Maintenance - Roadmap to Reliability: 1, #2

By Rolly Angeles

This is volume 2 on a series of book I wrote on World Class Maintenance Management - The 12 Disciplines.  This book depicts the life and struggle of maintenance in seeking better ways and means to improve the equipment and assets' Reliability. The author shares his experience on how to achieve such a feat. Transitioning from a reactive to a proactive maintenance stage is not an easy task, but it is not also an impossible task.  Some highlights of this book include:

 

- JIPM (Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance) Criteria on Planned Maintenance

- Actual Report submitted to JIPM on TPM Planned Maintenance

- Actual Planned Maintenance Results

- Assessment Questionnaire on the 12 Disciplines on World Class Maintenance

- Contains quizzes at the end of each chapter to gauge the comprehension of the reader

- Detailed explanation on the Preparatory Phase of Planned Maintenance

- Detailed explanation on the 4 Phases of Planned Maintenance

- Survey on the Top 10 Problems on Preventive Maintenance

- Important Lessons on Implementing TPM and more.  

The meaning of the word maintains simply to preserve our equipment and assets. And we can only preserve our assets if maintenance is equipped with the right knowledge on how to perform their jobs right the first time around. I have written this book to reach out to industries in search of discovering ways to improve not only their equipment and assets but also their maintenance human resources. Remember that maintenance is not a department; it is not a function or any organization, but rather maintenance is humble and down-to-earth human being; hence, let us provide them with the respect that they truly deserve because that is all they ask for. The message of this book is simple and straightforward. There is no better way to start the journey to Reliability than to go back to the basics and address these very small problems in our plant. Big problems, unplanned breakdowns, and catastrophic failures are just an accumulation of small problems that have always been ignored in the first place. Maintenance is always shared responsibility for operators and maintenance working together in complete harmony. It will be difficult for maintenance to transition from a reactive to a proactive mode if operators will not be involved in doing maintenance since maintenance is always shared responsibility for operators and maintenance

This book explains how to proceed with the 4 Phases of Planned Maintenance and how to integrate RCM into the TPM process. It also covers the importance of Autonomous Maintenance and Spare Parts Management which is believed to be the missing link theory on any reliability and maintenance strategy. Chapter 11 is a classic case study on what maintenance can achieve if there is a clear roadmap to follow. The last chapter states that maintenance is just human like you and me. What is important is not to blame them for every failure in the plant but for both operations and maintenance to work together on the problem. Many industries are looking for a structured and detailed approach to improving their maintenance asset and resources. This book provides that level of information. Each chapter begins with a quote on the wisdom of maintenance and will be a quiz for you to answer at the end of each chapter.

The author shares his experience on how to achieve such a feat. Transitioning from a reactive to a proactive maintenance stage is not an easy task, but it is not also an impossible task. The author believes that the key to everything is educating the maintenance people on what maintenance is all about

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rolly Angeles
• Release date: Jun 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201897734

Book preview

M.R.R. Book Review

IT IS VERY MUCH REALLY noticeable that Mr. Rolly Angeles had gone through the basic maintenance experience and had given his heart to his job.  He knows the subject deeply. From Gopal Chunhun. PIPAVAV, Gujarat India

First, I want to thank you, Sir Rolly, for giving me this very rare opportunity to comment in your book and have my comment in print.  At first, I was wondering where this book would lead me.  Your quote, changing a system means changing a culture, captured my attention.  So as I read, I already knew I need to finish reading this book.  I can relate to most of what was illustrated, stated, and examples in this book.  They are all true and happening.  A reality I dreamed of having a kind of maintenance organization such as those described.  My only worry is that I am not in the position to implement it.  This kind of approach should indeed be from top to bottom.  No support from upper management means you'll end up with nothing.  I am a maintenance guy and always proud to be one.  But it is great to know somebody that dedicates too much time and adheres to improve the lives of maintenance people like Rolly Angeles. From Darwin Abragante, Level 2 Thermographer, Analog Devices Gen. Trias,

