Best Maintenance Repair Practices |
This article focuses on “Best Maintenance Practices—Mechanical”
If principle principles and techniques of "Known Best Maintenance Repair Practices" they will result in a serious reduction in “self-induced failures.” A number of surveys conducted with industries throughout the United States have found that 70% of equipment failures are self-induced. Maintenance personnel who are not following what are termed “Best Maintenance Repair Practices” substantially affect these failures. Between 30% and 50% of the self-induced failures are the result of maintenance personnel not knowing the basics of maintenance. Maintenance personnel who,although skilled,choose not to follow best maintenance repair practices potentially cause another 20% to 30% of those failures.The existence of this problem has been further validated through the skills assessment process performed in companies throughout the State of Georgia.
This program evaluated the knowledge of basic maintenance fundamentals through a combination of written, identification, and performance assessments of thousands of maintenance personnel from a wide variety of industries. The results indicated that over 90% of maintenance personnel lacked basic fundamentals of mechanical maintenance.“Best Maintenance Repair Practices” are necessary for maintenance personnel to keep equipment operating at peak reliability and companies functioning more profitably through reduced maintenance costs and increased productivity and capacity.
The potential cost savings can often be beyond the understanding or comprehension of management. Many managers are in a denial state regarding maintenance."The result is that they do not believe that repair practices directly impact an organization’s bottom line or profitability" More enlightened companies have demonstrated that, by reducing self-induced failures, they can increase production capacity by as much as 20-30%. Managers accept lower reliability standards from maintenance efforts because they either do not understand the problem or they choose to ignore because it has become the "New Norm".A good manager must be willing to admit to a maintenance problem and actively pursue a solution.You may be asking, what are the “Best Maintenance Repair Practices”? Maybe the following charts could be a great place to answer this question.
What is the root cause of "Maintenance Induced Failures?
1. Lack of knowledge or knowing what good look looks like and value it represents if a plant follows best maintenance repair practice.
2. Maintenance is totally reactive and does not follow the definition of maintenance, which is to protect, preserve, and prevent from decline (Reactive Organization)
3. Maintenance personnel do not have the requisite skills.
4. The maintenance workforce lacks either the discipline or direction to follow best maintenance repair practices.
5. Management is not supportive, and/or does not understand the consequences of not following the best practices (real understanding must involve a knowledge of how much money is lost to the bottom line).
Here are a few numbers known throughout industry:
This post was taken from Keith Mobley and my book, "Industrial Maintenance Repair", and is published in e-book or hard copy and can be purchased at: https://www.elsevier.com/books/industrial-machinery-repair/smith/978-0-7506-7621-2
The Author: Ricky Smith CMRP, CMRT, CRL
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