ready for this reliability stuff. I have to say that in my first 5 years working as a consultant, I wasn’t prepared for some of the things folks would tell me while working on site, and there were times I actually laughed when I should have just bitten my tongue. I once asked a manager if their equipment was reliable; he pondered the question a minute and replied, “It is some of the time.”

Tell me: how do you not laugh when someone says that with a straight face? [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic 2 Comments

The Driver of Wrench Time: The Maintenance Planner / Scheduler

The Roles & Responsibilities of the Maintenance Planner / Scheduler

The Maintenance Planner / Scheduler is known as the coordinator of the maintenance department. But what if they are unsure of the priorities of the department or business? It has the potential to increase overtime, planned downtime and increase costs. That is why this series continues with the Maintenance Planner / Scheduler. With the Planner / Scheduler clear on their roles and responsibilities, the technicians can deliver the right amount of care. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini 7 Comments

How Fluid Flows in Pipes

The Basics on How Fluid Flows in Pipes

A fluid is either a liquid or a gas. In industry, they are piped from storage to the point of use. Correct design and installation of the piping system minimises pressure loss and improves the behaviour of equipment and processes.

This article briefly explains what happens to fluids flowing through pipes. [Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette Leave a Comment

The Top 5 Signs of A Reliable Plant

Having visited hundreds of manufacturing plants in the last 15 years, someone recently asked me if there were any traits the most reliable plants all had in common. I have listed below the top 5 signs of a reliable plant. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic 1 Comment

The Leader of Maintenance Excellence: The Maintenance Manager

The maintenance manager is known as the leader of the maintenance department. But what if they are unclear on where they are going or need to do? It has the potential to derail the entire department. That is why this series is going to start with the maintenance manager. Once they are clear, the rest of the team can follow.

If you followed the steps in first post of the series, you would be ready to review the roles & responsibilities across the department. This post takes the next step of breaking down the individual role of the maintenance manager to help you on that journey. [Read more…]

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Capacitance Levels Probes

Capacitance level probes consist of a long rod or cable that protrude into a vessel and its contents. The instrument sets up an electric field between the probe and the tank wall using the contents of the tank as a dielectric (a nonconductor that allows an electric field to exist within itself). If the tank is non-metal, such as plastic or brick lined, two parallel rods are mounted in the level probe or a metal strip can be run on the outside of the tank. The electric field is set-up between the two probes or the probe and the metal strip. Figure 1 shows a simplified layout for a capacitance level probe. [Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette 1 Comment

Is Your Company’s Reputation Important?

5 Tips on How To Maintain Reputation & Integrity

My father taught me at a young age that your name is everything and if you want to be successful in life you have to ensure that when someone hears your name in conversation or reads your name in print that the first thing they think is positive.

The world hasn’t changed from the time he told me that over 40 years ago, in fact today it’s even more critical because we now have the internet and social media.

Good news travels fast.

Bad news travels 100 times faster!

Understanding this, here are 5 tips on what your company can do to build and maintain its reputation and integrity. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic 1 Comment

STOP! Break the Reactive Cycle with Roles & Responsibilities

The key to driving performance to new heights is Roles & Responsibilities.

Play drawing — Image from opensource.com

Your planner is putting together a scheduler to 8:00pm on a Friday night for Saturday morning. Your storeroom doesn’t have the parts you need and you maintenance supervisor is running back and forth. On top of this, you are unable to meet your maintenance goals, preventing the orgainzation from achieving its goals.

Depending on your organization, you may walk into this type of chaos every morning, and those that don’t, chances are you did at some point.

So what seperates the organizations that have this choas and those that don’t? Clear Roles & Responsibilities is what seperates these two types of orgainzations. This is the first of a series of 6 posts on the topic of Roles & Responsibilities. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Use Words Instead of Code Numbers

in your CMMS System

A work order full of code numbers confuses people. When work order type (breakdown, corrective, modification, etc) is described as Work Order Type ‘04’ you can guarantee that no one knows what ‘04’ is without looking it up on a list.

If a Trade Type is a ‘02’ and it means a fitter, you can be sure that a lot of work order requests from operators will be wrong and they will take the planner’s time to correct. Even more confusing is when the Work Order Type and the Trade Type are both an ‘04’! [Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette Leave a Comment

The Recipe for RCM Success!

RCM Implementations don’t fail, believe me if you understand what your getting into upfront, use a proven process to select your asset for analysis AND you commit the resources, your implementation will be a huge success.

Looking back 20 years I can clearly remember performing my first RCM analysis and the ordeal that followed as we struggled to:

a) See the value in the analysis we had just completed (Someone told us that RCM should be performed on every piece of equipment at our plant so we selected one of our most common assets.

b) Free up the resources necessary to implement the tasks that came out of the analysis. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

Run to Failure is a Viable Option

How Allowing Equipment to Fail, Will Improve the Uptime in your Facility.

Often times the maintenance team is focused on preventing failures in the facility. All failures need to be addressed and no failures are acceptable. This mindset may be holding back the uptime in your facility. How is this? After all, if we strive to prevent all failures shouldn’t uptime improve?

Most organizations do not have the resources to prevent every single failure and as such, resources are often pulled from failure to failure. When the organization focuses on the consequences of the failure, instead of the failure itself, it can free up the resources to improve reliability. Once the consequences are understood, running equipment to failure becomes an option. This allows the team to focus on preventing the failures that make a difference to the business. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini 1 Comment