would you say variation is the worst enemy of reliability and that most people are not even aware of...

7/28/2019 Would you say Variation is the worst enemy of Reliability and that most people are not even aware of it.docx

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Would you say Variation is the worst enemy of Reliability and that most people

are not even aware of it?

How do you reduce Variation and thus increase Reliability of your assets? We could probably

make a long detailed list of items on "Causes of Variation" in our maintenance process which

impact Reliability, but let's look at three of the major causes.

Variation is Your Enemy

Number 1:

Preventive Maintenance (PM) is not effective. It is not the appropriate maintenance strategy to

address most failure modes. Even if it was, we continue executing PM, and equipment failures

continue to occur. If a PM procedure does not address the prevention or detection of a specificfailure, then why do we do it?

Number 2:

Work Procedures for Corrective Maintenance (restoring to a maintainable state). PM,Lubrication, and Operator Care are written in a manner that does not address Variation caused by

humans. If a procedure is not written to the lowest level of the people performing the work with

the specifications, standards, procedures (step by step), then you have major Variation and youwonder why you have failures! Let's face the fact, humans do not have an unlimited or infallible

memory, so effective procedures and the following of these procedures are critical. No excuses

accepted unless you enjoy living in a reactive world.

Number 3:

Managing with metrics which drive the right behavior. I have had people tell me they can not

measure Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) or PM Labors vs Emergency Labor Hours,

Percent of Assets with No Identifiable Defect. I know everyone has an excuse, so we don't knowwhere we are until we have a ship wreck. If you are managing with Lagging Metrics, such as

cost, you have a problem because we need to be measuring everything before it, which impacts

cost, and share a few of those metrics in order to drive the right behavior. I know MTBF is a

lagging metric, but I also know it can drive the right behavior when used properly.

The great industrialist Peter Drucker once stated;

"The problem with management is they are always measuring the wrong thing"


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We are all frustrated with the economic situation which is effecting people'sjobs. I want to tell you friend this situation is only going to get worse before itgets better.

Some companies who operate at a lower cost are driving their sells pricing

down trying to run their competition out of business. Even in government jobs,they are struggling to find a way to operate on less money which will result in

job cuts.

Remember the goal is to drive cost out of your business NOW so you cansave jobs. You may be able to effect your competition and take market sharefrom them.

Here are the first 6 Steps I recommend you take which will result inhigher reliability at a lower cost per unit.

1. Determine which assets you and operations consider critical. Fornow, only identify the top 10%. Establish your criteria for throughput, cost ofdowntime, safety, environmental, and reliability. Once these assets have beenestablished with your operations partner move to the next step.

2. On these top 10% of your critical assets, perform a PM Evaluation. Task allPMs the most critical asset requires and break each PM down to the tasklevel. Evaluate these task to identify them in one of the following catagories:

Non-value added (task does not address a failure mode or regulatoryrequirement)

Not enough detailed information (needs clearer/better steps and/orspecification)

Re-engineer (maybe you need to move a piece of conduit so no onehas to perform this PM)

Assign to operations (if they are standing at that location everyday andcan be given a simple PM which has quantifiable standards on thecheck sheet then it should be performed by an operator)

Assign to Predictive Maintenance (Why shut equipment down to inspectwhen you can use PdM Technology to inspect it - be careful when hiringa contractor to do this for you, make sure they will add value to yourprogram and evaluate them regularly)

Move to the next piece of critical equipment.


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NOTE: If you say you do not have time or the skilled labor to perform any of the above steps call me,seriously, at (USA) 843-725-8378 and I will give you a few ideas which can help or send me an email [email protected]

3. Ensure all work performed on the equipment with the new PMs have workorders written for all work performed on them and that they are codedproperly. If a mechanic or electrician must perform any work, no matter howsmall, you want a work order written. THIS IS A MUST, NO DEVIATIONS.

4. Measure the effectiveness of the equipment with new PMs. Measure PMlabor hour (yes, labor hours) against Emergency labor hours and trend byweek on the same graph. Post this graphy where everyone can see. You'd besuprised what a positive motivator this is!

5. Measure effectiveness of all equipment in the process using Mean Time

Between Failure. This is done by performing the following; dividing thenumber of failures (# of emergency work orders) into time. Example: Divide 3(emergency Work Orders) into 24 hours = MTBF of 8. Post this for the totalline and post the information for each piece of equipment on the line in youroffice and in the operations managers office. If you want my "MTBF UsersGuide" send me an email [email protected] I will email you acopy.

6. Begin developing work orders with steps (procedures), specifications, andstandards (basic at first) for all critical equipment work. Assign a maintenance

person 2 hours a morning to assist your planners - they can help to developeffective work procedures. (If you do not have a planner contact me directly so I can provide youideas how to solve this issue.) The goal here is to develop correctivemaintenance work orders that are consistently repleatable to standards orspecifications. If done properly, this will significanlty reduce your self inducedfailures.