This book is easy to read (take it from a guy who is a selective reader), and the flow of thought is smooth and relatable to maintenance, production, and quality people.  The book provides general and specific inputs that should be considered in preparing a maintenance roadmap for an organization.  The author, who is a maintenance guy, a facilitator, and a trainer, shares his vast experience in the actual maintenance task, implementation of maintenance strategy, and analysis on maintenance management issues.  This book has a well-established link from the initial book that Rolly released.  The way the book was written is just like having Rolly in front of you, explaining with passion the different topics about maintenance strategies.  This book is well written.  The TPM-PM implementation and TPM lessons shared by Rolly give the reader of this book a glimpse and guidance on what needs to be done, plus the pitfalls that need to be avoided.  As each organization forms and develops its own maintenance culture, this book is a good reference to have. From Charles D. Mendoza, Sr. Quality Improvement Engineer/TQM/TPM, S.T. Microelectronics Inc.

Chapter 1

Problems Industries Face on Maintenance

1.1: Do Industries Know What Maintenance Is All About?

IN MOST CASES, I TEND to say this repeatedly in my training classes, like a broken soundtrack, that most of the time, industries do not really understand the role maintenance play in their organization.  The problem is deeply rooted down in their organization.  If we speak about the process, manufacturing, assembly, automotive, pharmaceutical, electronic, or a semiconductor plant, for instance, priority is given to quality.  When you visit their plant, almost every corner on the wall hung a poster on what they vision themselves to be in the future, and that is to be the best in terms of their product, quality, and cycle time.  They want to be the fastest in terms of delivery by exceeding every single competitor in their field and to exceed every single customer expectation because their line of the business depends on them.

On the other hand, if we speak about construction, mining, airline, shipping, foundry, oil, and gas industries, quality is not the priority, but safety.  This will be their main concern, and all employees are inclined to follow every single guideline, procedure, policy, and protocol on safety.  The bigger the plant and number of employees, then the more people are deployed on safety and quality.  These industries think that it is the right thing to do for them.  I even know of a plant with more than 200 people in its quality department alone, which are deployed in almost all plant areas.  I am not saying that it is a good or a bad thing, but what I would like to stress out and emphasize in this book is that doing too much quality and safety is not the same thing as improving the reliability of the equipment.  And giving it some thoughts performing too much safety or quality can end up doing more police work in the plant by highlighting every single non-conformance they can audit, which may have a detrimental effect on the reliability of the equipment.  So the question is, which industries focus on reliability?  I can only think of the power plant industry because the consequence of its failure is simply different from that of other plants.

Let me explain this matter with an example.  A quality auditor in a manufacturing plant conducts an internal audit on the production floor and finds out that only twenty out of fifty activities on the quarterly Preventive Maintenance have been performed on the equipment.  The auditor slaps a non-conformance ticket to the maintenance staff for missing out thirty activities for that quarter, but what the quality auditor does not know is that their Preventive Maintenance group had been trained on the different patterns of failure and learned that placing too many activities on their Preventive Maintenance tasks will just end up in a lot of infant mortality failures which they experienced in the past.  The maintenance decided to skip some of their Preventive Maintenance activities, which are deemed irrelevant, mostly on replacement and overhauling, but the quality person thinks he has done the right thing because it was his job to do that in the first place.

FIGURE 1.1: WHAT'S the Priority of Your Industry

Every industry has standard operating procedures, specifications, rules, policies, and protocols to follow on almost everything they do.  Every industry also wants to adapt change, so they can do better in the future.  To change, industries also need to update some policies.  It is not an easy task to do this since some of these policies have already existed since the very beginning of time and may take more than three or more approving bodies who will ask them why they need to change this in the first place.

