How lean is your UK site regime?
2 Jun 2008
It is well over a decade now since I was last responsible for the engineering and maintenance of a large chemical manufacturing site. Back then costs were under pressure, plant reliability improvement was much needed, safety was everyone's first priority and regulatory compliance a given.
Every maintenance manager wanted a CMMS, or to better exploit what he had, to give better control and support the drive to be more planned and less reactive, more improving and less "fixing". Condition monitoring, FMECA, RCM, etc, were all part of the lexicon, if not part of the day-to-day practice.
So what's new? Not much appears to have changed, or at least the pressures and goals remain much the doing anything different?
I have probably been onto something approaching 100 different manufacturing sites in the past few years (chemicals, pharmaceuticals, food, plastics and others) and have assessed many with respect to their performance, practices and culture. In that time I have seen the good, the "plenty of room for improvement", and the darn right ugly. Assessments have spanned all aspects of the supply chain, with maintenance being just part, although a rather important part, of course.
Reflecting on what I have seen, I come up with the following list of thoughts:
- the majority of maintenance organisations are still struggling with the same old issues, like not getting to the root cause of problems and eliminating them, so that breakdowns continue;
- probably overall there is a better working relationship between maintenance and operations personnel, but in many places there is still an unhealthy "you bend it, we mend it mentality";
- trying to increase wrench time, but not getting very far through not doing anything very different;
- managing plant overhauls and projects to time and cost;
- raising housekeeping standards.
Some things, however, have changed, like:
- more maintenance is now contracted out to third party organisations, though some are now going full circle and bringing certain maintenance skills back in-house;
- systems for regulatory compliance are more developed than in the past (no choice!);
- greater reliance on fewer people - a skills and resources issue.
If I were to summarise though, I feel that the maintenance profession has become more formalised and systems-based, but otherwise hasn't changed its approach a great deal.
Now I appreciate that it is all very well saying this, but what could maintenance people be doing differently?
If we stand back from maintenance and look more broadly at manufacturing businesses we would see some of the same general traits, but we would also observe that over the past decade there has been an explosion of businesses pursuing Six Sigma, lean manufacturing, operational excellence - or whatever they want to call it.
Fundamentally this is about establishing a business-wide vision, measuring process performance against ideal and involving cross-sections of people in developing and implementing solutions. Businesses have gradually taken it on board that the challenge is at least as much cultural as technical. Implementation tends to start in operations where the product - and the money - is made or lost.
This is perfectly natural but I would have expected to see by now many more encompassing maintenance and engineering in this new way of life than I do.
A great deal can usually be achieved through people/process-based improvement, even in a "technical" environment such as maintenance and engineering. Team-based problem-solving has demonstrated time and again that it is an effective way to resolve long-standing problems. Plant capacities, process yields, productivity and customer service have all been dramatically raised, so we know it works and it pays back big time. Yet it takes one hell of a big breakdown before plants resort to this sort of approach as everyone is busy with their "own" job.
I appreciate that root cause failure analysis is undoubtedly something you have thought about, read about (many times) and done something about (sometimes). How to make it a way of life is the question. Let's not confine ourselves to RCFA, however.
Maintenance tasks, packages of work, projects and overhauls - any work - take time and cost money. If production must stop whilst the work is in progress, then this can be the biggest cost of all.
Some lean manufacturing techniques have proven to be very effective in reducing the time it takes to carry out tasks and whilst most of us would associate this with machine tool setting, the principles can be applied to very different tasks and environments to deliver similar major leaps forward. I know of organisations applying this to engineering project work and PICME has helped a chemical plant almost halve the duration of its planned plant shutdowns. Not surprisingly, this involved operations and maintenance (largely contract) working collaboratively and looking at work with a different pair of eyes.
There is a saying that you can't teach old dogs new tricks and we can all see how the maintenance workforce in the UK is ageing, but the saying simply isn't true for most people. It's all a question of motivation. Doing things differently can be fun and provide a great sense of achievement that can become addictive. Breaking the ice is difficult - and that's one of the reasons why external facilitation may be necessary.
Simplification is the focus these days when it comes to improvement rather than extra systems, paperwork and meetings. If you wonder what opportunity there is in plant maintenance, then just ask yourself how many people does it take to change a light bulb on your plant?
