Reliability reduces waste of time, talent and resources
Following along with my last blog, “Reliability is a green initiative”, I would like to talk about waste reduction. Waste is seen in many different forms in manufacturing. Some of these wastes include physical, time and talent.
Physical waste is anything that is left over from the process that has to be discarded, recycled or sold. For every process, there is an expected amount of waste that is unavoidable and, therefore, is not what is focused on here. The waste that is focused on here is the excess waste that is produced because of equipment or process reliability issues. There are many processes that are a one-shot process where if it is interrupted during the process all of the materials become waste.
Time waste also directly relates to equipment and process reliability. Any time that the system is down for unplanned maintenance, that means there is extra time required to make up the work, idle manpower, and manpower required to correct the deficiency. In many cases, the extra time required to make up the work falls into overtime or extra shifts.
Talent waste is the use of time and education to repair or correct process or equipment failures. There will always be the need for the use of talent to fix failures. The real loss is when the failures are preventable and nothing is being done to change the situation. The talent used to fix unnecessary equipment failures can be utilized to improve the process and equipment.
Any angle from which you look at reliability will reveal that it is a necessary function to be a good steward of resources.
There are numerous other benefits from being more reliability conscious, and if you would like to share some of these, please feel free to join in by posted a reply.
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Filed Under: Featured, Reliability Engineering | Tags: business management, change management, Lean Manufacturing, maintenance management, operations and production, reliability excellence
Comments
By Frank Murphy on October 26th, 2009 at 6:54 am
Robert:
“Wasted time, talent and resources” also applies in the MRO spare parts storeroom. Having several skilled and well-paid craft technicians walking up and down aisles, looking in shelving and boxes, opening and closing modular cabinet drawers and searching pallet racks is very costly. Factor in equipment downtime, idled workers and product loss, and you have a well-blended recipe for waste resulting in negative profitability.
Frank Murphy, CPMM
President, IMS
By Beau Groover on November 17th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Great article Rob - very good points.
A good rule of thumb is to look at all processes through the lens of the 8 wastes of the Toyota Production System. The 8 waste cover most processes. Whether it is the MRO store room, the reliability process or just about anywhere else, use the 8 waste to help generate and identify the key improvement targets.
Keep it up!