Fix It Forever

Recently I helped a large bakery in Amherst, N.S., work toward having a world-class maintenance department. Using a CMMS as a tool and with a lot of hard work and commitment by the plant, it is moving closer to this goal. This gave me the idea of explaining of how this plant is putting its problems to bed once and for all.

Using a concept that the bakery plant manager explains later in this column, the plant has made some simple but important changes in the way it does business in order to reduce problems.

The plant has focused on four critical areas.

1. To start with, the bakery has totally reviewed its preventive maintenance (PM) program through continuous review of its work procedures and inspection frequencies. Equipment availability to carry out the PM is used wisely, especially in the summertime when the plant is in full production. Every minute of PM time is considered precious in order to keep the lines running smoothly.

2. The storeroom has been totally reconfigured into a world-class setup, where parts are reordered based on stock levels and lead times. Signage and bin locations are so simple that maintenance personnel can find parts in less than a minute, so repair time is cut to a minimum.

3. Each piece of equipment has a Bill of Materials that is linked to the stock location of the necessary parts and the quantity on hand in the storeroom. Vendors that supply the parts are listed as well.

4. Maintenance personnel process their own work orders and issue follow-up work orders when required. Parts and labour are recorded on every work order so the equipment history and costs are always up-to-date.

These initiatives took place over a few months and are mainly the result of the commitment of the company, the plant manager and the maintenance staff.

Now we’ve all heard the phase ‘fix it right the first time,’ which refers to taking the time to do proper maintenance so the likelihood of the problem reoccurring is reduced. In a meeting with the plant manager, he said that he wanted to adopt the philosophy of ‘fix it forever’. What does this mean? He said that whatever tasks, projects, improvements or maintenance activities that the plant committed to do would all work toward a ‘fix-it-forever’ result.

For example, he said, the storeroom used to be a disaster. “We didn’t know if we had the parts we needed and if we did know, we couldn’t find them. Although it took several months of labour to get it where it is now, and some daily commitment to keeping it that way, we have fixed our storeroom forever.”

He continued to say that their efforts to improve the preventive maintenance program have improved PM task completion rates to nearly 100%. Through a constant review process, where PMs are questioned on their frequency of inspection and how the program relates to reliability, a more focused PM program is being developed.

“With our commitment to continuous improvement — to our PM program — we have fixed it forever,” he said.

“Now, looking at the history on our equipment, it was nearly useless. We had never recorded our labour, parts or any comments on the work we did. Now our maintenance staff records everything on the work order. If follow-up work is required, they create work orders to be planned and scheduled.

“We used to wait to the last minute to see if we had the parts to do our planned repairs and often we were held back because we needed a part that was a non-stock item,” he said.

“Now, we stage our work orders at least a week or more in advance. We create a complete work package for the craftsmen. This has sped up our repair time tenfold — there are no more last-minute panics of getting the parts to the plant so we can get the equipment repaired.

“Then we make sure all the parts are linked to the equipment, so we have a complete Bill of Materials for every piece of equipment. The work order training we’ve done with the maintenance crew, and the work order planning and scheduling procedures we’ve put in place, have fixed our equipment records and repair costs forever.

“Our CMMS has been our key tool to making this happen,” he said. “Without it, we would be dead in the water. We have come to realize that we need to ensure the integrity of our database. Everyone knows the importance of accurately recording good, reliable data into the system. With the use of failure and solution codes when closing work orders, we can analyze equipment failures to further increase our reliability.

“We now realize how easy it really is to do all of these things. All we need to do is to make sure we commit ourselves to give the people the time and support to ‘fix it forever.’ “

Machinery & Equipment MRO software editor Peter Phillips of Trailwalk Holdings, a CMMS consulting and training company based in Nova Scotia, can be reached at 902-798-3601 or by e-mail at peter@trailwalk.ca, or visit the website at http://trailwalk.portalhouse.net.

The Mechanics of Maintenance

When you read what the plant manager has to say in the accompanying column, I’m sure you would agree that everyone should want to adopt these kinds of maintenance practices. It sounds simple and it actually is. At Trailwalk Holdings, such practices are called the ‘mechanics of maintenance’.

As maintenance people know, the simpler a piece of equipment, the easier it is to maintain. This is our approach to implementing maintenance management tools. Our Mechanics of Maintenance philosophy is to keep every aspect of maintenance simple. From the time a work order is received by maintenance to its completion, every step needs to be simple. Every part of the maintenance system needs to be easy to maintain.

Mechanics of Maintenance guarantees that everyone involved knows their roles in the work order process.

I work with and visit manufacturing facilities all over North America. The vast majority use some sort of computerized software. In many cases the systems have been nothing more than a paper generator, but they want to have a system that tells them something, that is a tool that can be used to improve maintenance activities and the equipment they’re responsible for.

Guiding companies through the process can be challenging and improvement efforts sometimes stall due to lack of commitment and resources. But the organizations that persevere and work through the roadblocks, and take the time to develop the SKA (skills, knowledge and attitudes) of their people, can certainly learn how to ‘fix it forever’.

To learn more about ‘fix it forever’ and the Mechanics of Maintenance, visit http://trailwalk.portalhouse.net. You can also request a copy of a free ROI (return on investment) calculator as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet by sending a request to peter@trailwalk.ca. The calculator allows you to input your company’s operational stats and helps you estimate the cost of implementing a CMMS and the other key ingredients of a world-class maintenance department. It allows you to input the cost of implementation. The software calculates the number of months it will take to return your investment. This tool may help you justify the necessary capital to invest and in return achieve a maintenance program like the one described in this column.

However don’t forget to include the time commitment of your people and don’t move forward unless you have the full support from the upper management team.

I find that the capital costs, even though they may be significant, are not really a factor for success. The payback period is usually less than a year in the majority of cases. The benefits and the cost savings return year after year.

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