What our plants have failed to learn in 25 years
Twenty-five years ago, I left the U.S. Navy nuclear submarine program.
As I gained experience in civilian industry, I began to appreciate the Navy’s aplomb for reliable engineering, exceptional training and consistent operations. Their penchant for comprehensive preventive maintenance programs also impressed me.
What I found in industry 25 years ago was quite different.
- There was almost no redundancy in design; the failure of a single small pump could shut down an entire plant. Sanitary systems had been modified over time, introducing unsanitary attributes. Many components were chosen solely on initial cost, not reliability or life cycle cost.
- Operator training was limited to “hit the green button in the morning, the red button at night, and call maintenance if anything goes wrong.” We especially didn’t train operators on what to do in abnormal situations, so small problems often snowballed.
- Standard procedures (SOPs, CBMs), if written at all, were relegated to a dusty bookshelf.
- And, nearly all maintenance was reactive in nature.
So quite by accident, it seems, I began a career of helping companies do these things better.
I claim some small successes on my resume, at least in individual factories where I worked. But wouldn’t you think with all the improvements our industrial society has made, and with progressive publications like Reliable Plant, that we would have evolved to a better place?
My work recently took me back to some of the factories of a company I worked with long ago.
- Technologies have improved with mix-proof sanitary valves and PLCs. But, there is still little control of changes and little redundancy.
- Training is better regarding mandatory safety programs, but no better in system operation.
- SOPs remain on the shelf in most locations. The only nod to improved consistency is in the expanded use of automated controls (PLCs).
- Most sad to me is that maintenance remains almost entirely reactive. For all of the sophisticated predictive technologies that have been developed, a huge amount of our machinery is run to failure. Expensive systems fail prematurely, requiring big buckets of capital dollars to replace them.
If we had kept this same rate of improvement in other aspects of our business, we would still be calculating our financials on computers running Windows for Workgroups V3.1.1. We would be tracking inventory and shipments on spreadsheets instead of ERP systems.
By this point, I have surely angered some maintenance and engineering professionals. They have made great strides in their individual locations. That isn’t my point.
My point is, after 25 years, shouldn’t ALL of our factories, large and small alike, be much further down the path than they are? Are you?
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Filed Under: Featured, Maintenance Excellence | Tags: continuous improvement, engineering, maintenance, maintenance leadership, maintenance management, maintenance procedures, management, manufacturing, PLCs, reliability, standard operating procedure, standard work
Comments
By john crossan on June 23rd, 2009 at 6:30 am
Good observations.
I think there are a number of reasons we’re still not more broadly proactive in maintenance, but probably the biggest I think, is that for untrained manufacturing managers (and how many ever do get any, even maintenance awareness, training?) its just absolutely intuitively obvious, that maintenance as needed (reactive) just has to be more cost effective than having even the small infrastructure to support a proactive effort.
I don’t think many view the military environment as being really relevant to industry as it’s not seen as profit driven.
So it’s mostly an education issue, and we just have to keep plugging away, changing the world, one manager at a time.
By Ned Mitenius (author) on June 23rd, 2009 at 8:14 am
Great point John!
And we keep getting “new crops” of untrained manufacturing managers. And why is that? We train on everything else, including 12 different OSHA topics, 6 HR topics, 2 Employee evaluation topics and certainly much more. Would it be so hard to include a couple of introductory maintenance and reliability training topics?
Of course for you and I, it is intuitively obvious that fixing something while it is a small problem is cost effective over waiting until it is a big problem. And “Murphy” says the eventual failure will always be at the most inopportune time (and therefore most costly).
I do agree that industry might discount the military experience due to the lack of a profit motive. But they do have a mission motive, and they do have some examples of extremely high reliability.
For example, while we can not afford a manufacturing plant with all the redundancies built into a nuclear submarine, can’t we look at a small number of redundant components and cross-connections if there IS a profit-driven payoff in higher reliability?
Would love to see you blog with more thoughts on how we can tackle the education issue, and continue to change the world “one manager at a time.”
By Greg Jones on July 2nd, 2009 at 9:45 am
In my 21 years of Maintenance I have strived to achieve the levels spelled out in the military guides for reliability. I have never been in the military but the only place where I was able to get good reliable data is from the military handbooks.
My wish is that more organizations would share what they are doing and what works instead of being concerned about company inside information.
The other issue that I seem to run into is that most organizations worry about the maintenance budget and I have been asked to cut from the budget 5% year over year. That mindset just means were going backwards and not keeping up with what needs to be done to actually make a profit. Is there any Accounting professionals who currently teach that could help change the mindset that profitable companies = smart funded maintenance organizations.
I guess it comes down to the fact we need to properly teach our organizations; reliabilty, profitable methods such as highly trained staff, maintenance departments properly performing maintenance without having to cut corners to save money.
By Ned Mitenius (author) on July 2nd, 2009 at 9:59 am
You speak volumes, Greg!
I am working on another blog posting, along the lines of “maintenance isn’t an expense, it is an investment.” It goes along the line that many plants aren’t running nearly as well as they could (actual production vs engineering line speeds, for example) and that “investments” in greater reliability could reduce capital expenditures for new lines and new plants.
Yet much of it still comes down to what John said earlier, and you say as well, that we need to train people to think like this. One problem that I see is that the people we need to train in such thinking, are not necessarily the ones reading this fine magazine?
I’d love to have you write me directly; perhaps I can include some of your experience in that next article. And while I am not an accounting professional, I think I can share information in that next article to make a compelling financial case.
By Ken Brown on July 2nd, 2009 at 10:34 am
I see the same thing in the power generation industry and it is apparently getting worse. Maybe because the people who know what to do are retiring. Technical training appears to be the exception rather than the rule and when has the new hire or new person actually worked beside the previous person in the job for at least a month. For example, recently there have been problems at a power station because of improper changing of filter elements and purification media cartridges. There were no procedures and the housing pressure gauges were not working so that the correct installation cannot be verified. In many cases the equipment is forty years old and needs more attention, not less. But the trades, the engineers and the operators also have to know what is right and if wrong, what action to take. Generally they do not know who to call to discuss it or will not take the initiative. One client provides a fire resistant control fluid for steam turbines and they have a toll free number but we usually have to initiate the corrective action. I do not believe that they do not care but rather that they have so many items on their plate that they do not think through the way to get the best answer in the fastest way. Maybe they do not know who to call or e-mail or maybe they have been beaten over the head for years to solve it yourself, do not spend any money and do not discuss ‘our’ problems with any other station. The days of industry wide collaboration seems to be gone and you see that with declining attendence at key conferences.
One other problem that I see is that maintenance and technical staff do not know how to do cost justifications to be able to take on the bean counters. Consequently they do not bother.
By Ned Mitenius (author) on July 2nd, 2009 at 10:43 am
Wow Ken! You make a number of great points and I thoroughly agree with you!
Speaking of bean counters - it must be time for me to finish and post that “investment” blog!
By Robert Schindler on July 3rd, 2009 at 6:43 am
My own experience on a nuclear submarine made me appreciate the value of long term thinking and the reliability approach. Life cycle cost is often over-looked during the engineering design phase and that is a major mistake. When the short term cost takes precedence over the long term reliability of the equipment or process, you set yourself up for the high costs of poor performance. The original purchase price is a small component of the cost of ownership and should be secondary to the considerations that generate long term profits like standardization, simplification, maintainability, and reliability. We build billion dollar facilities and then make them hostages to the flavor of the moment components and processes that are non-standard, difficult to replace, and/or unreliable.
Our management schools are ignoring the major effects that equipment decisions have on the profitability of our plants. Our new managers can whip out a chart or graph in a heartbeat but can’t tell you why the profits are going down. The MBA schools need to make reliability a key component of their curriculum to turn the trend around. We need to stress the benefits of reliability in all of our meetings with senior management.
By webb snow on July 3rd, 2009 at 7:42 am
I am a small business owner of a fluid power company. I call on many manufacturing plants and everything you say is true. It is very frustrating to convince my customers to establish any kind of PAM
program. Simple things like taking regular oil samples, keeping hydraulic reservoirs sealed properly, recycling oil should be a “no brainer”. Everyone is so busy putting out fires and thinking short term that is difficult getting people to listen.
