Up Time Magazine- April/May 2008 - (Page 27) 8/ 05 9/ 05 10 /0 5 11 /0 5 12 /0 5 1/ 06 2/ 06 3/ 06 4/ 06 5/ 06 6/ 06 7/ 06 8/ 06 Management Support - Management support has to be stated up front and be visible. But this does not mean that there needs to be frequent hand-holding. It simply means that everyone understands that if an impasse is reached, management is open and willing to getting the issue(s) resolved. Constant intervention by management diminishes the process of employees taking ownership of the changes. But management must be committed to providing the resources necessary to make the implementation successful. Don’t Be Afraid to Alter Course - This means that there are many paths to the desired results, and the initial path taken may not be the best. Sometimes you don’t realize this until you are part way along. Learn from what you’ve done, and do not be afraid to take a different course if it provides a more effective way to reach your maintenance and reliability goals. No one methodology will work at every company. The process of improvement at Lone Star Steel is ongoing. Has it been easy? No. Will it ever be easy? No, but it will get better as time goes on. We began the transition in mid 2005 as a reactive based maintenance organization. At that time, the number of emergency (reactive) work orders entered into TabWare® was two to three times the number of preventive (proactive) work orders entered. After 11 months of diligent work, the number of work orders entered that prevented failures and breakdowns exceeded the number of work orders entered to repair failures. This trend is shown by the chart in Figure 3. This, combined with our use of predictive tools, allowed us to officially claim being proactive in comparison to our previous culture and history. In the months since that historic occurrence, we have continued to widen the gap between proactive and reactive work order volumes. Hopefully, in the near future, we will begin the next challenge: to go from being www.uptimemagazine.com Figure 3: Volume of Work Orders Entered by Month From Inception of CMMS a predominantly time based preventive maintenance culture to being a heavily predictive maintenance organization. Editor’s Note: Lone Star Steel was sold to US Steel on March 29, 2007. At the time of writing this article, Allen Strickland was the lead Reliability Engineer for Lone Star Steel Company. He has an electrical engineering degree from Texas A&M University. He has his CMRP certification and is a Level II Infrared Thermographer. He has managed engineering departments, operating departments and maintenance groups. Allen and his wife Tina recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. 9/ 06 10 /0 6 11 /0 6 12 /0 6 tion is being done, what the scope of the implementation will be and what the changes in the organizational structure will be before the implementation begins. Make sure they understand the benefits of the implementation and how it can make their job easier, put more profit to the bottom line, etc. One universal truth is that each person is most interested in how their own daily tasks will be affected. We held pre-rollout meetings with all of our maintenance groups describing the upcoming transition and listing the benefits that would be achieved. Most people will not ask questions in a group session for fear of looking “stupid” or simply because they do not know enough yet to know what to ask! When you think you have adequately prepared everyone to accept a major culture change, then you probably have only done about half enough. Work Orders Entered by Month 3500 3000 2500 Number of Work Orders 2000 1500 1000 EM RT PM 500 0 27 http://www.sdtnorthamerica.com http://www.sdtnorthamerica.com http://www.uptimemagazine.com
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