I taught in a plant in South Africa last 2012 when an announcement was handed down to me that my training would be interrupted and delayed for an hour for a safety meeting where most of the maintenance delegates would also be involved in the meeting.  I was lucky they did not kick me out of the room.  They allowed me to sit down and listen to their safety meeting, in which I practiced my right to remain silent and allow the safety officer to speak without any line of interrogation on my part.  One of the main concerns highlighted by the safety officer was that maintenance conducts repair without the proper work permit or job order.  Every time maintenance was caught working without a job order, safety people penalized them by giving them a non-conformance ticket.  After the meeting, I talked to the maintenance people and asked why they failed to comply.  They smiled and told me that in most cases, it would take an hour or more to get a job order because the Boss is not around or perhaps the Boss was in a meeting somewhere in the plant, and they said that if we comply with every single safety protocol, then they lose a lot of maintenance man-hours with the people thereby prolonging the downtime.  Sometimes the person who needs to sign the job order is not around, and the cost of downtime for the plant is high.  My point is very simple, instead of thinking about how to comply with every single safety issues and deviations, why don't we also try to solve on how to lessen the time from hours to minutes on how to obtain a job order in the fastest possible time by automating the process or why not give the non-conformance ticket to the person who delayed the job order because his signature was required and he was not around that caused the delay, and there will always be the cost on prolonging the downtime of the equipment.  Now, who is right on this, the safety officer or the maintenance?  I will leave that good judgment to the reader.

If we study human error, some are unintended, known as slips and lapses, and those which are intended, which are categorized as mistakes and violations.  For violations, they can be grouped into routine violations, acts of sabotage, and exceptional violations.  And both quality and safety people should know what an exceptional violation is all about.  There are cases where we need to flex the rules and S.O.P. a little bit.  A driver from a funeral will drive the vehicle at a very slow pace causing traffic to build up, while an ambulance driver will drive the car very fast since the driver knows that it is a matter of life or death situation for the person he is carrying with him.  I have not heard of an instance where a traffic police officer gave a ticket to an ambulance driver for overspeeding.  Hence, if one of your friends suffers from a heart attack and drives the car to the nearest hospital while the sign on the road says a maximum speed of 40 kilometers per hour, we can simply disregard and exceed the speed because it is an exceptional violation.  We are violating the rules for a very good reason, which is to save a life.  I hope I make some sense of this.  We do not want any dispute or argument with quality or safety people since what we all want in life is for the good of the plant, but if there will be some problems and repercussions in the end, then perhaps both maintenance and other groups can work out in harmony for the plant to run better and more effective.  My message here is straightforward and simple.  Lines of communication between quality, safety, and reliability people should always be open, and both quality and safety people should also understand what reliability is all about so that safety, quality, and maintenance people can work hand in hand in maintaining the reliability and integrity of their assets.  These people should sing just one song.  Perhaps a Rolling Stones song would be nice.  I believe that this is what everyone wants in the organization, but the problem is that they take on different routes and sing different songs simultaneously.  And if you mix them up at the same time, then what you've got is noise.  By understanding what maintenance is all about, people can make better judgments during audits.

In one automotive industry, one delegate approached me and told me if their industry was doing the right thing, so I asked him what his concern was.  He told me that every day when maintenance reports for the shift, they were given a form for them to update on an hourly basis on what equipment they have repaired.  If one person submitted 10 sheets full of repair work, and the other guy submitted an empty sheet, then who do you think performed well in their line?  In some manufacturing plant operations, people yell if maintenance is not visible on the production floor even if there are no problems whatsoever.  Whether a breakdown happens or not, they want maintenance to be there on the equipment.  If I were the maintenance on sight, I would not leave this operations guy and just stare at him.  When he reacts and tells me to look for problems, I will just tell him, "Boss, I am looking at the problem, and you are the problem.