Understand what I have given you are basicshort term steps. Once you feelyou have accomplished these steps and increased throughput and reducedcost let me know and I will provide you advice on the next steps to take.

"If you say you cannot perform all these steps, you are right, if you say youcan perform all these steps, you are right. What do you think?"

Why RCM does not Work?
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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It has been almost 30 years since Stanley Nowlan and Howard Heap

published "Reliability Centered Maintenance", the

ground-breaking study that changed maintenance forever.

Yet myth, mystery and confusion about RCM still abound. So let's

begin with the basic truths.

RCM Made Simple

To paraphrase author John Moubray, RCM is a process that determines

what must be done to ensure that an asset does what its supposed to

do. It is a decision-making process that is applicable to

virtually any plant, system or equipment.

RCM's roots go back to the early 1960's, when the commercial

airline companies were considering buying the new jumbo jet, the

Boeing 747.

At the time, the airlines religiously practiced time-based

preventive maintenance. Why? Because the conventional wisdom was

that equipment wears out over time. So that meant taking planes

out of service for maintenance every 1,000, 5,000 or 10,000 hours.

But the problem with the 747's was the amount of maintenance

specified by federal regulators was three times more than the

maintenance required for Boeing 707's. That meant more time in

maintenance, more time out of service, and a huge disruption to

operations.

Clearly, the airlines' traditional approach to maintenance would

not be economically feasible for the new jumbo jets.

So the airlines had two choices: Either buy a larger fleet of

planes or develop a more economical approach to maintenance.

That's why United Airlines led a task force to re-evaluate the

concept of preventive maintenance and determine the most economic

strategy, without compromising safety. The result was the process

that we now know as RCM, which was successfully employed on the 747

and all subsequent jet aircraft.

Who Developed RCM

United, along with and Boeing Aircraft Corporation, were the early

pioneers of RCM. Other airlines also considering buying the new

747's joined the task force and contributed to the process.

But it was Boeing and United who took the lead in developing a

logical, rational approach to maintenance that would also be


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acceptable to the federal regulators.

In 1976, the U.S. Department of Defense contracted with United to

publish how airlines develop maintenance programs. The result was

"Reliability Centered Maintenance", a landmark 495-page report by

Stanley Nowlan and Howard Heap, which described the RCM methodology

developed for the Boeing 747, Douglas DC-10 and Lockheed 1011.

(Nowlan was the Director of Maintenance Analysis for United; Heap

was United's Manager of Maintenance Program Planning.)

In 1978, the Defense Department placed the report in the public

domain for use by anyone interested in it.

How RCM Revolutionized Maintenance

The key to RCM was abandoning the philosophy of

"preserve-equipment" in favor of "preserve-function." Simply put,equipment became the means to an end, not the end in itself.

In addition, Nowlan and Heap concluded that a maintenance policy

based on operating age would have little, if any, impact on failure

rates. Thus, applying time-based maintenance on equipment which

has no "wear-out" pattern was futile. This forced a change in

philosophy from, "It wasn't broke, but we fixed it anyway" to "If

it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Nowlan and Heap also concluded that:

- Time-based maintenance works only for a small percentage of

components, and then only when there is solid information on their

"wear-out" characteristics.'

- Condition based maintenance is the most-preferred option. That

means monitoring, observing and taking non-intrusive actions, such

as lubricating and cleaning, until a condition signals that

corrective action is necessary

- Run-to-failure is a viable tactic in situations when there is no

safety and little economic impact.

- In a significant number of situations, the very act of maintenance

itself causes subsequent failure of the equipment.

- Non-intrusive maintenance tasks should be used instead of intrusive

maintenance whenever possible. In other words, don't do any

maintenance, except monitoring and non-intrusive sustaining

actions, until condition directs intrusive corrective action.


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RCM Pitfalls

In the last 40 years, no better method than RCM has been found for

determining what maintenance should be performed. Four

statistically significant studies have confirmed the validity of

RCM.

Yet, in a survey conducted by Reliabilityweb.com in 2005, some of

the dirty little secrets about RCM were revealed. For example:

"Mining, like all industries, wants results right away, not in 6

months or a year. The classical RCM process is too time and

resource intense."

"RCM is a great tool but very resource intensive."

"100% reliability is extremely expensive, difficult to attain, and

not necessarily the right answer."

"RCM is misunderstood to be software."

"In the beginning, it was hard. And it is still a challenge to

steer the mind-set toward more condition-based maintenance than

time-based."

"We always ran into the problem with implementation. In the few

places where we implemented it successfully, it was at the

maintenance level. And recognition for it was non-existent."

"The system is very strong but too high level ..."

The truth is, there are many pitfalls in RCM. But few get revealed

when an RCM project fails. You see, nobody wants to write an

article or present a paper at a conference which reveals how money

was wasted and great visions were never realized.

So next time, in part two, we'll uncover one of the most common

mistakes that leads to false starts, dead ends and sour tastes

about RCM.

Until then,

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