You could well find that it is a joke, but not a funny one. Lean concepts of work and waste apply just as well within maintenance and engineering as any other part of a business. Perhaps as a profession we just need to be a little less conservative and give a few radical things a try. Ten years from now we could be somewhere different - or we might not be here at all!
Michael Glass has over 25 years of process industry experience, including expertise in plant reliability improvement and business re-engineering. Since 2001 he has led the development of PICME's manufacturing and business improvement services in the chemical, pharmaceutical, polymer and related process industries.
Five steps to effective maintenance
ABB has drawn up a quick guide to developing an effective maintenance plan:
1 Selection
The starting point for reliable and accurate instrumentation is choosing the right device. Look out for low-maintenance options and equipment incorporating protection against arduous environments. And consider all operational scenarios, such as whether it may come in contact with any cleaning chemicals or how pressures or temperatures may vary.
Consider also the service and technical support offered by the supplier. Are there local service engineers available to help when needed?
2 Installation and Commissioning
This requires not just following the manufacturer's operational specifications, but also considering post-installation maintenance requirements. Instruments that are difficult to access are, typically, overlooked when performing maintenance activities.
3 Recording and
Tracking Activities
Keeping service histories updated can offer real benefits and cost savings throughout a product's lifecycle. Noting down the original set-up parameters of an instrument can improve recovery time if a crisis occurs. Many instruments now have memory 'scratchpads' to allow these parameters to be saved independently of the instrument's normal working memory.
4 Planning and
coordination
The inherently longer service life of more reliable and robust equipment means ensuring maintenance, support and upgrades occur at exactly the right time. Lifecycle planning meets this need by offering a plan based on a manufacturer's research, experience and knowledge overlaid with the skill-set and service product.
5 Assess and Reassess
A properly designed lifecycle programme should involve continuous tracking and recording. The actual lifecycle programme in place should also be assessed periodically, challenging the methods and practices employed.
Root cause analysis should also be included; analysing failures and finding ways to improve or remove any reoccurrences. This could be within product design, access or maintenance needs and to practices such as keeping a spares inventory or a complete 'hot spare' instrument on standby for emergencies.
Don't forget that walking the site is a simple way to find opportunities where good maintenance can improve plant operation and can often act as a valuable surrogate for a carefully planned programme.
Every maintenance manager wanted a CMMS, or to better exploit what he had, to give better control and support the drive to be more planned and less reactive, more improving and less "fixing". Condition monitoring, FMECA, RCM, etc, were all part of the lexicon, if not part of the day-to-day practice.
So what's new? Not much appears to have changed, or at least the pressures and goals remain much the doing anything different?
I have probably been onto something approaching 100 different manufacturing sites in the past few years (chemicals, pharmaceuticals, food, plastics and others) and have assessed many with respect to their performance, practices and culture. In that time I have seen the good, the "plenty of room for improvement", and the darn right ugly. Assessments have spanned all aspects of the supply chain, with maintenance being just part, although a rather important part, of course.
Reflecting on what I have seen, I come up with the following list of thoughts:
- the majority of maintenance organisations are still struggling with the same old issues, like not getting to the root cause of problems and eliminating them, so that breakdowns continue;
- probably overall there is a better working relationship between maintenance and operations personnel, but in many places there is still an unhealthy "you bend it, we mend it mentality";
- trying to increase wrench time, but not getting very far through not doing anything very different;
- managing plant overhauls and projects to time and cost;
- raising housekeeping standards.
Some things, however, have changed, like:
- more maintenance is now contracted out to third party organisations, though some are now going full circle and bringing certain maintenance skills back in-house;
- systems for regulatory compliance are more developed than in the past (no choice!);
- greater reliance on fewer people - a skills and resources issue.
If I were to summarise though, I feel that the maintenance profession has become more formalised and systems-based, but otherwise hasn't changed its approach a great deal.
Now I appreciate that it is all very well saying this, but what could maintenance people be doing differently?
If we stand back from maintenance and look more broadly at manufacturing businesses we would see some of the same general traits, but we would also observe that over the past decade there has been an explosion of businesses pursuing Six Sigma, lean manufacturing, operational excellence - or whatever they want to call it.
