14 JUNE 2017 • FOGHORN FOGHORNFOCUS: OPERATIONS point to which systems are costing the most money to support. 2. Simply discuss, with your main- tenance staff, which systems take the most time, resources and do not function as required frequently. Even if you have excellent main- tenance data and can identify the problems systems with Pareto analysis, I recommend you also have a dis- cussion with the maintenance staff. Getting them involved early will help when it comes time to develop and implement solutions. A highly effective approach to resolving recurring machinery failure problems is to implement condition monitoring and conditioned based maintenance. Why? Organizations make better decisions if the decisions are based on good data. Condition monitoring is all about collecting data that will allow an organization to only Figure 4: A sample screen for an easy to use and inexpensive condition monitoring software. do the maintenance it needs to accom- plished and will provide time to plan maintenance that will disrupt opera- tions. A sample screen for an easy to use and inexpensive condition moni- toring software is provided above (Figure 4). As you can see, the color coded high level indication panels provide the users with a quick way to review whether or not the condition of the machinery is satisfactory (green), needs conditioned based maintenance soon (yellow/amber) or needs to be secured immediately to prevent a cata- strophic failure (red). As can be seen in the lowest box, each parameter being monitored is automatically trended and compared to set points for con- ditions that require action (yellow/ amber) or (red). Implementation of a project to resolve a “low hanging fruit” type problem will provide an early and rel- atively easy victory on the journey to improving your maintenance program. It will help build confidence with the staff that the new program will work and deliver the maximum benefit in terms of improved reliability and reduced future maintenance costs. Most organizations that are ready to implement condition monitoring and a conditioned-based maintenance program will already be successfully implementing a planned maintenance program. A planned maintenance program can result in the main- tained assets being fairly reliable and available particularly when compared to a reactive maintenance program. So, why take the time and effort to implement condition monitoring and a conditioned based maintenance? • It reduces the number of human maintenance and repair interven- tions, which will reduce the number of failures. • It provides the time to plan main- tenance interventions that interfere less with operations. • It reduces maintenance costs. • The resulting increased asset avail- ability can result in needing fewer assets. HSC CODE ANNEX 10 ISO 9001:2008 Proud supplier of the New York Citywide Ferry Project