If you take a look at what industries call their maintenance people, you will usually hear some common reactive words such as technicians, mechanic, electrician, sustaining, etc.  These words have one meaning.  Their work will be to repair the failure when it happens, usually making the industry reactive.  Ninety percent of their work will be spent on troubleshooting, repair, and fixing breakdowns, while the remaining ten percent will be to do any other task as may be assigned to them from time to time.  I have a friend.  When he was new in the plant, it took him 4 hours or more to replace a bearing that failed.  Today, he is in his 15th year of service in this plant, and he told me that if a bearing fails, this time, it will just take him 15 minutes or less to repair.  Is this a good or a bad thing?  If you say that's good, then ask yourself why he is good at repairing.  It is because the bearing simply keeps on failing.  Sad to say that this is not the role and function of maintenance; you see, maintenance and mechanic are two different people.  A mechanic will perform repair until he becomes good and efficient on doing it, while maintenance will likewise troubleshoot and repair the problem, but if the problem persists or recurs, it is now time for them to use their most gifted tool, which is their brain and start analyzing the problem.  To be precise, the evidence on why the bearing failed will always be visible on the inner and outer raceway of the bearing, but the problem is when it fails, we throw the evidence away and repair the failure until we become good at it.  If I can state it for the record in a much simpler way, a mechanic mostly uses his hands in fixing failures while maintenance uses his brain more in analyzing failures.  If you come to think of it on what is really the role maintenance plays in an organization, it should be doing maintenance activities before a failure happens and not after the failure occurs.  Remember that when your maintenance people become really good at repairing or fixing breakdowns, then something is definitely wrong with your maintenance organization.  The Chinese simply call this insanity.

It is really quite tough and challenging to handle a maintenance organization nowadays, but I will never steer you wrong, good people, that the real role of these industry's humble servants is simply to preserve and maintain their plant and environment.  This cannot happen if most of them are deployed on the right side of failure, which is the reactive side.  Operations people want maintenance to be reactive because this is how they do things around here in the plant, and this type of culture had existed way before World War II since simple equipment existed during those times, so why in the world should I change things if this plant has been working this way since the beginning of time?

In a reactive industry, most maintenance people's work occurs right after a breakdown.  Planning and scheduling are in place, yet when the machine fails without any warning. Maintenance is deployed to repair and fix the problem.  Most maintenance is deployed after a failure occurs.  This always remains the accepted norm of their culture.  Maintenance will always follow this path because this is what the incumbent maintenance people often teach the new ones, and this tradition has been passed on from generation to generation.

FIGURE 1.2: REACTIVE Side of Failure

FIGURE 1.3: PROACTIVE Side of Failure

On a proactive side, when equipment reliability improves, there will be fewer people working on a reactive mode, which is on the right side of failure.  It does not mean that these people will be retired or terminated.  Top management must understand that maintenance is a diversified role and noble profession.  Industries should understand that there are many positions and functions on maintenance that can be filled in besides repairing.  When maintenance and reliability improve, then new doors will open for the maintenance function.

I do not know if industries understand what a maintenance organization looks like or if there is actually a plant or industry that exists with a complete maintenance organization structure, but what I believe is that there are industries and organizations that I have trained in different reliability and maintenance strategies which are now aiming slowly to have a holistic approach in their maintenance organization.  Little by little, these industries are now aiming to have this type of organization because they believe that their plant can run better if most of their maintenance people are deployed on the proactive side of failure.  If the highest person on maintenance in your plant reports directly to the operations manager, who is a non-technical person whose brain only thinks about output, then the vision of having a maintenance organization like this can never happen and can only exist in mind.  If the operations manager has some forehand knowledge of reliability or if the highest person on maintenance has the same level as the highest person in operations, then this type of maintenance organization is a real possibility.

FIGURE 1.4: WORLD CLASS Maintenance Structure

Being proactive simply means being one or more steps ahead of failure.  When equipment reliability improves, then there will be fewer people working on a reactive or fire-fighting mode.  Last 2009, I was privileged to be one of the resource speakers at a maintenance conference by a large training organization here in the Philippines.  My topic was about Root Cause Failure Analysis.  Before, my slot was another speaker discussing lean manufacturing.  In one of his slides, he said that before implementing lean, there were 36 people from maintenance, and after implementing lean manufacturing, there was only six maintenance left.  When one of the delegates raised his hand and asked what happened with the 30 maintenance people, he smiled and replied that management retired them.  In my mind, this guy does not know what maintenance is all about, nor the different functions and roles maintenance plays in an organization.  Top management must understand that maintenance is a diversified function.  Remember that there are no industries on this planet that can run without the maintenance function.  These people should understand that there are many positions on maintenance that should exist and be filled in on industries.

I hope that one day, industries finally realize what the role maintenance plays in their industry and that people from different departments should work together in harmony and balance their priorities not only on safety and quality but as well as on reliability itself for the benefit of their industry.  I believe that most, if not all, problems industry experience are man-made; therefore, if man created the problem, then let man solve this problem.

