Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
If you can’t sell all you can produce, then reducing costs is often the only way to improve margins, but that simplistic accounting perspective is not always the case.
Cost control is often thought to be key to attaining profitability but it the case of maintenance it can get you into trouble.
Cost control can have a big opportunity cost if you don’t take advantage of the opportunities you have. [Read more…]
Conventional consulting approaches begin with assessments to determine your current state of affairs, judge what’s good and bad about it, give it a score, provide a long list of recommendations and then build an improvement strategy based on the outcome.
Strategy development is normally carried out by a select leadership team and then the change is rolled out to lower levels in the organization. This approach has served well for a long time and it is at the outset of almost any major consulting engagement.
It is useful when comparing sites among each other, but is there some sort of award for being best? Usually not. [Read more…]
Welcome to the final blog in my 10-part series called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.
To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.
Whenever you are following a set of steps to achieve some goal you are following a process.
Your people do their jobs through day to day implementation of those processes in order to deliver results. If the processes are ill-conceived or inefficient things move slowly and results are more expensive to obtain than they need to be.
Well designed, efficient processes that integrate with other related business processes keep things running smoothly, costs down and help to keep people motivated. [Read more…]
Welcome to part nine of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.
To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.
There’s an old saying that, “two heads are better than one”.
Teamwork has been proven time and again to produce superior results. It is the basis for many successful methods like RCM, PMO, RCFA, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and various quality improvement programs like Six Sigma.
The importance of your people has already been stressed part 2.
Choosing excellence goes beyond that – the use of self-organized teams brings the best out of your people, delivers enhanced productivity and superior results. [Read more…]
Welcome to part eight of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.
To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.
Being proactive with your assets is all about managing failures before they occur.
You can reduce or eliminate the consequences of failure by forecasting what is likely to happen and deciding in advance about what to do about it. The advantage to doing this is that major business impact due to equipment breakdown can be avoided.
High performing companies manage proactively – they foresee and avoid problems.
It’s good for business! [Read more…]
Welcome to part seven of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.
To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.
Computerized systems are important and now seemingly indispensable tools for business. Just remember the last power failure you experienced and you’ll understand.
There isn’t much that isn’t computerized these days. Technology and its business applications continue to grow and proliferate. The world of maintenance is no exception.
Most maintenance work is not computerized, but it is complex and managing it requires sophisticated tools. Using those tools effectively will improve the efficiency with which you deliver maintenance services.
Use them poorly and you only add cost. [Read more…]
Welcome to part six of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.
To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.
The work management process is essential to keeping costs under control in maintenance but how will you know if you are doing well if you don’t measure what you are doing and the results you get?
Performance management is another essential for maintenance management. Costs are important, results are important and so are the processes you use to turn costs into results.
Performance management is central to managing those processes so you get the most output for the least input – the greatest cost effectiveness. [Read more…]
Welcome to part five of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance. To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels.
In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.
Without parts, many jobs can’t be done. There’s no point planning and scheduling work if you can’t rely on materials management to provide the parts when you need them. If you want excellence in maintenance you need excellence in materials management. [Read more…]
Welcome to part four of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance. To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.
Like the human body, our plant and mobile equipment will break down if it’s not looked after. It will tolerate some abuse but it won’t do it forever and it won’t do it if you don’t take care of it at a basic level. Basic care is all about taking care of our physical assets so they continue to do what we need them to do. To choose excellence it’s essential to master the basics. They keep you compliant with regulations and keep you operating. Beyond them you expand in the direction of excellence. [Read more…]
Welcome to part three of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance. To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.
At the core of the maintenance function is work management – a six step process for getting maintenance work done. Without it workforce deployment becomes reactive to emergencies and maintenance costs are high. Work done in those reactive situations is anywhere from 1.5 to 3 times as expensive as work that is fully planned and executed on schedule. In some industries the cost of emergency work is even higher. If you choose excellence then master the work management process. [Read more…]
Welcome to part two of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance. To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.
Any organization is nothing more than an extension of the people who make it up. It stands to reason that we need to focus on people if we want our organizations to thrive and change. Without your people nothing happens. They are the most important part of your business. If you want excellence your people need to choose it with you. [Read more…]
Welcome to my latest 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance. To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital-intensive industry.
Leadership is all about making change and taking your organization in new directions. Leaders rock the boat, managers keep it stable. In choosing excellence you’ll be choosing a path of constant change and improvement – leadership is essential. Leadership is about strategy, effective execution and your people – without them you accomplish very little. If you want excellence you need leadership. [Read more…]
Entropy is a thermodynamic concept that represents chaos and degradation. It occurs naturally in any physical system and will naturally grow (i.e.: become more chaotic) if we don’t do something to arrest its growth. Doing something requires the expenditure of energy, so energy is what counters entropy. We don’t speak of these thermodynamic terms and concepts in everyday language and conversation, but they are at work behind the scenes. We are well advised to remain aware of them and act accordingly or nature will steadily and relentlessly increase the state of chaos in which we exist. [Read more…]
Our simple 3 legged stool model from part 1 will deliver high performance at low cost and risk – i.e.: high productivity. It is important however to keep the legs intact! Doing so requires a bit of investment. In thermodynamic terms we need to put some energy into the system to keep the entropy from growing. That energy is investment in maintenance and the payoff comes in the form of steady, predictable revenues with a high margin for profit. Those words should be music to accountants’ ears. [Read more…]
We all want high productivity – maximum output for the least input, the most blast for our buck! We know that high payback will entail a level of risk, but again, we want to minimize our downside risks and maximize the opportunities that may be available to us. We need practical ways to achieve this. Good Capital Asset Management™ will deliver that – how? Well, here’s a simplified scientific explanation of how that works. [Read more…]
