What is it that makes Maintenance and Asset Management so difficult to lead as functions, but at the same time so vital to master for a Manufacturing organisation?
Is it the lack of awareness of technique and modern maintenance thought? Is it lack of skilled manpower to actually translate grand plans to action? Or is it just plain poor attitude of the operating people towards a task that they do not particularly enjoy? Either way it is a cause of much heartburn for the people involved whether a front line technician or a Senior Business Manager.
Most large manufacturing organisations have had enough of various philosophies and management systems. The plain a simple question here is, "Where is the Time?" After all the investment that has been put in and various other performance issues with the equipment, whatever time it seems to be up seems to be at a premium in any case. And who knows when another long breakdown may snatch away precious productive time. Whether you have the best of planning and maintenance scheduling software, or have all the inspection and preventive maintenance checks well documented, or running a TPM programme to cure everything that is wrong, or have the most modern diagnostic equipment, time is required to correct, modernize, retrofit or strengthen equipment. In top-down environments putting up another piece of equipment or system to strengthen or modernize is easier than taking good and right care at regular intervals. So how do we release time for maintenance, whether performed by your own maintenance crew or outsourced to a specialist agency.
Solutions to one problem sometimes lead us to solutions to other problems as well. Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) has emerged as the key tool for the Lean Manager to reduce set-up, change-over and adjustment times. Most modern equipment is today designed to facilitate rapid change-over. Multi-model, leveled schedule Lean Manufacturing necessitates minimizing change-over time from one model to another, enabling production of all models everyday, every shift, and every hour if required. While in many manufacturing organisations product changeover times are still sacred cows, many others have challenged this frontier and are reaping the benefits. Maintenance jobs too can be approached the same way changeovers are from the point of view of Time Reduction, Quality Improvement & Adjustment elimination.
Many maintenance jobs are necessary to maintain product quality of machine performance rate. It is not uncommon to immediately write-off an entire shift's production, whenever a certain problem occurs or a certain maintenance routine is required to be followed. ECS's "Rapid Maintenance" approach helps take uncertainty away, maintain high quality of workmanship and continually reduce the time and effort required in maintenance. A number of large manufacturing organisations have already tasted the fruits of Rapid Maintenance in terms of reduced ‘Mean Time to Repair’ and increased ‘Machine Availability’ of bottleneck equipment.