1.2: Maintenance – A Scapegoat for Operation Problems

FOR MANY INDUSTRIES and organizations, the maintenance department simply does not exist.  Instead, they rephrase or change their organization's name to Equipment Engineering, which is a very nice name.  Indeed, even though not all people in that department are engineers.  I recall when I was just starting my teaching business; I was part of a training group in the Philippines that conducts regular training on semiconductor industries.  They change my courses from maintenance and reliability training to Equipment Engineering Trainings because that was the trend, and semiconductor industries prefer to use that term.  They simply wanted to avoid the word maintenance because, to them, the word maintenance connotes a negative word.  But the funny part is that they refer to their people as technicians, mechanics, electricians, repairmen, sustaining, which is reactive in the first place.  If industries understand maintenance, they will not be calling them these names since the function of these people does not only happens right after a failure occurs, and this is what is happening to most industries, especially in manufacturing.  My apologies for being rude, but if this is a marathon race, manufacturing is always on the last of the race to reliability because their priority is on productivity.  Being reactive creates more overtime for these people, which I think maintenance like because of the extra bucks, but the downfall is that pressure is intense, mostly from production people, which I think they hate.  After all, they are not proud to be called maintenance because industries perceive maintenance often as an evil and neglected word and are always considered a cost center.  As a result, too much fire-fighting and cost-cutting are going on.  Basic equipment condition is frequently neglected on their assets.  Today industries suffer from a high cost of doing maintenance because of a lack of a structured and effective Planned Maintenance system in place.  This means that if it takes 100 dollars to manufacture a product, in mining industries, around 20 to 50 percent will be the cost of doing maintenance.  Recent surveys on maintenance management in different types of industries indicate that one-third or 33 cents out of every dollar of all maintenance costs is wasted as a result of unnecessary or improperly carried out maintenance, which results in ineffective maintenance management that represents a billion-dollar loss per year or even more.  Put it this way, most Preventive Maintenance is done regardless of the condition of the equipment because Predictive Maintenance simply does not exist in their plant.  PM includes risks because it will replace parts and components which are still in working condition.  Why, the reason is simple, Just in Case.

The problem with most industries is that they insist that all breakdowns can either be prevented or eliminated; hence too much focus is given on doing Preventive Maintenance on their equipment and assets.  Most maintenance managers admit the fact that even with a sound Preventive Maintenance program placed in their plant, they seem to realize that failures are inevitable and do happen.  They often strike without warning or when they are least expected to occur in the first place.  When this happens, most maintenance managers, together with operations people, discuss what to do to prevent the failure, and the default will be to place activity in their never-ending lists of Preventive Maintenance.  Hence, the list of Preventive Maintenance activities never stops increasing, and the pressure on doing it grows minute by minute, day by day.  Most industries think that this is the right thing to do, but this is where they get it all wrong.  The traditional thinking is that all parts will eventually wear out, so the need to schedule equipment will be done for every asset in their plant.  But when the schedule comes for a Preventive Maintenance, PM will be waived because operations will simply not allow maintenance to do their stuff since their line of thinking is that all that matters is just one thing and one thing alone, which is output, nothing more, nothing less.

Remember that equipment is not like a television set that when you plug it, then it plays without any further need for intervention.  In equipment, this will be different since there are mechanical parts that move, and every single part that moves will be subject to stress.  Once the stress exceeds the strength, then wear occurs, and since their scheduled Preventive Maintenance is missed out, more breakdowns increase and strike us right in the face at a time we least expect them to happen, so maintenance will be left with no option but to put out fire every time.  They are busy recuperating and troubleshooting their equipment.  If a spare part is affected, most often, the part is unavailable in the storeroom, and maintenance is left with two options, which are either to cash advance and buy the part outside in excess while they keep the rest of the parts to themselves or simply cannibalize other parts on idle equipment that are not used since operations are now pressuring them to get the line going at all cost.  Now once again, the equipment is running with some Band-Aid fixed therapy, and these people will attempt once again to get the equipment for Preventive Maintenance, but operations will again deny them of that chance since they need to cope with their backlog and this humble maintenance will be working for very long hours with more pressure on them just to keep the asset running.  As a result, there will be a massive amount of breakdowns and failures suffered from their assets while the cost of doing maintenance increases.  The funny thing is everyone knows the reason for the high cost of doing maintenance, but instead, the Boss will question no one but you on why maintenance cost is high, and they want you to provide them a very detailed answer for that.  Operations people are now looking for a scapegoat, an escape from their failure, and there is only one thing that they can think of, which is our humble and down-to-earth maintenance people themselves.  The morale for maintenance declines, and life goes on for them.

