Answers to questions facing today's reliability & maintenance professionals department | on the floor Double Up With Q Autonomous Maintenance A What is the purpose of autonomous maintenance and what benefits does it provide? Dr. Klaus M. Blache Univ. of Tennessee Reliability & Maintainability Center (RMC) The purpose of autonomous maintenance is to set up a process that enables operators and trades/technicians to continually communicate regarding equipment health. Operators and maintenance employees benefit from improved safety, better workplace organization, and an improved team environment. Operators are recognized for having valuable knowledge about the equipment, which increases their participation. Maintenance gets better information for troubleshooting and root-cause analysis on maintenance-related issues. The plant gets increased visual aids, error proofing, and problem solving, which results in greater uptime and throughput. The focus should be on improving OEE (overall equipment effectiveness = availability x performance x quality) by minimizing or removing the six big losses: Availability losses » Equipment failure » Set-up and adjustments Performance losses » Idling and minor stops » Reduced speed Quality losses » Defects in the process » Start-up rejects. The six big losses are an effective way to categorize equipment losses and target improvements by small teams focused on bottleneck assets. This all relates to the three goals of TPM (total productive maintenance) which are zero unplanned failures, zero defects, and zero accidents. Most companies fail to properly apply TPM. Fully implemented, the eight pillars are: Autonomous Maintenance Focused Improvement Planned Maintenance Quality Management Early/equipment Management Every 4.5% to 5.0% reduction in reactive maintenance/total maintenance equates to a 1% reduction in maintenance cost/ replacement asset value. 30 | EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM SEPT/OCT 2019http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM