More Articles
10 – 1 = 16.5; with maintenance planning, it’s possible
I’m a big fan of podcasts, and one I listen to regularly is a financial/economic podcast put out every month by Bill Gross of PIMCO, the giant bond fund house. He was one of the few over the last years voicing serious concern about the huge financial house of cards being built. Although always
Why PM attainment needs to be a shared metric at your plant
Preventive maintenance (PM) is a cornerstone of reliability-based maintenance. It’s no surprise then that PM attainment has become a key performance indicator (KPI). But it may surprise you that in many organizations, maintenance is NOT primarily responsible for this KPI! Maintenance always has
Maintenance is not a cost: How to justify an investment in M&R
As many of us strive to improve the reliability of our plants, several comments bemoan how challenging that is to do in an era of continuous deep cost cutting. They say that in their operation, maintenance is seen as a cost, and is one of the first things to arbitrarily cut. Some think their operations
You need to take care of your customers, your operators and your techs!
The customer is the end reason that the plant exists. However, the people who interact with the customer are employees. Management’s focus must be on those interfaces. They cannot get to the customer otherwise. Therefore, I would direct management to focus on employee development, training, behavior,
P-FIRST: Success in plant reliability is in the hands of the people
Thermal scanning, automatic balancers and levelers, predictive equipment, fluid scans, ultrasonic testing, PM programs, reports and logs, more reports and logs, and yet even more reports and logs. These are all great ways to track, detect or predict possible real, and future failures. I know many companies
Questions, comments and random thought triggers on maintenance
I evaluate maintenance operations on the existence of effective PM programs, a working and meaningful work order and information system, effectiveness of the stockroom, and the processes in place to support the technician. Are there contingent processes in place for handling emergencies? Are there seasonal
The rise of autonomous operator maintenance and work redesign
My blog entry on the “White Glove Story” got close to the idea of operator maintenance. My study on the coal gasification generating plant was about the ultimate vision of the one employee who has the skills and ability to do whatever is necessary to keep the process operating effectively. What
Plant maintenance: Is it just like the tale of Sisyphus?
I stumbled across some music trivia lately, that the old rock band Chicago finally had its album “Stone of Sisyphus” released last year. One of the more famous “lost” albums, it was originally recorded in the early 1990s but had languished for years, available only in illegal
Let risk and your equipment determine your maintenance strategy
When I attend conferences and workshops and read articles on maintenance and reliability, more and more I hear people touting that preventive maintenance is more costly and not the right approach. When we talk about preventive maintenance, we are primarily talking about time-based inspections, but it
Important considerations for CMMS data entry
When implementing a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) into a facility, one of the largest tasks involved is entering the data into the system. This is a two-part task that first requires the one-time entry of the initial data that has been gathered. The second task is the entry of the