FIGURE 1.5: DOMINO Effect of Being Reactive

In a reactive environment, most maintenance people work occurs right after a failure or simply when a breakdown happens.  Repairs and fixes are done at the quickest possible time because if repairs are prolonged, there will be shadows at the back, whispering to their ear how much more time.  There will be some planning and scheduling efforts, which are well set in place, but even with all these done, the machine still fails.  Mostly this will always be the accepted norm of a plant's culture, and maintenance gets a pat on the back for being reactive or for coming to the plant very late at night fixing the equipment where everyone has given up on how to make it run again.  This is always what the incumbent maintenance teaches to their new ones.  They have been doing this since the beginning of time.  Training is a complete waste of time and money for these industries since they had existed with this line of culture.  This is how they do things in their plant on a day-to-day basis.  They do not believe in the use of any Predictive Maintenance instruments or any other form of non-destructive diagnostic tools since management just thinks of them as expensive things and some fancy nice to have features for the maintenance function, or simply they have existed for a very long time without these instruments.  What I cannot comprehend in my thick skull is why do all international airports have infrared thermography in place to scan people, and not all industries can afford to have one?  The truth of the matter is that not all failures can be prevented.  For the record, not all breakdowns can be captured by doing Preventive Maintenance.  In fact, increasing the number of activities on Preventive Maintenance will simply increase the chances of infant mortality failures. It's as simple as that.  Many failure modes will provide signs and symptoms that it is on the verge of failing.  They can be predicted with precision accuracy with the use of these non-destructive Condition-Based or Predictive Maintenance instruments.

In reactive industries, the longer they can tolerate the pressure from operations people, the better chance for maintenance to stay longer in this type of industry.  They just adopt Newton's law.  Whatever they hear with their ears must come out.   There are many instances where the Boss will call you and ask you for the root cause of the problem.  You just cannot tell him that the Boss is the root cause of the problem unless you still want to be employed in the first place (even if your Boss is really the root cause of the problem, you need to think of other causes) and the lamest excuse for maintenance is wear and tear.  The Boss will tell you to make sure it does not happen again.  The default will be to add an activity in the never-ending lists on their Preventive Maintenance.  The saying goes true if you cannot change them, just join them.

Changing the name of your maintenance organization to other fancy cool names to get rid of the word maintenance makes it sound really nice, but technically, it does not really make your maintenance organization more effective or proactive at all.  I will still stick to the word maintenance because this is who we really are in the first place.  Maintenance should not be considered a cost center, but it can be transformed into a profit center if both operations and maintenance people truly understand what maintenance is all about and the role they play in industries.  Maintenance is one area of the organization where cost can definitely be saved, and I hope and pray that one day industries finally realized this message.

Industries that do not understand maintenance best practices will always have one option in cutting costs, and that is to retire or terminate people.  Maintenance only becomes famous when production people highlight them for a breakdown for not hitting the production of the day even if they did not cause the breakdown in the first place.  They are always considered as scapegoats and will always be blamed for every single downtime on the equipment.  Industries should understand that instead of blaming and putting fingers on maintenance, every time equipment fails is not the right thing to do.  Instead of blaming them all the time, why not just sit down with them and work in harmony on solving the problem together.  Industries must understand that maintenance is not only for the maintenance people; it is always shared responsibility for both maintenance and operations in industries.

