Plant Services - November 2007 - (Page 70)

BOILER ROOM The power of reliability excellence Drive your lean, six sigma and TPM initiatives to their best outcome S ustainable business improvements come through orIntegrate lean, six sigma, and total productive maintenance ganizational ownership of standardized work prointo a single holistic process implemented vertically and horicesses coupled with the discipline to execute them. In zontally throughout your plant. For example, 5-S and 7-W apstriving to achieve improvements, many organizations turn ply to each functional area of the plant, not just the production to lean manufacturing, six sigma and total productive mainfunction. The foundation of change must be a thorough undertenance (TPM). They’re valid initiatives and proper implestanding of the limiting factors that restrict performance. Relimentation depends on having stable, repeatable operations. ability excellence includes an assessment process that accurately Realize that such operational stability is delivered through a identifies, quantifies and prioritizes the factors that must be corcombination of organizational and equipment reliability. rected to achieve and sustain desired performance levels. Core methods: Address each facet of reliability excellence to Organizational change management (hoshin kanri) is achieve reliability, low cost and profitability. If the primary process driver. These processes one element is sub-par, it jeopardizes the stability will have little, if any, sustainable benof anything that follows. Reliability requires sysefit without changing the work culture and Asset reliability, the way that each employee performs and tematic identification and elimination of waste as well as from processes while increasing responsiveness makes decisions. Management commitment to change. The 10 interrelated, perhaps concurand leadership are nurtured and developed an effective rent, core methods that can help implement a through the business reengineering training maintenance lean production system are, in sequential order: and the development process that continues function, are six sigma, hoshin kanri, kaizen, five S (5-S), throughout implementation. critical to lean. cellular manufacturing, just-in-time (JIT) Total employee involvement is encourproduction, kanban, seven wastes (7-W), aged throughout transformation. Evaluation single minute exchange of dies (SMED) and of existing work processes, development of total productive maintenance (TPM). new, more effective processes and the training The differences: The primary difference among these and for and implementation of these processes is done through other improvement processes is implementation logic and cross-functional focus teams comprised of stakeholders methods. Most applications of these processes are limited to within the organization. The entire reliability excellence a narrow focus on a single limiting factor. It might improve transformation is by the workforce, for the workforce. the focus area but, if not applied widely enough, will often While the objectives and methods of lean are valid and desirincrease cost of goods sold and reduce product throughput. able, the methods employed don’t address two critical success Six sigma iusually is implemented as a QA tool or to gain factors. First, the sole focus is on the production organization ISO certification. These implementations don’t consider orand excludes that asset reliability, as well as an effective mainganizational change management or the effect it will have on tenance function, are critical to lean. Second, lean assumes that critical issues, such as cost of goods sold, life-cycle cost, asset the processes used in day-to-day business (planning, managereliability and even environmental, health and safety. ment, operations, procurement and maintenance) are reliable. Few, if any, companies fully implement the entire lean manReliability excellence draws heavily on lean and six sigma methufacturing process. Instead, selected components are impleodologies, but also includes the missing pieces needed to achieve mented as quick-fix tools in one or more areas of production. a sustainable level of improvement and build the foundation for While these are good and needed methodologies, they won’t continuous improvement that solidifies the company’s chance provide the benefit that most plants need for survival. The critifor long-term survival. cal limitations of a narrow-focus application of select parts of the lean manufacturing process are change management and E-mail Contributing Editor R. Keith Mobley, CMRP, MBB, principal universal application of lean as a cohesive process. consultant at Life Cycle Engineering, at kmobley@lce.com. 70 www.PLANTSERVICES.com November 2007 http://www.plantservices.com/voices/boiler_room.html http://www.PLANTSERVICES.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Plant Services - November 2007

Plant Services - November 2007 Contents New Tools Letters Let Us Know Where to Put the Gas Up and Running How are you Fighting Crisis? What Works Why is the Best Practice Transfer so Hard? Who are you Going to Call? Chained to Power Mobile Mindset Making Money in the Lube Lab Grabbing a Moving Target Bagging the BTUs Keeping Mellow Preserving Health and Safety The Power of Reliability Excellence

Plant Services - November 2007

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