Asset Optimisation

#MaintenanceMinute : Stop saying “the plant is old, and will break down more often” I have seen some Model T Ford’s still running around, and most run reliably. And some 1972 VW Beetles. Why is that? Surely they should be breaking more often, if the above quote holds true. But it does not, because most of their owners maintain their classic mobiles appropriately for their age and design. It is that simple. If we maintain our plant appropriately for their age and design, it won’t ‘break down more often’. As leaders, we should stop saying, “I know the plant is old and will breakdown more often, but we need to improve our maintenance”, because every time you say this, you give your team the authority to use the same excuse. Every breakdown, instead of owning it and finding a long term solution, they just shrug and say “It’s an old plant, so it will break more often”. As a leader, change the language. Old plants only break more often if they are not properly maintained. Remember the VW Bug! #leaders #language

#MaintenanceMinute : The problem with best practice I often hear people talk about maintenance and the fact that they are aiming for best practise. The problem with best practise is that best practise is only best practise at that point in time, and for the industries that it has been applied to at that point. You see, if you comply with ‘best practise’ you are part of an average. If you only aim to be in step with ‘best practise’ you are only aiming to adopt other business’ work methods and that brings you to average. If you empower your team to really think outside of the box, to push the limits of ‘normal’, of ‘best practise’, only then can your maintenance organisation begin to strive to improve, to start thriving in your operating environment. So are you aiming for ‘best practise’, or are you aiming to excel in the maintenance of your organisation? #reliabilitycoach #maintainthebalance #maintenancecoach

#MaintenanceMinute : Shutdown Work - To do, or not to do? That is the question. But that is the question not asked often enough. Too often, work is planned into major outages/shutdowns because ‘the plant is down’ without asking if these work can be done at another time. A facility often have annual, or 6 monthly or maybe 4 yearly major outages, with some minor shutdowns in between. During these outages there is typically a reliance on external labour to perform a high percentage of work. Remember, work done during major outages are usually at a higher cost (external labour, additional travel costs, accommodation, etc.), a higher risk (people not familiar with site, higher level of interaction between work crews, etc.) and with a lower revenue period. So the aim should be to NOT do work in this period. If you want your major shutdowns to become more effective, move as much work out of your major outages, and into your smaller downtimes. That way you can focus your best effort on making your major outages a success. Remember: the best shutdown EVER, is the one that NEVER happened! #maintenancecoach #bestshutdownever #todo #nottodo

Run-to-failure is an acceptable maintenance strategy that can deliver a great result. #runtofailure #rtf #thinkdifferently

#MaintenanceMinute : Rapid WOM Improvements If you have Work Order Management rolled out in your business, or have established your process and are now working on embedding and improving your maintenance, what is quickest why to rapidly improve your Work Order Management? Is it in the execution, or maybe the planning? What about the scheduling? In my experience it is the Approval and Prioritisation of the Work Request (Notification). If it is incorrectly prioritised, it will follow the wrong process. If you want to improve your maintenance rapidly, really interrogate how your jobs are prioritised. To break the habit of all work being ‘urgent’, you need evaluate the work requests. Do this diligently, and you will be amazed how your ‘urgent’ and ‘break in’ work decreases. How a lot of the chaos and noise goes away. #prioritymanagement #continuousimprovement

#MaintenanceMinute : Use the 80:20 Principle This is definitely one of my favourite quotes. The logic is this: you will usually get 80% of the result for 20% of the effort. The last 20% of the result, will cost you a further 80% of the effort. I use the term effort, but it can be interpreted as cost or resources as well. For example if you need a vehicle, at 20% cost you will get 80% result when buying a Yaris, however, an additional 80% cost, will get you the last 20% of the Lexus, which does not really add more functions, just fancy features. So when we are doing a RCA, remember the 80:20 principle. Spend 20% effort to get 80% results. If you keep doing this, your reliability will improve! Your results may not always look pretty, but it will improve your reliability. #effectiveness #8020rule

#MaintenanceMinute Insanity American inventor Thomas Edison once said, ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.’ When coaching maintenance teams, and I hear about a failure that has occurred more than once, I always ask: “So what have you done differently?” If you have a repeat failure, have you tried different ways to repair it, to make changes in the design, in the way you operate, in the way you use the machine? If not, why not? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. To be an agile organisation that is progressively getting better at what you do, you sometimes have to find the ten thousand ways that does not work, in order to find the right solution. But learning ten thousand lessons is far better than doing the same thing (failing) over and over. Of course, the impact/risk of failures should be taken into consideration, and the repair/changes should follow sound engineering principles. Share some examples of where you have seen the same thing being done over and over with no success. #doingitdifferently #challenges

#MaintenanceMinute : Do you have erratic Maintenance Spend? Does it feel like your maintenance is out of control? Are you frequently asking why your maintenance team can not control their spend? Are you often questioned about your maintenance spend that is out of control? If you can relate, how do you gain control? First of all, extract your spend from your CMMS. Then calculate how much your spend is on Planned Work vs Unplanned Work. If you spend $4 on Unplanned Work for every $1 you spend on Planned Work, it means that 80% of your cost is spend in an unplanned (read uncontrolled) fashion. You will not be able to forecast your cost. You will not have any control over your cost. How do you gain control? Start implementing work order management. Get control over how your team spend their effort, and you will gain control over your budget. #maintenance #costs #spend #maintainthebalance

#MaintenanceMinute : If you can not fix the root cause…. In today's industry, there are times where eliminating the root cause of the failure is not possible. This may be due to the root cause requiring a significant capital investment, or a delayed outage, or similar event that is not feasible in your current operation. What do you do then? Leave it. Keep highlighting it to management every time the failure occurs? No, that is when reducing the impact of the failure, should become the focus. Focus on eliminating the consequence of the failure or reducing the impact. If you keep doing it, you will see an improvement. How have you addressed the consequence of a failure, instead of the root cause? #consequences #impact #reduction

#MaintenanceMinute : Shutdown Planning Let’s start off by defining a shutdown as a set of tasks you do, and each task consists of a sequence of job steps (the purpose is not to debate the definition, just for clarity to what follows). A shutdown is one of your highest risk activities as you may have people unfamiliar with the site and the work to be done, your labour is generally more expensive and you have a loss of production. So when selecting your tasks for the shutdown, you need to be critical in ensuring that any task that can be done at another time, is removed. The next step is to eliminate job steps that can be done outside of your shutdown. As an example take the change out of a conveyor tail pulley. Job steps that could be done outside of the shutdown, is fitting the new bearings onto the pulley. This step requires detailed planning, and a very clear understanding of the task. If you start to understand the steps required, you can then start highlighting the steps that can be done outside of the shutdown. This enables you to reduce your critical path duration if required. Detailed planning is the key. #planningandscheduling #planningahead