Up Time Magazine- August/September 2008

subordinates to practice new skills. First line supervision is also the point at which management decisions are turned into action. Supervisors need to enforce policies and procedures as well as ensure that standard work processes are followed. Most supervisors are saddled with extraneous duties that keep them tied to their desks or attending meetings. If they are not allowed to spend adequate time in the field, they will not be able to provide the level of support needed to maximize the quality and quantity of work or to nurture the development in their people. The Maintenance Manager is responsible to make sure that the first line supervisors have at least 50% to 60% of their day devoted to field supervision of the craft resources. Reliability is inherently a function of design. All we can do from a Maintenance perspective is preserve that inherent reliability. All too often, significant potential equipment life is lost because crafts people did not pay the appropriate attention to detail in repair or installation. For example, studies conducted by Barringer and Associates2 have found that if we have as much as 1/8” of piping misalignment in a standard ANSI end-suction centrifugal pump, we will lose as much as 45% of it’s inherent life! To be an effective Maintenance Manager, you should insist that all work is done to the appropriate level of precision. Tools required to achieve this precision, such as dial indicators, calipers, torque wrenches, laser alignment devices, and the like should be available to all crafts persons. The tools should be included in the calibration program and each crafts person should be effectively trained in their use. Validation of precision work should be routinely performed through a post-maintenance testing program such as taking baseline vibration readings or operational performance tests. Regular audits of repair work should be conducted both to verify that the work is done correctly as well to illustrate the importance that you place on precision. Another important factor that bears mentioning along this line is to insist that crafts persons must be given sufficient time to achieve the level of precision required. There will always be significant pressure to complete a field repair quickly, but rushing through a repair is detrimental to precision. Considering the example above, if a standard pump has a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) of 7 years, and an investment of 8 hours to correct a piping strain problem can potentially result in an added life of over 3 years. Remember the old adage, “There’s never enough time to do it right, but plenty of time to do it over”! Don’t rob your crafts people of their desire to provide quality workmanship. won’t have accurate equipment history. Good people performing in a poor system will produce poor results; average people performing in a good system will produce good results. No organization can afford to be stagnant. There is always room for improvement, and it is a key responsibility of a leader to continuously drive improvements. Remember the saying, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” If we want to make improvements, we’ll have to change the system – but these changes usually cost money. Since we operate within a larger financial “system”, we need to be proactive in obtaining funding for necessary improvements. One of the best ways to do this is to have a three to five year master plan that is updated on an annual basis. This will allow us to get our improvement ideas into the budget cycle, which will greatly increase the chance of funding. It will also increase senior management’s confidence in your ability to manage the department in a proactive fashion. 4 You Must Have Procedures For Performing Maintenance When one considers the wide variety of equipment encountered in the average industrial facility and the variety of tasks performed on that equipment, it is surprising to realize that, in most organizations, few procedures exist for maintenance and repair. Most organizations depend on “skill of the craft”, memory, or (even worse) an “educated guess” to determine the technical details required, such as clearances, torque values, tolerances, belt tensions, and the like. Studies have shown that a high percentage of “infant mortality” failures occur in the absence of detailed written procedures1. In these cases, equipment does not perform to standard or often experiences a failure soon after startup. These can only be due to mistakes and errors made during maintenance or repair. These errors are not the craftsperson’s fault; failing to provide the necessary resources to enable quality work to be done is the fault of management. Even the most talented craftsperson does not have an infallible memory! Ideally, maintenance procedures should be developed by the Planning function. In creating these procedures, it is natural to want to avoid inserting too much detail to avoid “insulting” the craftsperson’s intelligence. Rest assured that it is not an insult to make technical specification details available, nor is it an insult to spell out the proper steps to complete the job in the most expeditious fashion. In fact, the vast majority of crafts people would appreciate having the information available to do the job right the first time! 7 Always Question Policies That Don’t Seem To Make Sense Although this may seem like an invitation to make a “career limiting move”, it is not – it is really an extension of point 6. Many “systems” that we work within do not exist by design; they have evolved over the years. The organization may have put a policy in place that was needed to address a problem many years ago, but the problem no longer exists. We sometimes find ourselves bound by those policies that needlessly stifle organizational growth. A common example of this point is the decision to select some craftspeople for training in predictive maintenance technologies. A policy may be in place that such positions have to be awarded on the basis of seniority only, and when the position is bid, a craftsman who is only a year or two from retirement has bid on it and has the greatest seniority. Does it make sense to award the job to that person and provide a year’s worth of training, only to have him/her retire just when he/she becomes competent? The world around us is constantly changing, and sometimes our rules and policies need to change in order to keep pace. If we do not recognize this and make the necessary changes, it is tantamount to being “stupid on purpose”. We need to take an objective look at our rules, policies and practices, and modify those that don’t make sense. Although this 6 The System Wins Every Time The late Dr. W. Edwards Deming made the point that everyone works within a system. Most people want to do a good job, but often, they cannot do so due to constraints of the system. In point 5 above, if the “system” does not allow them time to use precision methods, we will not get a precise result. If our materials management “system” does not ensure that we have the materials required to do the work, we will experience delays. If our work management “system” does not include documenting work details after the job is done, we 5 Precision, Precision, Precision! www.uptimemagazine.com 41 http://www.uptimemagazine.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Up Time Magazine- August/September 2008

Up Time Magazine- August/September 2008 Contents Upfront Upclose Information Technology Lubrication Infrared Maintenance Management Motor Testing Precision Maintenance Reliability Ultrasound Vibration Upgrade

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