Fundamentally this is about establishing a business-wide vision, measuring process performance against ideal and involving cross-sections of people in developing and implementing solutions. Businesses have gradually taken it on board that the challenge is at least as much cultural as technical. Implementation tends to start in operations where the product - and the money - is made or lost.
This is perfectly natural but I would have expected to see by now many more encompassing maintenance and engineering in this new way of life than I do.
A great deal can usually be achieved through people/process-based improvement, even in a "technical" environment such as maintenance and engineering. Team-based problem-solving has demonstrated time and again that it is an effective way to resolve long-standing problems. Plant capacities, process yields, productivity and customer service have all been dramatically raised, so we know it works and it pays back big time. Yet it takes one hell of a big breakdown before plants resort to this sort of approach as everyone is busy with their "own" job.
I appreciate that root cause failure analysis is undoubtedly something you have thought about, read about (many times) and done something about (sometimes). How to make it a way of life is the question. Let's not confine ourselves to RCFA, however.
Maintenance tasks, packages of work, projects and overhauls - any work - take time and cost money. If production must stop whilst the work is in progress, then this can be the biggest cost of all.
Some lean manufacturing techniques have proven to be very effective in reducing the time it takes to carry out tasks and whilst most of us would associate this with machine tool setting, the principles can be applied to very different tasks and environments to deliver similar major leaps forward. I know of organisations applying this to engineering project work and PICME has helped a chemical plant almost halve the duration of its planned plant shutdowns. Not surprisingly, this involved operations and maintenance (largely contract) working collaboratively and looking at work with a different pair of eyes.
There is a saying that you can't teach old dogs new tricks and we can all see how the maintenance workforce in the UK is ageing, but the saying simply isn't true for most people. It's all a question of motivation. Doing things differently can be fun and provide a great sense of achievement that can become addictive. Breaking the ice is difficult - and that's one of the reasons why external facilitation may be necessary.
Simplification is the focus these days when it comes to improvement rather than extra systems, paperwork and meetings. If you wonder what opportunity there is in plant maintenance, then just ask yourself how many people does it take to change a light bulb on your plant?
You could well find that it is a joke, but not a funny one. Lean concepts of work and waste apply just as well within maintenance and engineering as any other part of a business. Perhaps as a profession we just need to be a little less conservative and give a few radical things a try. Ten years from now we could be somewhere different - or we might not be here at all!
Michael Glass has over 25 years of process industry experience, including expertise in plant reliability improvement and business re-engineering. Since 2001 he has led the development of PICME's manufacturing and business improvement services in the chemical, pharmaceutical, polymer and related process industries.
Five steps to effective maintenance
ABB has drawn up a quick guide to developing an effective maintenance plan:
1 Selection
The starting point for reliable and accurate instrumentation is choosing the right device. Look out for low-maintenance options and equipment incorporating protection against arduous environments. And consider all operational scenarios, such as whether it may come in contact with any cleaning chemicals or how pressures or temperatures may vary.
Consider also the service and technical support offered by the supplier. Are there local service engineers available to help when needed?
2 Installation and Commissioning
This requires not just following the manufacturer's operational specifications, but also considering post-installation maintenance requirements. Instruments that are difficult to access are, typically, overlooked when performing maintenance activities.
3 Recording and
Tracking Activities
Keeping service histories updated can offer real benefits and cost savings throughout a product's lifecycle. Noting down the original set-up parameters of an instrument can improve recovery time if a crisis occurs. Many instruments now have memory 'scratchpads' to allow these parameters to be saved independently of the instrument's normal working memory.
4 Planning and
coordination
The inherently longer service life of more reliable and robust equipment means ensuring maintenance, support and upgrades occur at exactly the right time. Lifecycle planning meets this need by offering a plan based on a manufacturer's research, experience and knowledge overlaid with the skill-set and service product.
5 Assess and Reassess
A properly designed lifecycle programme should involve continuous tracking and recording. The actual lifecycle programme in place should also be assessed periodically, challenging the methods and practices employed.
Root cause analysis should also be included; analysing failures and finding ways to improve or remove any reoccurrences. This could be within product design, access or maintenance needs and to practices such as keeping a spares inventory or a complete 'hot spare' instrument on standby for emergencies.
Don't forget that walking the site is a simple way to find opportunities where good maintenance can improve plant operation and can often act as a valuable surrogate for a carefully planned programme.
