HOW TO REDUCE DOWNTIME AND
INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY
By Larry Bush
Documentation mined for
maintenance information "gold".
All maintenance activities of the workforce must be documented, this
includes breakdown repairs, callouts, preventive maintenance, replacement
maintenance, overhauls, and Testing & Inspection work. Maintenance
work by production line employees must be included, whether or not the
employee is listed as in maintenance. These activities can then be mined
for maintenance information "gold".
List all repetitive work
One of the first things that a maintenance supervisor should be
concerned with is repetitive work. Any and all repetitive work should be
identified and isolated. This list can then be prioritized as to
criticality to production lines and plant effectiveness.
After the list has been rearranged, each task item must be analyzed to
determine if the repetitive work is actually aimed at fixing a problem or
fixing a symptom of a deeper problem. Fixing symptoms has the immediate
effect of allowing production to rapidly resume, but does nothing for the
underlying problem(s). In fact, the underlying problem may get worse.
Development of a solutions
As soon as a high priority problem has been identified and analyzed,
work should begin on development of a solution to the problem. Once the
solution to the problem has been developed, plans can be made for
purchasing required parts and material and then scheduling the manpower
and production time to implement the solution.
Maintenance planning of machine repairs
Complete documentation is absolutely essential for control of the
maintenance process. How can the process of maintenance be under control
if the person in charge has no complete idea of what the total maintenance
activities and costs are? If needed repairs are not documented and planned
for, a considerable portion of these needed repairs and modifications will
be forgotten or ignored until production tries to run again.
Justify machine repair cost
Planning essential repairs and modifications requires documentation. It
is easy to say that we need a modification to this particular machine and
output of this line can be increased 25%. However, with no planning, six
months later no work has been done on the idea. Even if the idea were
actually to be somehow implemented, the output increase may not come to
fruition.
If no research was carried out on the rest of the line equipment, there is
no certain way of determining line and equipment capacity. How would the
machine be able to increase output 25% if its current output was already
100% of the lines actual output capacity? All the costs associated with
increasing the one machine's capacity would have been wasted, unless
additional work was undertaken to bring the rest of the production line up
to the output of the one machine.
A production line's output capacity is only as great as it's least piece
of equipment. That bears repeating. A production line is only as fast as
it's slowest piece of equipment. A chain is only as strong as its weakest
link.
Prioritize your maintenance planning list
With documentation, the list of priority work problems to solve can be
reduced fairly rapidly, at first. The list of easily solved problem areas
will gradually be replaced by higher cost work items. Research and
planning may reveal that the costs involved with eliminating some
repetitive repairs are more than living with the repetitive repairs.
Compare production downtime after solution
After implementation of the solution, production downtime for that
particular item can be documented and compared to pre-implementation
production output. Maintenance time not spent on working on that solved
problem can also be documented for the same time period. These savings can
then be extrapolated for an entire year and presented to management to
justify the cost of repairs.
Without documentation, research, and planning, the person in charge of
making the decisions is working in the dark. With documentation, research,
and planning, the great wall of China can be built, or the Panama Canal,
or the Aswan Dam, or a world-class maintenance organization.
Maintenance Policy and Procedures is a plan to organize your maintenance
department. Following the plan will cause you to document your
department's activities. Other department's maintenance activities and
interactions with the Maintenance Department will also be documented. With
the documentation, planning can begin. For information on this article and
Maintenance Policy and Procedures, contact the author.
Larry Bush
larryb642003 @ yahoo.com
About the Author: Larry Bush
has been an electrician for 47 years, and in maintenance management for 22
years. Download his new e-Book "Maintenance
Policy and Procedures Manual" !!
(http://www.reliability-consultant.com/maintenance_policy.htm)
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