This thread was generated from a tip that was originally published in Maintenance-Tips July 6, 2006 - I found it interesting enough to post it here. I am sure there is more to come as well. - Terry O

The purpose of maintenance

The fundamental purpose of maintenance in any business is to provide the required capacity for production at the lowest cost. It should be regarded as a RELIABILITY function - not as a repair function.

By Ray S. Beebe, Author, Predictive Maintenance of Pumps Using Condition Monitoring

Maintenance Tip Feedback published on July 27, 2006

Note: This is in response to a tip, not necessarily a tip of its own:

The following tip was posted in the July 6th email:

“Maintenance Tip
The purpose of maintenance

The fundamental purpose of maintenance in any business is to provide the required capacity for production at the lowest cost. It should be regarded as a RELIABILITY function - not as a repair function.

By Ray S. Beebe, Author, Predictive Maintenance of Pumps Using Condition Monitoring”

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I agree in spirit what is being said, but I worry about the potential literal translation that can occur with these statements, especially the first, that “maintenance’s purpose is to provide the required capacity at lowest cost.”

I believe maintenance is a key player to provide needed production at lowest price but I look at this as a joint team effort. In this effort there are four team players, Business Management, Engineering, Operations, and Maintenance. Business management determines the market needs and evaluates the available economics and needed capacities. Engineering uses available economics and needed production to determine designs and construct the process. Operations manage the equipment and incoming resources to produce the product. Maintenance provides specialized reliability activities, monitors equipment for pending failures, and does repairs when needed. It takes all four groups working together to provide required capacity at lowest cost.

All too often one of these four groups falls short and the attempted pass the blame game begins. With maintenance the last to become involved with equipment, they can be the first to get blamed. Using a pump as an example, no amount of maintenance can help if the system is not designed correctly. Or even with a good design if it is not operated within design parameters. If the suction head is not there, whether from supply tank level allowed to drop too low by operations or an engineering marginal design, production will not meet needs and pump failures will occur. No amount of “maintenance” will improve reliability in these cases.

In summary, my concern with a statement that maintenance’s purpose is to provide needed capacity, that is the case when wear is the factor causing low capacity.

Through positive maintenance efforts, condition based monitoring, good troubleshooting, root cause analysis, and other functions, with involvement of the entire team a difference can be made. The key is to not let one group move into false self glory at the expense of another.

Awesome PdM-2006 Maintenance Tips Challenge Honorable Mention Winner Tip provided by Evan Smith, West Reliability Engineer, Praxair, Pocatello Idaho

Thanks Evan

Terry O

August 10, 2006
Maintenance Tip Feedback 2

I am responding to the following discussion between Ray Beebe and Evan Smith:
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The following tip was posted in the July 6th email:

“Maintenance Tip”
The purpose of maintenance

The fundamental purpose of maintenance in any business is to provide the required capacity for production at the lowest cost. It should be regarded as a RELIABILITY function - not as a repair function.

By Ray S. Beebe, Author, Predictive Maintenance of Pumps Using Condition Monitoring”

=====================================
Response from Evan Smith:

I agree in spirit what is being said, but I worry about the potential literal translation that can occur with these statements, especially the first, that “maintenance’s purpose is to provide the required capacity at lowest cost.”

I believe maintenance is a key player to provide needed production at lowest price but I look at this as a joint team effort. In this effort there are four team players, Business Management, Engineering, Operations, and Maintenance. Business management determines the market needs and evaluates the available economics and needed capacities. Engineering uses available economics and needed production to determine designs and construct the process. Operations manage the equipment and incoming resources to produce the product. Maintenance provides specialized reliability activities, monitors equipment for pending failures, and does repairs when needed. It takes all four groups working together to provide required capacity at lowest cost.

All too often one of these four groups falls short and the attempted pass the blame game begins. With maintenance the last to become involved with equipment, they can be the first to get blamed. Using a pump as an example, no amount of maintenance can help if the system is not designed correctly. Or even with a good design if it is not operated within design parameters. If the suction head is not there, whether from supply tank level allowed to drop too low by operations or an engineering marginal design, production will not meet needs and pump failures will occur. No amount of “maintenance” will improve reliability in these cases.

In summary, my concern with a statement that maintenance’s purpose is to provide needed capacity, that is the case when wear is the factor causing low capacity.

Through positive maintenance efforts, condition based monitoring, good troubleshooting, root cause analysis, and other functions, with involvement of the entire team a difference can be made. The key is to not let one group move into false self glory at the expense of another.

Assure all equipment and systems used to manufacture and develop product are safe to use, pose no threat to the environment, are available to produce product, without interruption at a cost that Flex Products Inc. can afford.

