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What reliability improvements are possible within 60 days?

Management is impatient for results and wants to see results as soon as possible and long time horizons are usually not very interesting for them.

Is it possible with the right focus, support and team, to make major reliability improvements within 60 days that show improved production and OEE?

If you had a 60 days charter to focus on one production line where would you begin your efforts to improve it? What kind of team would you assemble?

Posted by Terrence O'Hanlon on Nov 10, 2011 8:01 AM EST

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Vee

Date Posted: Aug 18, 2012 at 6:06 AM

Terry,
I have always believed that relianility is a state of mind. If we can get the operators and maintenance technicians on board, we can get them motivated and work towards improving reliability. The behavior of people brings the fastest changes in reliability, and one that is systainable. Of course they must also be competent, but that is easier to achieve.
I have described my experiences in Chapter 14, page 119 entitled "Building a Reliability Culture in "Case Studies in Maintenance & Reliability: A Wealth of Best Practices, 2012, Industrial Press.NY ISBN-13: 978-0831102210 (previously titled 100 Years in Maintenance).
The process irself is quite simple, a sort of basic 5-Why exercise. But we let the technicians work out the answers to the questions, and not react verbally or through expressions. After about 2 weeks of this repeated questioning (without answers!), they started finding out, by opening the equipment manuals, talking to operators, checking their own work etc. Within about 6 weeks, I could see a reduction in failures and this continued thereadter on its own steam.

If we can change qhat goes on between the ears of people, that is easily the most effective way. Without that, all the RCMs, PdMs, Six Sigmas and other processes will struggle.

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Don Fitchett

Date Posted: Feb 9, 2012 at 10:37 PM

Assemble operators, QC, maintenance and engineering to assess waste. Could be wasted motion/process, wasted time, or both caused by defects. For example quality issues may be detected automatically with high speed vision cameras, so part does not continue through process. As opposed to quality check on finished product. How to spot area of greatest return? Use TDC (true downtime cost) analysis and tracking. So area of greatest cost is first to be addressed by team.

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Sam Pickens

Date Posted: Jan 1, 2012 at 12:22 PM

Had an incident as such which in turn made a positive impact of $1.2mm to their pocketbook almost immediately and a contract for me to do their PdM program.

I was called-in on a problem area. Interview operators, make an outline, gather all data and run a vibration survey - diagnose and provide conclusions. Adopt, implement and success - get a pass to collect $200 and proceed to GO.

It takes the experienced seasoned professional to glean and screen knowing where to focus efforts to provide the quick path to success. Else, your path may be much slower.

King regards,
Sam

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