Do you have Equipment Reliability or Process Reliability Problems?

Do you have Equipment Reliability or Process Reliability Problems?

Source: Jose Wilkins and Ricky Smith
 Do you have Equipment Reliability or Process Reliability Problems?
 
 
If I had a dollar for every plant I visited everyone is saying we have a maintenance problem I would be a very wealthy man. After seeing the results from many Process Reliability Plots most of the losses are caused by production not operating the equipment to specifications and not from improper maintenance (not all but most). A process reliability plot breaks down equipment and production losses into separate categories by lost production opportunity and monetary losses.
How do you know if you have Equipment or Process Reliability Problems?
 
Many have seen one or more of these issues: 
> Production not meeting production goals (capacity, cost, and customer requirements) 
> Maintenance cost out of control (Maintenance Cost as a % of Replacement of Asset Values is high, typical = 8.4% - 17.1%, world class = 1.4 - 4.7%) 
> Replacement of components and parts are frequent (stock-outs is the norm in storeroom)

What is the concept of Process Reliability? 
Process reliability is a method for identifying problems, which have significant cost reduction opportunities for improvements. 

It begins with this question: “Do I have a maintenance or a production problem?” Jose Wilkins, a good friend and former colle has reviewed hundreds of processes and found only one site that did not need significant improvements—thus the chance for finding a process not requiring improvement is very small. 

Sometimes the problems are identified with as showing a need for maintenance improvements however almost all the problems have roots in the production/operations area.

So why do companies not know these facts?
This is Simple:
Most companies only know what they have experienced and do not know what is possible. I have seen companies who thought they had a Maintenance Problem (a lot of maintenance failures with unknown causes) and after conducting a process reliability plot the losses in production was 10-30 times higher than maintenance losses.

Here is an example: Let's call this Company X
 
Yearly Maintenance cost was $352,000 over budget (parts, overtime, contractors, etc.)Yearly Maintenance cost was $352,000 over budget (parts, overtime, contractors, etc.)
 
Management did not believe the data so I ask if they did not believe $11.7mm would they believe $5mm, and they did not believe this number, so we agreed on $1.2mm. The cost of this maintenance transformation cost about $250K and expected their ROI would be recovered in 5 years however it depended on their commitment. Within 6 months, their capacity increased 42% in a sold out market, ROI was achieved.
Whether you believe the numbers I provided above does not matter to me however what does matter is people, employees, company leadership, and stockholders.

The next step is up to you. If you have questions just ask or to learn more go to: 

 
 
About: 
To all my friends, The Maintenance Community on Slack is an incredible free space where over 1,500 maintenance and reliability professionals like myself share real life experiences with each other.   To join us, sign up here: https://upkeep.typeform.com/to/icC8EKPT

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