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Response from Alexander D. Douglas Jr., Mgr. Equipment Reliability & Maintenance, JDSU, Flex Products Group:

I believe that they are both correct but did not elaborate to clarify.

Here is my take away.

In any enterprise worth its salt where equipment, hardware, facilities, systems etc, are used to produce product or provide a service, someone needs to be responsible for equipment performance. I am using the term equipment here as a catch all.

Most of the time its clear who isn’t responsible for “equipment” performance, like Sales, Accounting, Finance, Quality etc.

So the performance responsibility for equipment performance typically falls into one or more of the following…. Manufacturing, Engineering, Maintenance, Operations, etc.

One way to organize is as follows.

Engineering specifies the recipe “PROCESS” for making product…. And specifies the “TOOLS” that Operations uses to make the product….

The recipe and the capability of the tool together provide an expectation… typically called in RCM speak “what the user wants” or FUNCTION.

So a Functional expectation is created that manufacturing / operations come to rely on.

Manufacturing / Operations reports deviations to the functional expectations…. Along with the consequences. Down-time, injuries, yields lost, product lost, throughput reductions, environmental damage, etc.

Maintenance collects those reports, applies forensic investigation and analysis (using either a single maintainer or a team approach depending on the scope or the deviation) on the important deviations and generates a corrective action.

Those corrective actions could be assigned to anyone…. Operations, Manufacturing, Engineering, Maintenance, an outside consultant, an outside vendor and could include one or more of the listed corrective actions.

Those corrective actions could be:

1) Modifications to Equipment
2) Modifications to the manufacturing recipe
3) New training
4) New Proactive Maintenance tasks
5) Changes to existing Proactive Maintenance Tasks
6) Changes to training
7) New Equipment
8)Changes to work instructions

……What ever it takes to mitigate the functional failure.


Maintenance takes the lead… because Maintenance is the second functional group to encounter a functional failure. Operations are first, however operations should focus on operating…

Maintenance needs to focus on the following:

Assure all equipment and systems used to manufacture and develop product are safe to use, pose no threat to the environment, are available to produce product, without interruption at a cost that the enterprise can afford.

Take the lead…. Get er done….

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Thank you for your reply Mr. Douglas!

August 17, 2006
Maintenance Tips Feedback 3

The following tip was posted in the July 6th email:

“Maintenance Tip”
The purpose of maintenance

The fundamental purpose of maintenance in any business is to provide the required capacity for production at the lowest cost. It should be regarded as a RELIABILITY function - not as a repair function.

By Ray S. Beebe, Author, Predictive Maintenance of Pumps Using Condition Monitoring”

=====================================
I too would like to put my two cents in about the role of maintenance. I have found that in the short turn maximizing the ability of production to produce at the lowest cost possible has been the direction that most facilities wants to go. What have you done for me lately seems to be the rule.

In fact maintenance has two huge mandates they have to balance. The first being production needs and the second being long term preservation of shareholder capital. Maintenance is the only organization in manufacturing that has a responsibility to the assets being used and the responsibility to ensure they will be usable tomorrow. These somewhat opposing missions and the lack of a shareholder representative at the facility lead to a continuing dismissal of the shareholders capital cost at the expense of production. Life cycle costing takes some of this into account.

Feedback provided by Clint Mileur, Project Manager, Lincoln, NE

Terry O

August 24, 2006
Tips feedback

Taken from one of readers comments:

“Maintenance is the only organization in manufacturing that has a responsibility to the assets being used and the responsibility to ensure they will be usable tomorrow.”

Everyone in the organization has or MUST HAVE this responsibility.

I realize that maintenance department’s closer ,more frequent, contact with the assets make this feeling surface.

As a minimum all manufacturing departments must be on same level. Maintenance should not be part of (under) production and should an equal voice in decision making.

Joe Cannatelli
Con Edison
NYC NY

Leave it to a New Yorker to tell it like it is! Thanks Joe - Terry O

Feedback published August 31

I would like to respond to Mr. Cannatelli. Especially since he quoted me.

The Challenge of Maintenance

I agree all departments, personnel, manager, supervisors and corporate staff should have the usability of assets in the future as a consideration. I wouldn't be in maintenance if I didn't believe that. However, that IS NOT WHAT IS GOING ON. People focus on the right now. As Janet Jackson sings "What have you done for me lately!"

This is the challenge of production. If you don't satisfy the customer today then you will not have them tomorrow. The customer wants it now. Have you ever left one store because they did not have an item, drive across the street and buy it at a different store?