1.3: The Most Important Reason to Maintain

THE WORD MAINTENANCE is not synonymous with repair or troubleshooting.  If we look at the meaning of the word maintain in Oxford Dictionary, it simply means cause to continue, while Webster Dictionary will tell you that maintain is to keep in the existing state.  Maintain simply means to preserve something.  On the other hand, maintenance ensures that physical asset continues to do what the users want them to do.  With that said in mind, we maintain only the things that the users use and are important to them, nothing more, nothing less.  I used to have an Erickson's cell phone, and my kids always tell me to buy a touch screen, which I am not comfortable with.  I used my phone to text, call, and check the time.  That is all I need on my mobile phone.  It also has a built-in camera that is no longer functioning.

I have never used that camera since the day I purchased it, and now it is no longer working, so it really does not matter to me if that function is not working.  If you work in a very cold environment or in a country with below freezing temperature and one day your car air-conditioning fails, the question is, will you have it fixed immediately?  I guess not, but if the heater of your car fails, then you will waste no time to have it fixed immediately.

On the contrary, if you work in the Middle East, where the temperature can reach 40 to 50 degrees centigrade, and the heater of your car fails, my question, will you have it fixed?  I guess not, but if the air-conditioning of your car fails, then you will have it fixed immediately, while others rely too heavily on recommendations of their OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), which leaves them a large amount of non-moving parts in their storeroom.  The message on maintenance is simple.  We only maintain what the users of the asset want it to do in its present operating condition.

When we set out to maintain something, the question to ask is what is the existing state that we wish to preserve, and what is it that we wish to cause to continue.  Therefore, when we set out to maintain an asset, it is because we want it to function properly.  These users expect their equipment to fulfill a specific set of functions because it is what the users want it to do in the first place.  And for industries, the question will always be asked why do we need to maintain our assets.  From an operations point of view, we maintain so that operations can push through with production.  From a maintenance standpoint, we maintain so that we can preserve and take care of our equipment, but basically, the most important reason why we need to maintain is that there will be times when the consequences of failure are far more devastating than the failure itself.  We maintain because there are failures that far exceed the failure itself.  I hope industries realize that this is the most important reason why we need to maintain our equipment and assets.  If we can just provide our people with the right amount of knowledge and education on the right way to maintain their assets and equipment, then perhaps we can sleep better at night without any further interruption from the plant asking us to report back to work in the middle of the night for a failure that nobody can seem to fix except you.  I always believe that all breakdowns are man-made, either from how the equipment is designed since there will always be some weak points in the structure, the way how it was commissioned, the way how it was being operated, or mostly the way how the asset was maintained in the first place.

1.4: Survey on Top Problems of Preventive Maintenance Revisited

LAST MAY 2008, I CONDUCTED a survey with a few of my subscribers from maintenance.  The instructions were to select at least three problems from the list they thought they experienced most on Preventive Maintenance.  The survey conducted was random, and the results, however, did not establish some trend after all. I continued this survey on some of my courses, and I think that at this point in writing, we can now see a trend as to what the real problems we face right now on Preventive Maintenance, and I would like to share with the readers the results of that survey.  To begin with, let me again list the Top 10 Problems on Preventive Maintenance with a brief explanation of what the problem is all about.

1) Add on PM checklists syndrome - When the equipment was new, and the OEM had completed commissioning the equipment in the plant many years ago, they left you with some activities on maintenance that needed to be performed regularly from time to time. The activities included some inspection, parts replacement, scheduled overhauls that need to be done in a scheduled and timely fashion.  But even if you complied religiously with these activities, unexpected and unplanned breakdowns still happened all the time.  When the boss’s attention was finally caught down by these breakdowns, his only question to you Is this included in your Preventive Maintenance activities?  And when you said no, then the boss told you to add them to your unending list of PM activities.  In short, when the machine was newly commissioned, there were just a few activities to be done on PM, but as time went by, more and more activities have been added up, and the PM list never seemed to stop.  The lamest excuse was when a breakdown occurs; just add this up to the PM activities.

