Need some hints what the KPIs should be for these two groups of people. Maintenance Engineers always claim that they do lots of proactive maintenance.I personally think that Reliability Engineers need to have KPIs specific for what they do.Most of them are not involved in repairs but rather in developing asset strategies and facilitating RCFAs.Mtce Engineers have KPIs like PM Schedule Compliance, % of Preventive Mtce: Corrective Mtce.

Dear Shukri,

I would suggest that there are a range of indicators and key performance indicators that could be attached to the work of these profesionals.

As usual it truly depends on what it is that you want to measure. If your goal is to understand how effective they are overall possibly a measure of unit costs after they have completed and implemented a project.

Or, more exactly, tie each of their projects to an expected result. These need not be direct performance figures and may be reflected in areas such as an increase in risk management, or an increase (over time) in environmental management.

I think this is the key. What do you want to measure them for? What should they be achieving? (According to your companies program) And how can this be quantified?

In a bare faced plug my book on this very subject has just been released and it can be bought on Amazon.com. It provides an array of guidelines to deciding how to create indicators for specific improvements.

The Title is: The Maintenance Scorecard
ISBN: 0831131810
Link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0831131810

Kind regards

Daryl Mather
www.strategic-advantages.com

How about consider adopting & adapting the RCM scorecard particularly if the reliability engineers are involved in RCM? A lot of efforts have been spent here in preparation and discussion. Perhaps it should be expanded to include other reliability activities. TQ

Hi Josh,

As a side note did you read through the comments on human error? Were these of any use to you?

Although I realise there is other work going on elsewhere, The RCM Scorecard is contained within the book, The Maintenance Scorecard, and has a focus on what RCM achieves. This is the result of decades of work, as everything is, and has been in development since around 2002. It also makes up part of the asset management information portfolio for a few companies. (Rather than producing a long list of indicators.)

This is a fundamentally different approach than has been taken within the reliabilityweb activity and is based on sophisticated asset management techniques and reasons for implementation.

I am working up a white paper on this theme, for publication on reliabilityweb if they are interested.

I hav e attached one of the overview tables here for your reference, it has gone on from this point, but fundamentally this is one of the end products.

I would appreciate any comments from your inquisitive approach.

Kind regards
Daryl Mather
www.strategic-advantages.com

RCM_Scorecard_overview.pdf (94 Kb, 35 downloads) RCM Scorecard - Overview

Dear Daryl,

In some organisations the reliability engineers are expected to facilitate RCFAs, Bad Actor Accelerations, FMEAs, RCM / RBI / SIL Studies, risk assessments, review reliability block diagrams and maintainability requirements. They are basically the owners of the tools. They work with maintenance, operations and project engineers to ensure equipment are designed with reliability in mind, have all the required reliability plans when they operate and identify the root causes of failures when they occur.They are also responsible in putting lots of systems in place in managing price of non-conformances (PONC), bad actors, defect eliminations, etc.

With all these facilitation works, what should be their KPIs?

Dear Shukri,

Thanks for the posting, I think that your comments go to the heart of what I stated earlier.

quote:

I would suggest that there are a range of indicators and key performance indicators that could be attached to the work of these profesionals.

However, the bottom line remains what do you (your company) specifically want from these professionals. (Not, "what do reliability engineers do in different companies?")

You could take the reactive route and say that these activities are now in place so we will attach some form of performance measure to each one such as:

RCM - Analysis rate (as an indication only) and number of analyses fully implemented (Implementation of all interventions and resultant actions as part of day to day activities)

Or...

RBI - Level of tolerable risk currently being managed (Via some form of functional or compliance measurement aimed at ensuring maintenance routines focussed on maintaining risk are executed within the timeframes that are required) This would be a partial measure of the reliability engineer and a partial measurement of the implementation process they have followed. (A difficult thing making people accountable to deliver results rather than merely think them up.)

In this sense an indicator regime could easily be developed based on what each method involves, what benefits it is designed to deliver and whatthe reliability engineers activities contribute within that method according to his or her role description.

Again, this is pretty much reactive and tactical and neglects the core issue. "Why are we doing this in the first place?" (These sorts of approaches also end up in great lists of indicators, or buckets, from where people can pick and choose according to their circumstances. A focus that is fraught with potential problems.)

However, presumably these strategic initiatives, activities and methods are in place to contribute, in some way, to the corporate objectives and goals. (If not then their contribution will be determined by their personal understanding of what they are there to accomplish, which may or may not be beneficial in the long term view of the company)

This is your starting point. What is the specific method designed to achieve? If, a you suggest, the reliability engineer is effectively the owner of that technique within the company, then the indicator would be whether or not they are delivering the goals and objectives that have been set out for them.

As such, determining the indicator regime, and therefore the improvement regime, for reliability engineers in your specific plant will depend upon:

1. What are the corporate objectives that support their activity?

2. How can these be represented at the level of the workers involved? (The reliability engineers)

3. What can be done to ensure achievement of corporate goals based on the current situation? (once known) (With additional indicators to show the progress orf this improvement initiative)


From an approach such as this you will be able to determine:
a) What the goasls are and whether or not the current range of activities are the most suited to the task at hand.

b) Whether the people in the analytical roles are the correct people to be working in the new activities defined by the corporate indicator structure, and

c) A range of performance specific indicators, related to the corporate goals, that will enable personal performance to be tagged directly to corporate requirements, rather than ambiguous or, worse, in line with some generic view of what a reliability engineer should or should not be doing.

Am sure this isnt the answer that you wanted, and that what you are really after is the long list of indicators that I referred to earlier. However I do recommend that you give this approach some thought.

KInd regards

Daryl Mather
www.strategic-advantages.com