Revenue is the driver of the facility. How do we maximize the return of the shareholders assets? I have seen some maintenance departments that stop doing preventative and predictive maintenance. This lowers costs in the short term. The maintenance manager, production manager and plant manager get promoted in three years due to their significant revenue increases and the next leadership inherits significant problems because the equipment is falling apart.

I have seen production refuse to give up equipment to maintenance due to production needs. Maintenance allows this to happen. The plant leadership allows this to happen. Why? Because they want and need to satisfy today’s customer in order to maximize revenue today. In addition, maintenance has not described how the return on investment (yes ROI) works to production. Maintenance is ill suited to give this description. We can say that if we do this the machine will be better. Unfortunately that logic is not understandable to production. By giving the equipment up for maintenance how many more products will production be able to produce over what they could produce if they didn’t give it up. This is the question maintenance has to answer.

Why would production want to change? Why would the plant leadership want to change? The customer wants it and he wants it now. This is how production is measured and plant managers are measured. This is what drives the revenue. The only way they will change is if Maintenance shows them the value of changing and with investment in maintenance they can better serve the customer now and tomorrow. This is the challenge of maintenance.

- Clint Mileur

The purpose of maintenance is to safeguard technical integrity of the assets.

My only problem with the overall statement is the lowest possible cost.

Maintenance is only one function of many that ultimately drives a company's profits or losses. You cannot optimize any one function (lowest cost) without non-optimizing the whole.

Joe you are correct, Maintenance does not have all the costs variables under its control, however given the business environment where we are, we must aim to get the most cost efficient solution possible with the factors we can manage.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Eugene,

People,
I think maintenance has two PRIMARY roles
1. To ensure Technical Integrity, as Josh stated earlier. This makes sure we dont pollute, kill people or damage asset value, and hence assures viability. Society will shut us down otherwise. Long term profitability is assured if we have Tech. Integrity.
2. To ensure Operational Integrity. This means that the Plant is available when we want it, and allows us to make a profit. This will keep the Analysts happy because our Quarterly returns are good and our Share Cap does well.

quote:

Maintenance is only one function of many that ultimately drives a company's profits or losses. You cannot optimize any one function (lowest cost) without non-optimizing the whole.

I agree totally with this statement. In my view, one function that drives a company's profits is Marketing and is a very important contributor. Of course Purchasing, Operations, Maintenance, Finance etc. are all inmportant; they are all links in the chain, as Eli Goldratt so eloquently explains in his Theory of Constraints.
Let us not play 'my father is bigger than yours'; maintenanece matters, but so do other links in the chain.

I agree with much of what has been posted in this thread. These are important business processes that if applied should aid a company in performing “optimally”, but why isn’t it called:
a) One of the purposes of doing business
b) The Purpose of Reliability?
c) The Purpose of Cross-Functional Teams
d) The purpose of Operations?
e) The purpose of risk management?

I understand the thread is about “the purpose of maintenance”. I am curious as to the definition of maintenance as this should also indicate or lead us towards “The Purpose”.

Is there an assumed definition that we apply – perhaps it is what the maintenance department use to do or does PLUS all the new things we have learned? Or are there new definitions? Does the SMRP provide these definitions or is it a Goal of the SMRP?

I find this akin to the situation with Pluto – is it a Planet or not? First, what is the definition of a planet as opposed to relying upon the “cloudy historical” definition. I am partial to first having a definition so that everyone has an equal understanding.

quote:

Originally posted by Terrence O'Hanlon:
The only way they will change is if Maintenance shows them the value of changing and with investment in maintenance they can better serve the customer now and tomorrow. This is the challenge of maintenance.

- Clint Mileur

Clint is a very wise man! This quote is - in my opinion - very valuable for many reasons. Some of which are:

I have seen many organizations make changes just for the sake of changes. - Not good.

Change that does not bring added value to the organization is not good.

Change that is not communicated efficiently/effectively is change that will appear good at the beginning, but end up bad.

People in the organization need to realize why changes are happening, and for what intended purpose.

We must ensure that our maintenance is targeted, efficient and effective, and communicated.

Explain to Management - in terms they understand - why changes must happen. What benefit will Management/the Company have by Maintenance changing?

Ensure that those changes in Maintenance will bring long term added value. If not, then it will not be supported.

Every single change in Maintenance MUST be supported by upper Management, and even Corporate if your organization is large. If this is not supported from above your level, it will fail.

Our goal is to ensure mechanical/electrical reliability in the plant/facility producing the products they need. That is all we can do. We can't make it reliable, we can only set up the equipment to be reliable. Balance must occur on the other side to ensure process/operational reliability. It makes no difference to you when your car is maintained properly for you to drive the snot out of it, slam on the brakes, drive recklessly, or drive in a dirty/dusty area. HOW you drive effects the reliabilty, as well.