2) Introduction of infant mortality failures - Infant mortality failures are failures that occur right after a major maintenance intervention or Preventive Maintenance on the equipment is performed.  Others refer to this as commissioning failures of start-up failures.  This problem is mostly experienced right after Preventive Maintenance is performed on the equipment, and the operator is having a hard time running the equipment.  Sometimes the operators whisper that if this equipment is not touched by PM, I am sure that this will be up and running.

3) Replacement of parts just to conform to PM specs - Preventive Maintenance uses the JIC concept.  JIT means just in time.  Hence, JIC simply means Just in Case.  Most of the sentiments on maintenance people is when a machine is overhauled, that is the only time they have on this world to replace parts and components that they think are on the verge of failing and need to be replaced.  Their thinking is that if this part fails and the boss questions them if it had been replaced the last outage and you answer no, then you are in big trouble.  Maintenance assumes that the parts they replace are nearing their rupture, but most of the time, the parts they replace are still in working and good condition.  Partly this is what makes maintenance costly.  Why?  Because most of the assumptions made are not right in the first place.  When a part is still in working condition, then it should remain in service.  It’s as simple as that.

4) The case of random failures - Random failures occur in any given period.  It simply means that the probability that an item will fail in any period is the same as it is in any other period.  In short, the parts eventually have no life and can fail at any given time.  One characteristic of random failure is that wear-out age is not known or identifiable.  When failures that occur are random in nature, then this is where Preventive Maintenance will be at its weakest point.  In simple terms, it is not a recommended option, and other tasks to use will either be to run to fail, but this option is only feasible when the consequences of failure are low or some forms of redundancy is in place.  If a run to fail is not valid, then Condition-Based Maintenance or modification takes place.  Sample of random failures includes electronic boards, bulbs, ball-bearings, seals, etc.  Most industries think that Preventive Maintenance can address random failures by doing some forms of scheduled maintenance activities on them, such as regular replacement and overhauls.  Doing these activities will just induce more infant mortality failures in the equipment.  This is where they got it all wrong.

5) Aging workforce - nearing retirement - When good old maintenance, people like the Rolling Stones retire or simply said when industries retire these people, their experience goes with them.  The industry will now hire new fresh and young people with totally no experience on the asset whatsoever because they will be paid much less in terms of salary and benefits.  And because the experience of these people was not captured nor documented when they were still employed, new people tend to experiment on how to repair the failure, and the cycle goes on for generations.  These older people have experienced most of these failures in their equipment since they have stayed with the plant long enough to witness the failures, and most of the time, industries do little or nothing to document how they repair or troubleshoot the failures.

6) Lack of training on the maintenance function - Many say that the people are the company’s greatest asset.  I totally disagree with this statement because the correct way of stating this is that the right people are the company’s greatest asset.  Wrong people are simply called liabilities.  And we can only have the right people if they have the right skills and knowledge to perform their jobs correctly.  Training will always be the foundation and backbone of any cultural change because this is where we acquire knowledge, but sad to note that when cost-cutting is the name of the game most industries play, the number one department to be affected will be training.  In my small firm, I often tell people that maintenance is not only a verb (action word), but maintenance is also a noun.  Meaning maintenance are people in the first place.  When we invest in the people, then these people will do the right thing doing their jobs.  But sad to say, that maintenance is always busy caught up on repairing and troubleshooting their equipment; hence they simply have no time for training.  I am also saddened to hear that when I conduct in-house training to industries, many say that this is the first time they attended a training of this kind, and these people have stayed with the plant for more than 10 years or even longer.

7) Still reactive and a lot of failures even with a sound PM program - When I ask good maintenance people if they are satisfied with the results of their Preventive Maintenance activities, almost all will say no.  Despite their most noble efforts on maintenance, failures, and breakdowns still happen. Industries have their own way of doing Preventive Maintenance, yet most are not satisfied with the outcome of their activities.  Industries must understand that doing Preventive Maintenance includes risks because there is always an assumption that everything dismantled will be put back together in the first place.  Overhauls are prone to human errors.  Hence, despite the very best efforts on Preventive Maintenance, failures still happen

Reviews for Maintenance - Roadmap to Reliability

[Bambang Sujianto · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Exellent book by an expert. I will try to read all and implement it in my factory