Old Millwright,

You can now start creating your own Roadmap for Change.

Create a graphic Roadmap of your Master Plan and pin it up on the wall for all to see (this could be revised at any time). With all the running around and outages, your workforce would need something simple to constantly remind them to focus on the bigger picture.

In the interim you would need to market this to the people that fund your activities i.e. Senior Managers, etc. You will need to justify your existence everyday, every hour. Your goal is to elevate maintenance to board Room level discussion. Soon you will be siphoning cash out of somebody else's budget (a believer).

On the shop floor you need to convert the loud mouths. The ones that have the most influence over the bunch - they could be your biggest asset. You also need to enforce planning. You would be surprised how many people say they plan their work and have no clue what planning really entails.

With that you can attain gold

Regards

Hello Old Millwright,
I have been in a very similar situation in a Just In Time Automotive manufacturing plant and although it may feel hopeless at times this is very fixable. Further more this is an opportunity for you to be recognized as a Superstar among the management team. Here are your starting points:
1. You said you have 30% job change over. I assume you mean 30% of your equipment sees a job change daily or 30% of the day's downtime is due to job changes? Either way this is an opportunity for you to do maintenance. When faced with the same situation I was able to put a maintenance man with the production groups set up team and take care of the basic things that lead to failure, tend & adjust and cleaning and lubrication. This can be your best or worst craftsperson depending on what is down in production that day. I would try to get your key people in the process once you have gained some productivity through this new PM process. This eliminates the battle between maintenance and production about shutting a press off from producing product because it is already down.
2. You must attend the operations daily production meetings. This cannot be delegated until you have some measurable downtime improvements. Once you have some measurable improvement you can be safe to assume that you have more time within your staff to plan, by you, and your subordinates. Production has some version (normally) of machine effectiveness (Yield, Productivity, etc...) and your efforts of providing P.M. while the machine is down for change over will show up in these numbers quickly. You must remember your team is not there to fix everything during the PM. Lubricate, Clean & Inspect, and Tag any issue that may cause failure. This allows you to order parts and plan the replacement for the next job change without interjecting any downtime that is not related to change over. If the issue forces a repair during the production run you will at least have the parts on hand since you tagged it for repair and ordered the parts proactively.
3. Watch your behavior as a leader of your group; no belly aching about we told them this was going to happen if they didn't let us fix, or complaining about the management team and production teams focus on production only and preventive maintenance never. It is not their job to worry about that it is yours. If you are not flexible and understanding of their focus you will be in constant debate and your team members will be a direct reflection of you. It (your maintenance effort) must be focused on helping the company produce more efficiently through better uptime and yield. This is where your skills can pay the biggest dividends; it is what you have been trained to do. A collaborative approach with the production planning group to best utilize the scheduled change over downtime will demonstrate to the entire company that you and your team are a valuable force in its economic engine and results can be realized in weeks. It all starts with YOU and the Production Planning Team. Good Luck and Best Wishes.
Roger Harris CPMM CMRP
Senior Business Consultant
Total Resource Management
http://www.trmnet.com/

Hello Old Millwright,

We use to be in the same boat as you are, we then purchased a CMMS program "MP2" - which it works excellent - we did not start until June 2003 - we started off with just the basic equipment, and then expanded into sub pieces of equipment - then followed the pm program - tooling, parts, electrical, and of course the general main't.

You def need to get a CMMS program, and you could hire a data entry clerk to enter all the pertinent info needed.

we have 1 tooling person, 3 parts techs, 2 EMT's, Main't Coord., PM Coord., 8 GMT's, 1 SMT (support main't) and last but not least our Main't Engineer Director. Everyone plays a role, in getting the job done, and I agree with the last guy, you need to go to the operation meetngs - you have to work with them.

First things first, get a CMMS program and start a basic PM schedule.

Keep in touch, I would love to hear how this all works out for you - if you need any support, let us know - ciao

PM Gal

Hey PM Gal,

Is your companies major product RED?

Dave

Hello RRS_Dave -

I do not know what RED means - we manufacture all different types of batteries.

what do you manufacture?

PM Gal

I was thinking you might have been someone I know that works at the ketchup place there in Fremont.
I come up every month for Berylleium.

Dave

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

Old Millright,

There are essentially 3 things you need to drive your people, the 3rd one is the most important one.

I am pretty sure that this website contains a lot if informatin useful regarding how to build reliability culture in your plant.

1st - A strategy

2nd - A Team

3rd - A Big heart that says that it believes you CAN.

My Warm Regards,

I have been in your situation before and am simpathetic. There are some very good posts here, and some not so interesting. Feel free to print out this post and give it to your upper management. First off it is great to track or document your current situation but it sound like you are far beyond that and your plant is on "life support" so to speak with you holding the paddles "clear !!!". The amount of "maintenance" or "fire fighting" you are doing has to be adversely affecting your production goals. It is time the plant had a "time out". With a minimum investment on the part of both management and your maintenance staff you could start to turn things around. Start by identifing your worse issue or issues in the plant. Dedicate time and money to rectify these issues. This is a simple statement that can be rather complex. Management must be willing to fully back this venture (paying overtime and or hiring more people/contractors) and your maintenance staff must be willing to change their goals, working overtime, dedicating time to problem solving and thinking long term. When you are "firefighting" you are solely concentrating on the day to day or present time and hope you make it out alive. This is a bad principle to have in your maintenance staff. In our facility we have the full maintenance staff, plus a handful of production workers, here on downdays, Saturdays and or Sundays to perform our downtime maintenance and address ALL issues that occured during the week. Once you have eliminated the "big fires" you can start to go after the little ones. One Maintenance Manager once told me that "if a peice of equipment is not in use, there should be a Maintenance Mechanic right there working on it. Even if he's only polishing the chrome". That is a little extreme but you get the point. The more time the maintenance staff has with the eqiuipment, not running, the better off the eqiupment will be. You really need to sit down with all involved persons and have a brainstorming session, no time limits, and address issues and propose solutions. The long term goal would to be to impliment a "TRUE" preventative maintenance program, but that can only happen when you find your maintenance staff standing around during normal production hours (not fighting fires). Then you can start performing inspections and routine stuff to sustain the plant/eqiupment long term. "True" stands for Test, Reliability, Understanding and Effectiveness.

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

quote:

Originally posted by RRS_Dave:
I was thinking you might have been someone I know that works at the ketchup place there in Fremont.
I come up every month for Berylleium.

Dave

HEINZ IS RIGHT BY US, LOL... HOW IRONIC IS THAT?
WE ARE CROWN BATTERY