Efficient Plant May 2022 - 22

department | tech horizons
An ongoing look into the
technologies and trends
that will shape your
manufacturing future
Match R
Culture with
Technology
Dr. Klaus M. Blache
Univ. of Tennessee Reliability
and Maintainability Center
(RMC)
EDUCING REACTIVE
maintenance by eliminating
repeat asset/component errors
If you're not doing about 25% predictive/conditionbased
maintenance, you are not top quartile, which
is 23% for North America.
is best done through a robust continuous-improvement
process driven by an
engaged workforce performing PdM/
CBM (predictive/condition-based
maintenance). Individuals and small
teams use root cause analysis (RCA)
to investigate the level of roots (going
deeper to discover the underlying root
cause). The levels of roots are:
Effect: what you see/often experience
as the symptom
Machines/equipment/tools/parts:
what physically happened
Human factors: anything that
interfaces with people, human error
Processes: systematic issues in
organizational procedures and standard
practices, such as unclear, too
much variation
Dysfunctional/hidden issues: culture
( " we've always done it this way " ),
deficient accepted practices.
There are many RCA tools and
techniques that can be used alone or
together. Most plant-floor initiatives
start with the basic " Pareto analysis "
and " 5 Whys. " However, there are
many other tools that can be helpful.
Some are Fishbone diagrams, brainstorming,
process mapping, cause
mapping, fault tree diagram, and logic
tree diagram. It's this kind of technology
application to identify and eliminate
problems that makes a successful
PdM/CBM process. This " finding-fixing-finding-fixing "
is your continual-improvement
engine. If you're not
doing about 25% PdM/CBM (finding
only), you are not top quartile, which
is 23% for North America.
Predictive-maintenance technologies
have evolved to be more efficient,
effective, and user friendly, yet more
than half of facilities still aren't
satisfied with the state of their PdM
program. It's primarily an issue of
implementation (culture and continuous
improvement). Similarly, the
larger transition from reactive to proactive
maintenance suffers from the
same cultural dilemma. I just finished
a " Strategic Implementation in R&M "
training course with 26 company
participants. They assessed themselves
at an average of 33% reactive maintenance.
The North America average is
currently at 31%, so they were comparable.
They were polled on key cultural
roadblocks (top two). Note that the
first three items, totaling more than
72%, are culture related.
You should compile an asset versus
22 | EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM
MAY 2022
http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM
Efficient Plant May 2022

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