Plant Services - June 2008 - (Page 30)

MANAGEMENT Personnel and wastewater maintenance staﬀ. e training included best practices and procedures using new technology to increase productivity while improving skill sets for the next line of supervisors. “ e training was at our site, under our current functioning conditions and using our equipment,” says Senior Trainer Gloria Guerra. “Like any organization, resistance to change is a factor. With the tenacity of our training section and NTT’s qualiﬁed instructor, not only did a change in mind-set occur, but a high amount of learning took place.” By alternating from a classroom setting to the ﬁeld, the participants could quickly apply knowledge as it was gained. Participants were able to troubleshoot real-time problems from the ﬁeld; reproduce the issue, learn correct methods and rationale in the classroom – a safe environment – and take the experience back to the ﬁeld for application. “It was unbelievable to witness,” Guerra says. “Some supervisors started making changes even before the program was completed.” An internal ﬁnal exam indicated that knowledge parity was achieved between the younger and more seasoned personnel. Another task increasingly outsourced is maintenance. Don Johnson, vice president of marketing at Advanced Technology Services (www.advancedtech. com), says interest in outsourced factory maintenance and industrial parts and repairs has been growing despite the ﬂagging economy. In an ATS-commissioned Nielsen Research study this year, 100 U.S. senior manufacturing executives were asked if they would outsource maintenance to bolster their plant operations against recession, and 63% of RESET the respondents said yes. SUBMIT “Companies are examining what is core within their organizations,” Johnson says. “ eir business goal is to make products, not maintenance mechanics, and lacking suﬃcient maintenance competency can be costly.” Production downtime, according to the survey, costs the manufacturers an average of $21,200 per minute. When E-Z-Go Textron (www.ezgo.com) outsourced production maintenance to ATS, they realized 97% PM compliance, signiﬁcant reductions in downtime, increased output and more than $570,000 in Six Sigma savings. “With energy costs going up, demand is rising for energy audits on compressed air and motor systems,” says John Kronenwetter, director of national accounts for component distributor Kaman Industrial Technologies (www.kaman direct.com). “Additionally, plants concerned about sustainability and green manufacturing practices can as much as double the lives of their lubricants with the aid of our ﬂuid analysis and on-site ﬁ ltering services, creating savings on waste disposal, man hours and material costs.” Many plants can reduce costs by taking advantage of services that manage warranties and repairs of motors, drives, 30 Core competence? Many manufacturers view maintenance outsourcing as a means to hedge against a downturn in the economy, Advanced Technology Services found in a study conducted with Nielsen Research. This is opening up industrial maintenance as a separate business and career path for maintenance professionals. 4. Outsource appropriately circuit boards – even gearboxes. “We work with a number of our customer partners to track OEM warranties, capture service information and, where it makes sense, we’ll negotiate extended warranties for them,” Kronenwetter adds. Contractor organizations can oﬀer an alternate career path. ATS is experiencing 20% annual growth and plans to add 700 employees within the next 18 months. Too many organizations don’t. When Idcon (www. idcon.com) asked companies worldwide why planners don’t plan, about 1,000 responders said the leading reason was they lacked cooperation between operations and maintenance. Second, the planners weren’t given enough time to plan. ird, the companies lacked good technical databases. Christer Idhammar, president of Idcon, recommends developing a partnership organization to address the O&M gap. “Maintenance doesn’t sell a service – it sells equipment eﬃciency through service. Operations and maintenance RESET SUBMIT need to work as partners to properly prioritize tasks.” To solve the time factor, he says a good PM system can reduce reactive maintenance and breakdowns. As for the technical database, “It’s easier to keep this information up if it’s captured early, during the design and engineering stage.” Idhammer recommends using your best craftspeople as planners, provided they like to plan and are organized. “It’s a step up for most craftspeople, and it’s where we’ve seen the best success. We also suggest involving crafts in estimating job schedules, because they tend to ﬁnd this task interesting and challenging.” Schedule eﬃciencies are being realized with lean shutdown management. “To be lean, you need to ask which J 5. Plan and schedule .PLANTSERVICES. http://www.advancedtech.com http://www.advancedtech.com http://www.idcon.com http://www.idcon.com http://www.ezgo.com http://www.kamandirect.com http://www.kamandirect.com http://www.PLANTSERVICES.com

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Plant Services - June 2008

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