Thomas Industrial Library

18. Investigate Reliability Engineering

Reliability Engineering is a broad term that includes many engineering tools and techniques. Some common tools are:

Life Cycle Costing. This technique allows companies to know the cost of their equipment from the time it was designed to the time of its disposal.

RCM. Reliability-Centered Maintenance is used to track the types of maintenance activities performed on equipment to insure that they are the correct activities.

FEMA. Failure and Effects Mode Analysis examines the way the equipment is operated and any failures incurred during its operation to find methods of eliminating or reducing the numbers of failures in the future.

Early Equipment Management and Design. This technique takes information about equipment and feeds it back into the design process to insure that any new equipment is designed for maintain ability and operability.

These and other reliability engineering techniques improve equipment performance and reliability help to insure competitiveness.

19. Investigate Financial Optimization

Once the equipment is correctly engineered, the next step is to understand how the equipment or process impacts the financial aspects of the company’s business. Financial optimization considers all costs impacted when equipment decisions are made. For example, when calculating the timing to perform a preventive maintenance task, is the cost of lost production or downtime considered? Are wasted energy costs considered when cleaning heat exchangers or coolers? In this step, the equipment data collected by the company is examined in the context of the financial impact it has on profitability.

20. Are the Tools and the Data Available for Financial Optimization?

Although financial optimization is not a new technique, most companies do not properly utilize it because they do not have the data necessary to make it effective. Some of the data required includes:

MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) for the equipment

MTTR.(Mean Time To Repair) for the equipment

Downtime or lost production costs per hour

A Pareto of the failure causes for the equipment

Initial cost of the equipment

Replacement costs for the equipment

A complete and accurate work order history for the equipment

Without this data, financial optimization can not be properly conducted on equipment. Without the information systems in place to collect this data, a company will never have the accurate data necessary to perform financial optimization.

21. Use Financial Optimization

If the data exists and the information systems are in place to continue to collect the data, then financial optimization should be utilized. With this tool, equipment teams will be able to financially manage their equipment and processes.

22. Evaluate the Success of the Maintenance Management Program

Are the results achieved by maintenance reaching the goals that were set for the improvement program when it was started? If they are not, then the maintenance improvement program needs to be examined for gaps in performance or deficiencies in existing parts of the process. Once weaknesses are found, then steps should be taken to correct or improve these areas.

23. Strive for Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement means never getting complacent. It is the constant self-examination with the focus on how to become the best in the world at the company’s business.

Remember:

Yesterday’s Excellence

Today’s Standard

and

Tomorrow’s Mediocrity

Introduction to Functional Performance Indicators

A function is defined as the activities assigned to, required of, and expected of a person or department. Functional indicators derive their name from the word function. These indicators show how the function is performing. Earlier, this chapter discussed the functions of the traditional maintenance organization. To review, the following is a list of functions required by most maintenance departments.

Preventive Maintenance

Stores and Procurement

Work Flow Systems

Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) and

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Systems

Technical and Interpersonal Training

Predictive Maintenance

Operational Involvement

Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM)

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

Statistical Financial Optimization

Continuous Improvement

Chapters 3 through 13 highlight the 11 main functions of maintenance management. Each chapter begins with a brief overview of the function, followed by common performance indicators used for each function. The strengths and weaknesses of each indicator will be presented. The last section in each chapter covers the eight most common problems leading to low indicators in the function with suggested solutions to each problem.