12 JUNE 2017 • FOGHORN FOGHORNFOCUS: OPERATIONS Table 1: Process Discipline. Table 2: Maintenance Program Approach. MAINTENANCE PROGRAM AREAS UNSATISFACTORY (1) POOR (2) AVERAGE (3) GOOD (4) EXCELLENT (5) PROCESS DISCIPLINE Most key processes not documented; personnel use own direction to execute tasks. 30-50% key processes documented; informal understanding on how to accomplish work. 50-75% of key processes documented; processes are usually followed. 100% processes documented; deviation from process is unusual. 100% key processes documented; processes are audited & process improvement system implemented. degrade. At a certain point in time the change in performance is detectable. The goal of condition monitoring is to measure at intervals that are one third the length of the time from initiation of a failure to the time the equipment will fail. For example, if it takes a bearing three months from the point where its condition starts to deteriorate to the point where it will fail we want to monitor the condition of that bearing monthly. If this is done, the mainte- nance team will have at least one to two months to schedule corrective mainte- nance during a time that is least disrup- tive to operations. If your maintenance staff does not have an evaluation tool, or is not up to creating an evaluation tool, then the best approach is to find a reputable consultant to get assistance. It is important to keep in mind that the goal of any maintenance organization should be to not only improve reli- ability and reduce maintenance costs, but also be become as self-sufficient as possible in the process. There will likely always be tasks that require outside technical assistance, but you want to find a consultant that will teach your organization how to progress toward being a world-class main- tenance organization inde- pendently. 7 Steps to Improved Maintenance Here are seven steps you can follow that will help your organization improve its maintenance program: 1. Evaluate your mainte- nance organization 2. Ensure your organization has the process discipline required to make the necessary changes 3. Select one of the nine areas of the maintenance organization to make an improvement (preferably an issue that will have high impact and relatively easy to implement – often known as the low hanging fruit) 4. Put together an adequately resourced plan to implement the im- provements 5. Implement improvement plan 6. Evaluate effectiveness of the im- plementation and gather lessons learned 7. Return to step 1 Low Hanging Fruit There are two ways to identify the low hanging fruit (high impact projects). 1. If you have good maintenance cost data, a simple Pareto analysis will MAINTENANCE PROGRAM AREAS UNSATISFACTORY (1) POOR (2) AVERAGE (3) GOOD (4) EXCELLENT (5) MAINTENANCE PROGRAM APPROACH Maintenance Organization is Primarily in a Reactive Maintenance Mode and operations are regularly disrupted by reactive events. Maintenance Organization has a planned maintenance system but experience a significant number of Reactive Maintenance situations that disruption operations. Maintenance Organization has a planned maintenance system but still experiences Reactive Maintenance situations that disruption operations. Maintenance Organization has a reliability centered maintenance system with a strong conditioned based maintenance program; reactive maintenance events are rare. Maintenance Organization has a proactive maintenance system with a through RCM/CBM base and feedback processes that eliminate defects; planning process minimize maintenance impacts on operations. Figure 3: Equipment Degradation Process.