Maintenance Excellence

What is Maintenance Excellence?

When we ask that question to people in the Maintenance field it is surprising how varied the answers
we receive. Some think that Maintenance Excellence is all about effective planning and scheduling,
whilst others think it is more about excellent work task execution by technicians, or even having the
perfect maintenance policies and tactics.

Well to us Maintenance Excellence is all these and more . its many things, done well. Its when a plant
performs up to design standards and equipment operates smoothly when needed. Its maintenance
costs tracking on budget, with reasonable capital investment. Its high service levels and fast inventory
turnover. Its motivated and competent trades persons or technicians. Most of all, Maintenance
Excellence is the balance of performance, risk, and cost to achieve an optimal solution.

It is a concept that companies must continuously strive to achieve and one that is continuously being
updated as new and innovative approaches are developed in areas such as Reliability Engineering,
Condition Based Monitoring etc, thanks to changes in information technology that have enabled a
better, more complete interrogation of data or as we move from predominant tactics of run-to-failure
to prevention, then prediction and eventually to reliance (or the more popular buzzword Reliability).

Using the framework developed by the late John Campbell we seek to educate clients on what exactly is
Maintenance Excellence and how they can get there. Over the coming newsletters we will seek to
explain in more detail each element so watch out for the next installment.

Ready for Excellence?

Optimizing your effectiveness cannot be accomplished in a chaotic and uncontrolled environment.

Optimization entails making intelligent and informed decisions. That involves gathering accurate and
relevant information to support decisions and acting in a timely manner. Therefore several elements are
necessary for maintenance excellence to be achieved (see diagram below). They fall into three major
areas:

Exercise leadership at all times. Without it, change wont be successful

Achieve control over the day-to-day maintenance operation
Apply continuous improvement and quantum leaps, once you have control, to remain at the
leading edge of your industry

Maintenance Excellence www.relogica.com

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Leadership includes:

Organisation structure and style. It must fit the business environment and nd the strategy you are
implementing. It can be centralized along shop lines, fully distributed alongong area lines, or some
blend of the two. It mustt be consistent with busines
business objectives. If effective
tive teamwork is called
for, the structure must reflect the methods to achieve it. Of course, the number of maintainers
you use must match thee workload. If your organization is understaffed youll oull be stuck in a
reactive firefighting mode.
de. If you overstaff, it will be too expensive.
A clear vision for the organization,
ganization, with a high level plan to achieve it. Know
now your objectives
before making changes. Make sure that the entire maintenance organization, ation, along with
operations and engineeri ring, understands them too. You need good communication
munication so that
employees buy into the vision. If they dont, implementing it successfullyy will be nearly
impossible. Strategy is what gets done, not what is said.
A method to manage thee transition to the futur
future. Change is always difficult
cult to achieve
successfully. We all get used to the way things are, even if they could be better. You have to be
able to motivate your people.
eople. They need to understand why it is important ant to change and what
the impact will be. They need to see managements commitment to making king it happen, as well as
measurements that show w progress. Finally, they need to know whats in it for them personally.

Maintenance Strategy

First, you must draw a map and set a course for your destination. You need a visionion of what
maintenance management will be like in the future, say in three years time. What at is the plant condition,
the availability, the maintenancee cost structure, the amount of planned work compared
mpared to unplanned
reactive work, the work environment? You must assess where you are today, to get to where you are
going. This way, you will know the
he size of the gap to be closed. Finally, you must determine the human,
financial, and physical resource requirements as well as a timeframe, to make yourour vvision real.

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Quite often what we find is that our many companies have a clear Asset Strategy in terms of operating
performance, major overhaul schedules, etc but have very little strategy in terms of cost structures or
becoming a more proactive maintenance organization, and finally with regard to organization
development and skills needed to achieve these strategies is non existent.

One of the key challenges in building the strategy is where should we prioritize, are there any
interdependencies? Again all too often we see maintenance organizations that have embarked on
ambitious Reliability improvement programs, spending large amounts of both time and money only to
find that their organization lacks the ability to execute the new program. Or perhaps companies
spending vast amounts of money on expensive CBM tools and systems without understanding the
correlation between what they are measuring and the potential failure and as a result struggling to
capture the promised Return On Investment.

We believe a critical first step in any strategy must be establishing the current baseline, using the
Maintenance Excellence framework as an analytical tool to assess your current performance or a picture
of where you are today, but it also provides guidance on where you could be heading in the future, by
drawing on the elements of what is possible in good practice Maintenance Management and hence
forming the vision of where you want to go. Ideally we find that this is best achieved in a two day
training workshop, where each of the elements is explained and then the team can agree their own
vision of where they as a site wish to be. Following this workshop we find that clients have a clear,
common understanding of the vision or direction of the maintenance function and whats more
important they have a sense of ownership in the strategy as they were part of developing it.

Finally the various improvement initiatives need to be specified in terms of resources and timeframe
required, then prioritized in terms of an overall improvement plan and lastly communicated to all
maintenance employees and also maintenance customers such as Operations and Engineering, so that
everyone understands to new Maintenance Strategy, how it will impact them and when it will be
realized.

We hope that you have found this article interesting, in our next article we will explore more around the
control elements, how to achieve control of the day-to-day maintenance operation.

We would be very interested to hear your feedback on this article or perhaps a specific maintenance
challenge you are currently facing or should you be interested in knowing more about Maintenance
Strategy or how to conduct an assessment of your maintenance organization please contact us at
relogica@relogica.com

Maintenance Excellence www.relogica.com

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