HOW the equipment is operated has as much or more effect on the reliability of the system, as does Maintenance.

James Fajcz, P.E., CMRP
Reliability Engineer

Heinz Bloch Response from the Purpose Of Maintenance Discussion posted by Terry O


The various and sundry exchanges are all interesting; none of them can be disputed. But, as is so often demonstrated by the preponderance of articles in numerous trade journals, and by the work output of hundreds of "benchmarking consultants," these exchanges usually do little more than state the problem. Few, if any, are giving unequivocal solutions and the writers appear to be unaware that some organizations have implemented solid solutions four decades ago. Here's how they did it:

In essence, since the early 1960's and from that time on, my then employer did the following:

1. Assigned a machinery engineer to the project, insisting that he/she reside at the design contractors offices for the duration of the engineering and asset quality and reliability assurance (AQARA) phase of the project.

2. Assigned the same person (!) to the equipment startup team for the duration of the startup and, typically, one full year into the "feed in" or normal operation of the plant (!)

3. Asked the plant manager (first layer of management) to---typically--- head a four-layer organization. His/her second layer of management, which was then called a "Division," had (a) a Technical Division Manager, (b) a Manufacturing Division Manager, and (c) an HR/PR Division Manager.

4. Insisted that within the third layer of management (comprised of several "Departments") there were---among other Department Heads---an Operations Department Head and a Maintenance Department Head. Both of these reported to the Manufacturing Division Manager who told these two Department Heads about a critically important feature of their careers: He told them that, after an unspecified number of months of "wearing their respective hats," they would be asked to trade these "hats" and do the other Department Head's job for, again, an unspecified and entirely variable period of time.

(As an aside, the fourth layer was comprised of section supervisors or group heads. Their job functions reported, of course, to the "Department" layer).

Because of the edict spelled out in (4), above, the two Department Heads cooperated with unprecedented effectiveness. They leaned each other's job; there was never any bickering. The Manufacturing Division Manager was held accountable for quality and throughput. He had no excuse and could not blame non-performance on people (Department Heads) who reported to him in the first place.

Written in an email to Terry O by Heinz Bloch

The following is not meant to be demeaning, but to point out some irony.

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I wonder if the post care of Terrence for Heinz Bloch is meant for this thread. The post appears misplaced. If I were a contestant in the game show “Jeopardy” and I had just read the post from Heinz as a clue, and I had to think of the question that was being asked to generate this post I would respond “How do you rid an industrial site of the “Siloed” thinking that separates maintenance and operations from achieving optimised manufacturing?” I would not answer, “What is the purpose of maintenance?”
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Now I am left scratching my head wondering, “what is the purpose of this thread?”

It seems to me there are groups of us with different understandings of what we are trying to get at?

I’m intrigued by Vee’s response for purpose of maintenance (I like his response). And I’m intrigued by Heinz’s response on how to remove the walls between “operations” and “maintenance” (I like the strategy).

And I will take the opportunity to say what I think the purpose of maintenance is:

The purpose of maintenance and operations is to perform to the intent of the reliability and availability programs.

Senior executives set the availability and reliability strategies. The senior executives appoint local management to guarantee the strategic direction and implementation of the reliability and availability programs. And front line operators and maintainers build the programs based on their knowledge and history to meet the strategic direction set by local management.

If there are PM programs (CbM, PdM, Time based replacement) then there must be access to the equipment to perform the tasks in an allotted time frame.

If there is no available or realistic PM program for a piece of equipment then maintenance and operations must understand its need for corrective maintenance – Now or Later, Overtime or not, *Spare parts or not.

If the equipment has a PM program but still fails then there is a need for continuous improvement AND to understand its need for corrective maintenance – Now or Later, Overtime or not, *Spare parts or not.

*Spare parts (and overtime) are a part of an availability program – hopefully one built after a PM program has been devised and confidence in the program weighted. This also points to the need of those responsible for spare parts being apart of the bigger picture.

The puropse of this thread, to me it is simple, describe the purpose of maintenance.
Describe it in such way that a non-maintenance person (an accountant, a marketting officer, stores assitant) understand what Maintenance is.

Terms like RCM1, CBM, PM, reliability or weibull are maintenance lingo only used in the "upper clouds" of maintenance and should be avoided in the description. The lower echelons will be hairsplitting anyway, imagine the outsiders..

Just like for Operations, their most important terms are throughput & yield, Stores is addicted to turnover, and ICT has its own plethora which sometimes is used to "impress" the mere mortals