Why does your plant run better when you’re not there?
Welcome to this blog on maintenance management.
I have tried to summarize my background in a few sentences. I am the partner and vice president for IDCON Inc. This is written in January 2009 and, at this time, I have worked with IDCON and previous a employer in about 75 plants in 13 different countries. I have a masters degree in mechanical engineering from Lund, Sweden, and a bachelors degree from North Carolina State. Before IDCON, I worked for a supply chain consulting firm in Sweden and have a background in the Army.
I’m writing this blog on January 9 and I am thinking: Isn’t it strange that most plants, all over the world, run better when we have the lowest staffing levels in the mill/plant?
For example, I’m guessing that your plant ran well during the holidays. I also think most plants run better between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. weekdays and on weekends. It is a generalization, but if you are a 24/7 operation and have reliability practices in place, I think my statement is true. So, what is the reason? Perhaps we plan and schedule a bit better before we are about to take a weekend off or take Christmas break. I’m thinking you may run an additional equipment inspection round a few days before the break to find potential problems. We never schedule a shutdown for a Friday and rarely a Thursday because we know we may have startup problems. We don’t run trial products on or near weekends.
We simply spend a few minutes and think how we can avoid breakdowns on the weekend because we are motivated to do so. Perhaps we should do more of this “thinking and planning” stuff. You say you don’t have time to plan and schedule because there are too many breakdowns or perceived emergencies to fix? Hmmm …
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Filed Under: Maintenance Excellence | Tags: maintenance management, shutdowns
Comments
By John Sagraves on January 12th, 2009 at 7:41 am
So true Tor!!!!
When management is on site it is hard for the crew to focus on doing maintenance, we are too busy with meetings and trial runs, etc. We could save A LOT of time and money in our plant with some basic planning and scheduling. I will call you to discuss!!!
By Greg Weisman on January 18th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Greg
By Martin Crane on January 29th, 2009 at 8:20 am
Perhaps I should take more vacation time and we’ll run better, not a bad deal… ;). Just kidding, i think you are right, but trial runs etc has to be done as you know. But all our disruptive meetings could probably be done more efficient.
By Tor Idhammar on February 2nd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
John, Greg, Martin,
thanks for your comments. Martin, not a bad idea to work on basic meetings. I bet you could save a bundle of hour in your mill by just having:
1. Start on-tim (on the second)
2. Have clear preparation wok for each person attending
3. Follow the agenda and not allow any side tracks
For example, a daily planning and scheduling meeting that takes more than 15 minutes is usually not run well.
A generic meeting book i like is “Meetings that work!” by Chang & Kehoe. I think it is $19.95 on Amazon.
Tor
By Muhammad on March 28th, 2009 at 1:27 am
Human intervention is one of the reason of introducing failure modes into the system. Since humans have a tendency to do things wrongly, therefore there are fair chances of failures and problems occuring due to human interventions. All planned Maintenance activities carried out during the day on work days.
Also, our plants are usually not having very good visual workplace indicators / operator procedures checklists, therefore chances of plant operator mistakes are more.
By Frank on March 30th, 2009 at 5:23 am
Theres lots of support for the holiday effect in the oil industry, so much so that some Operating companies modify their working day behaviours eg any meetinf with site personnel held at ends of shift or adjacent to lunchtime, same windows for routine phone calls etc.
Tor’s point on meetings is supported by exeprience. Alcoa presented even quantified how much more effective planning made things in an NPRA paper some time ago.
Muhammad’s point is also well made. Interventions cause problems, making better use of predictive or detective methods reduces failure rates because it reduced interventions so there’s less revisit work. Even the most motivated, experienced and skilled staff using clear well written proceduces can introduce defects. I’m sure there’s enough people whose expereince bears this out in plants where the procedures are less good, or staff have less experiences, fewer skills or are less motivated.
Planning and prep, releagte transactional work (phone calls, email, meeting) to set windows, check the health og equipment using human senses, the process & operating parameters and conditon monitoring gadgets as appropriate so you avoid openining up equipment when possible.
By A Nimmo on June 3rd, 2010 at 10:47 pm
Some years ago I worked at a sugar mill in Malawi. We had the honour of a visit from the president of DRC Pres Kabila. Sugar mills are normally in very remote areas so this was a really big deal for the local Malawians. There were senior Malawian politicians, red carpets and helicopters etc. We briefed the workers on the route that the President would take and instructed everyone to just behave normally and stay at their posts and make sure that nothing broke down, overflowed or made a mess and that no safety valves popped etc.
When the president arrived the entire work force (about 400) left their posts and crowded to the sides of the route where he would be walking, just to cheer and give a typically warm Malawian welcome. The factory ran on fully automatic mode with absolutely minimal human intervention for about an hour. Bear in mind that the factory had basic instrumentation but was not designed to run only in auto mode.
Guess what - nothing went wrong and the results for that hour were quite good. Maybe in the USA you think this is normal but to anyone who has 3rd world experience in running a manually operated factory they will know how remarkable this is.
As you say I think that everyone tweaked their machine to perfection so that they could leave it unattended for the duration of the visit. The knowledge and skill etc is there but is not applied that often at that level.
By GEORGE NATEMBEYA WAMEMA on July 4th, 2010 at 7:36 am
Majority of managers in the third world want to be recognized while on duty,a fact most juniors don’t like.Managers will also want the juniors to work as per their instructios.This strips the junior off power to think constructively!
During holidays and weekends the juniors are left to make their own decisions which,you will be suprised, are better than those of some managers.The effect is better performance.
As I write this comment, most of my senior managers are away on an expo programme and be assured, the factory is crushing very well.
Once planning and maintenance has been carried out properly,managers should allow these juniors to run the plant.