By Ned Mitenius (author) on July 3rd, 2009 at 8:20 am
Wow, Robert, well said! (And nice to hear from another submariner!)
If there was some way to get our MBA schools to include a reliability component, that would sure begin to address a lot of the training vacuum that has been mentioned in these comments!
By Ned Mitenius (author) on July 3rd, 2009 at 8:25 am
Webb, you make a great point! Some of what we do requires some brains and technology, but much as you have pointed out is rather simple, a “no brainer.” Taking regular oil samples, sealing and checking reservoirs, recycling oil, and let me add, changing filters, would help our business AND yours.
Yet, we often receive positive reinforcement for putting out fires, not for quietly avoiding them. I think there is another blog idea being born!
By Patricia Keenan on July 5th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Even though maintenance and production employees physically work in the same facility, they do not do so “conceptually”.
Many of the routines, standards (and sometimes work rules) that are followed by production employees are not always followed by their maintenance brethren. They seem mystified or unaware of production priorities and look down on their production team mates as “dumb”.
Maintenance employees are frequently shocked and resentful that production employees are their customer. Maintenance employees frequently lack urgency and knowledge in the machines they must fix. Most being over-rated handy men who are jacks of all trades (masters of none).
Comparing the lowly production member to the skilled maintenance employee, the obvious is clear: production does their jobs better, makes robust/lasting improvements to their routine and moves forward.
Most maintenance employees are still letting repetitive break-downs continue after months or years, continues to push unfinished or un started work off to the other maintenance shift and still hasn’t learned how to fix a piece of equipment that has been in their area for years. Five different maintenance employees have five different ways to fix a machine. No standardization.
Simply put, even though it’s an apple to oranges comparison, manufacturing companies are being held back by their maintenance teams.
Please put down the coffee and newspaper and brush the donut crumbs from your coveralls. You must continually walk the floor with a checklist and monitor machine performance against the standard. Talk with production employees and learn the defects the machine is producing and fix them.
Do not wait to be called upon by production or engineering. Do not let production be your first indicator that something has gone wrong with the machine. Put a process in place to protect your customer (production). Be proactive!
Manufacturing companies are not in the business of fixing machines, they are in the business of making things.
By Ned Mitenius (author) on July 5th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Patricia, I hope you are generalizing to make a point. I am sure there are maintenance professionals that will be put off with your comments, just as there would be production professionals that would be put off if they were generalized as untrained folks who push the start button in the morning, the stop button at night, and call maintenance if anything goes wrong.
Yet your comments support my point that there are still maintenance folks that are NOT doing professional maintenance, even though we have known for decades what to do. And your advice to maintenance in the final paragraphs is exactly what they should be doing.
Shouldn’t we be finding better ways to bring our collective experience and talents together to improve the entire operation, instead of suboptimizing part of it? My next two blogs will address some portion of this - “Maintenance isn’t a cost” and “Who is responsible for PM attainment?”
I hope you will comment on those as well. And I hope you find someday the professional maintenance organization that you deserve.
By Robert Schindler on July 6th, 2009 at 7:06 am
Patricia, it looks like you have had some very bad experiences with your in-house maintenance groups. Bad habits can form in an atmosphere of disconnected senior management and poor communication between the departments. This is a case where senior management has to step up and take charge. We all have heard about changing an organization from the bottom up but for most of us, that didn’t work. It takes an involved, dedicated leader(s) from the senior management ranks to create a culture change that lasts. Hopefully, your senior management team will see what you are seeing and take action. Human nature says that we all rise or fall to the level of expectation and it sounds like expectations need to change for your organization. The departments are inter-dependent so the customer today is the supplier tomorrow. That’s why teamwork is so important. Good luck.
By John Crossan on July 6th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Patricia
Your sad picture of obviously non communicating production and maintenance departments shows the paranoia that seems to develop when that is missing. But it is amazing the change that can take place when some routine, orchestrated, communication mechanisms, focused on dealing with current issues, are put in place.
