Keep maintenance simple: Use senses and sensibility
What good is it to have advanced maintenance techniques if they have no real benefit over simple basic maintenance? Now I am not saying go and throw away all of your fancy toys. What I am saying is that you don’t have to have advanced tools for every maintenance task. I have seen many maintenance groups that have adopted certain maintenance techniques and, in turn, overuse them on everything they can be used on. The point is, why use them if they are not cost effective?
There are many cases in which a failure can be detected with an operator’s or technician’s built-in test equipment that takes no special training to use. This equipment is his or her senses - sight, sound, feel and taste (not recommended). These are all skills that should be taken into account when performing any kind of maintenance analysis. In many cases, a technician or operator can detect a potential failure in adequate time to mitigate the consequences of a functional failure.
Many different improvement programs use criticality to determine what maintenance they need to use to effectively manage their asset. If a functional failure has no impact on safety, environment or operation and minimal economic impact and an operator or technician will normally detect the failure in plenty of time, why would you use any tool that costs more than just the standard senses?
Many of the different maintenance improvement programs being used today employ logic that helps guide the decisions on what maintenance to perform. This logic normally includes probability of failure and severity of the failure. This approach can help avoid performing unnecessary and costly maintenance.
What are your thoughts, opinions and experiences on this subject? I would love to hear from you. Simply respond to this blog post, and let’s get the conversation flowing.
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Filed Under: Featured, Reliability Engineering | Tags: continuous improvement, equipment failure, maintenance, maintenance management, maintenance procedures, operations and production, reliability, skilled labor
Comments
By Maintenance Training on July 2nd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Proper maintenance training involved sticking with you senses.
By Robert Schindler on July 6th, 2009 at 7:14 am
Good points, Rob. The use of visual aids helps the technician and operator spot those changes in the process that alerts us to problems. It’s a great idea to use the gauge face stickers, setting range tags, and other visual guides that show at a glance where the needle should point, where the chain slack should hang, and the correct range for the flow readings. I also like the use of the green-amber-red system for SCADA displays to alert operators.
By Mark Brunner on July 24th, 2009 at 8:14 am
I’ve always been a fan of look, listen and feel. Particularly from operations and trades. They usually understand the equipment and are in the best position to see early signs of failure.
I don’t believe it replaces VA, thermography etc, but in the absence of not having this equipment, it is the obvious place to start a CM program and should include encouraging operators to report instead of accept the status quo.
By Michael Whittaker on July 27th, 2009 at 1:09 am
Agree with the use of own senses on “non-critical” failure modes, but, if the investment is already made in predictive technologies, for the more vritical assets/failures, then why not use them extensively?
Having gone through the RCM facilitation training and worked as a reliability consultant with a Condition Monitoring technology company, I have always baatled with the “spin” of applying VA to critical assets or not doing a simple task using your own senses, because that is a cost - these business-driven philosophies work great if the maintenance is performed as a profit-centre or under a contract, but in most cases organisations run their maintenance functions as cost-centres, so why not encourage operators and maintenance technicians to do the touch and feel tasks, that they like to do as well as doing the advanced techniques?
I guess what I’m saying is use the resources and skills available sensibly, based on knowledge of the failure modes, but ensure that you also encourage reporting and feedback to Planning. Ensure that you also understand the criticality (severity) and if possible the likelihood of failure failure, so you can prioritise what work is important and encourage the maintenance (and operators) to focus all their skills, senses and tools to the things that have the biggest impact on the business, at least cost.
By Cliff Williams on July 27th, 2009 at 4:59 am
The problem with senses is that for each individual they are different. As I worked in the steel industry many years ago when hearing protection was for ’sissys’ I suffer from hearing loss - so to me everything sounds fine. People also get a little desensitized by being in the same areA each day - particularly around smells. Modern technology has built on our senses and even though I still believe in the operator or maintenance being around equipment is our first line of defense, I don’t think we should assume it can effectively replace monitoring technologies.
By Rob Apelgren on September 10th, 2009 at 8:22 am
Great comments! I think there are times when monitoring technologies are the only way to go and times when simplicity is the best. The environment in which you work should be a definite driver on what you can use. I was a maintenance supervisor in a ductile iron foundry and in some places in the plant the environment was bad enough you couldn’t think stright but others were very sense friendly. I say don’t just use it because it is there. Use what is the most safe and cost-effective methods available.