Metaphysics of Maintenance

Metaphysics

Metaphysics of Maintenance

29 Sep. 2022
07 min read

What if, one day you realise you need to improve your equipment maintenance May these equipment failure losses factored-in to your production plans, revisit them as they may not relevant in near future or at some situations. May the maintenance performances in your industries inspire you to maintains status quo.

How to start with, is the major question. How to start with your maintenance as all element of maintenance seek your attention simultaneously. It is a big question for production plants with their own-kind-maintenance system. As each maintenance system has its own characteristics and features it is quite difficult to get in position to generate solution of problems. Hard wired experiences of people need to be question in the backdrop of your maintenance performances. Find out how your maintenance performances (whatever they may) are supported and how much it generates confidence in maintenance team and other stake holders.

Do the system depends on few personnel. Do your maintenance Cost are optimum and can you explain expenditure on maintenance do good for long terms. Do you have solid plans to avoidance catastrophic issues?

Find out your positions or management policies regarding formal system of managing affairs. How much your management believes in formal systems. It shall not be the case where formal systems looked upon as hinderances to innovation-ecosystems. How do you see concept of Management Tools, Frameworks and Strategies kind of stuff can bring change to your workshop practices, if you are not in agreeable terms with them, there lies all possibilities you are making them of your own to resolving the otherwise external issues. (Sometime making square wheels) And improving your maintenance system is not so difficult. All it required few changes rather reorientation of few aspects of (Only Yours ) organisation system. It is win-win situation for all stake holder of production system (Exceptions Spare and Service providers).

You can start with

Make your work maintenance

organization visible

Inform your people their responsibilities and accountabilities (and you will find they become more focused and motivated).

find your critical equipment (surprises await you if you do a systematic formal analysis)

Review your preventive maintenance system and its actual applicability (You will be getting answers to many whys) Make a business budget for maintenance operation.

Define key performance parameters for maintenance performance evaluation, it’s a vital, ensure you are not catching your own tails. Look out for industry benchmarks/Standards Have a conviction in your data collection system and resultant values thereof (KPIs) so you need not to revisit/ doubt every time you working to achieve them

Root Cause Analysis is vital to get real improvement. Simplicity of these tools sometime veil their fineness. Get things validated or least verified, before you expect any result on ground

Do critical analysis of your existing maintenance system People skills and competencies, motivation levels and alignment with organization objectives Here you come in middle of problem Estimate/Determine the changes that required to make in order to organise your maintenance Department. Please don't expect things will be change of their own

Let’s start with overview of front-end process

Find out your production target for Yearly or half yearly basis. Find out your critical equipment that must run or bottleneck processes Find out how much machine availability will be required to complete the production target Compare current availability requirements with your past machine availability data or trends If you are comfortable with past performances/ trends you can have less worries else maintenance performance improvements are mandatory. Don’t wait for unfolding when you know what is at core. Review breakdown histories of critical equipment find out confidence level of your maintenance and production team that performances will repeat or improve.

find out repeat problems and problems with high impacts Do needful Root cause analysis and find actionable causes and feasible solutions

You may not able to find/ implement many good solutions at once but once you follow reviewing schedules, Surly you will get opportunity and resources for implementations.