By Wayne Offermann on July 9th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
The problem rises that most of management from operations and above are only in that position for a short term. They are concerned more on the numbers then on a strategy to remain profitably. They strip and squeeze during their term until the next person takes over. The problem is somewhere down the line complete failure happens and the cost is out of sight. Example: Company done no repairs on the building HVAC for 5 years. The cost $90,000 in repairs. This does not include hidden cost of using more resources to run the degraded equipment. The cost would be closer to $150,000. I had to detail the ROI and Cost to get the repairs done. The $50K loss in electric each year should be enough to convince everyone that something has to be done. The cost of repairs do not go down over time. Even in this economy.
By Molly on July 28th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
There is a great book out there called Manufacturing a Better Future for America that anyone who is interested in the revitalization of manufacturing must read. America needs to be reminded that manufacturing is what built our economy so many years ago, and that we should look to it once more to drag us out of the economic mess our country is facing.
Furthermore, the economic mindset of our government and our business leaders needs to be shifted. The practice of offshoring production has rendered millions of Americans jobless and angry. This book justifies why jobs need to stay on American soil, and how a paradigm shift in business economics is needed to prevent this recession from repeating itself. All in all, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is willing to help bandage up our broken economy.
By Vinay Maithani on August 3rd, 2009 at 11:01 am
Gentlemen,
It feels like a kid in front of the great submariners and other seasoned maintenance professionals(their experience equal to my age) here, however that would not deter me to put my 2 cents here
Training: If the core team of maintenance has the opportunity to play a part during the erection & commissioning stages, then the people are aware of the equipments at a very detailed level. It helps to have rookies(me included) in place specially at this stage onwards. Experienced Technicians/craftsman need to share the ‘trade secrets’ in a healthy manner to new recruits even if it is followed by little ragging/leg-pulling. We all are the same if not equal!
Resources: With the advent of dot-com boom and emergence of lucrative ICE(Information,Communicaiton,Electronics) sector combined with retiring professionals has indeed created a crisis of sorts at least in parts of NA & Europe if not the emerging economies. For BRIC(Brazil,Russia,India,China) countries its the Information Technology sectors which have created a shortage.
Business Case of Maintenance & Reliability: WE the people of M & R fraternity should brush up our analytical skills and create compelling cases for investment in maintenance and reliability. Please make it a point to share it at as many forums as possible so that the learning is cascaded and the wave of awareness takes on the world and WE the people get the long pending DUE back.
If WE address these little issues in our manner(please share too) then the day is not far when, there would be lesser and lesser blogs or posts on crisis but on the SUCCESS STORIES, and that i foresee and pray for all in near future.
And yes for me even though the waters are choppy ahead but am sure coz of the the LIGHTHOUSES from this fraternity to guide me.
By Ned Mitenius (author) on August 3rd, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Hello Vinay, or should I say, “hello tenderfoot?”
It is very nice to have you post! You make great points about the need for training, and to be intentional about involving people in the commisioning phases of our projects. So true that we need to find better ways of information transfer from our seasoned technicians to our more recent acquisitions.
There is also a crisis in many industries of simply finding and hiring the “new technicians” who will take the place of our seasoned technicians! Where are we growing our industrial workforce of tomorrow? How many kids grow up wanting to work in a factory?
You may like my other blog, “Maintenance is not a cost” to see one approach (of several) to making a compelling business case for investement in maintenance.
Please continue to post; your viewpoints are valid and valuable. I also suggest that buried in many of the “problems” we write about, are our “solutions” to that problem at some point in the past. Like you, I hope these forms of sharing lead to more and greater SUCCESS by all!
By Frank Murphy on August 6th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Ned:
Your article is accurate, and the principles can be applied to another critical area of maintenance. After 20 years working in the various areas of maintenance, I founded a company that modernizes MRO spare parts storerooms. I am constantly amazed that Fortune 500 companies have storerooms that more resemble landfills than a place where expensive and critical spare parts are stored. Capital outlay for the standardizing, consolidation and organizing of parts to support reliable, best maintenance practices, is not an expense, but rather an investment. Redundancy of some spare parts and components is vital If the US wants to remain productive and competitive.
By Ned Mitenius (author) on August 6th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
So true, Frank. Stores is another area where we have “failed to learn.” Since you are talking about needing to look at maintenances practices as an “investment,” you might appreciate my other blog: “Maintenance is not a cost!”