This theory of constraints just exemplifies the need for all levels of the organization to understand the importance of maintenance reliability.

Companies just cannot exist in today's world with their traditional view of maintenance being a cost of doing business i.e. the necessary evil. Ever heard that before? We just cannot have our businesses run with maintenance on a yearly budget. Our processes and work is developed over a longer period of time, and if we change our direction year over year, we lose focus, and thus productivity in meeting our reliability goals.

Our reliability goals are to be a long term focus, and they cannot have the constant changing with the wind, or with the flavor of the month. This simply shatters any progress made when the focus changes. No wonder we see struggles in our respective reliability groups.

I have met a well known reliability culture change individual and I asked him that the place that he works must really be a great place to work to have him work at the plant. With his organized, structured approach to changing a reliability culture, who would not capitalize on that? He then proceeded to tell me that he dropped a book off on the personnel manager's desk (It was his book, by the way), and there it sat for over a year and a half. I was devastated, but realized then that our focus must change to gain the upper manager's support for reliability. It will not succeed without it.

Sorry, I'm on my soapbox. I just had a day of training, and I'm on a roll.

Dear james,

I agree with the sentiment of what you are saying. However, I would like to add that it is not seionr management fault when they do not support reliability or risk management approaches.

Rather, it is our fault for not explaining it to them in their words rather than our words.

For example:

• "They" have no appreciation of reliability improvement, they do understand productivity increases!
  
  
• "They" don't really get cost effectiveness increases, they do understand increases in net present value!
  
  
• "They" aren't at all signed up to the cost of managing safety, they are fully on-board with financial implications of getting it wrong!
  
  
• "They" don't understand why PM's are important, but they are keen to know how they can forecast their capital maintenance spending on replacements and refurbishments for years into the future!

I seem to have gotten on my soapbox a little there myself. But I thought it was relevent. SO many times when I train, or when I give seminars, I hear people complaining about their management and how they "just don't get it".

They are right, they don't get it, and they never will unless we explain it to them in terms that "they" understand.

Best regards,

In our university, almost all first year students of every faculty had to take a general chemistry course. The Chemistry Department has two courses to offer; we the students knew them as:
* General Chemistry
* General Chemistry for poets.
The first one was only for students completing a BS Chemistry or BS Chemical Engineering.
All the rest of the students had to take the second one, students of other Engineering, Business Administration, Social Sciences, Education, etc. All of us took the same General Chemistry for Literature students. On the vision of Chemistry Department and Chemical Engineering students, we were all "poets".

Now, after graduation with an Engineering or other technical degree and several years of experience we have to realize we need a Financial course for "poets" to be able to talk to the beanies.

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

Darth Eugene,

"Bean counting for poets"... I think there is some mileage in that...

Cheers,

Out of jokes, I have seen promotions from organizations like the American Management Association (AMA), or consulting companies like Fred Pryor Seminars, CareerTrack offering seminars such as: "Finance & Accounting for Non Financial People", from time to time.
The problem is dealing with priorities when a training opportunity arrives. Let's face it; many of us get just one outside training oportunity per year, what it will be (for example):
* Next International Maintenance Conference?
* A training to prepare for CMRP exam?
* A seminar on Finance / Accounting topics aimed at non business-administration proffesionals?

Eugene,

On the more serious side, I recently sent myself on a course run by an economics firm in the UK called Oxera.

It related to the financial aspects of the regulated utilities sector here and ran through a few of the twists and turns of finance, profitability, and income generation that are unique to that sector.

Personally, I think I benefitted from this immensely and it was a good personal investment in my future. (It has also given me an interest in the economics field which would have been unheard of a year ago for me)

Best regards,

Daryl,
Spot on!

quote:

Rather, it is our fault for not explaining it to them in their words rather than our words.

The amount of bean-counting we need is not all that great, and yes, poets can pick up concepts like NPV, ROI, DCF, Depreciation and Taxation fairly easily. But the will to learn the language must be there, not just the drive to play with our toys and gadgets.

Terry,

On the more serious side of things, the responsibility for reliability differes from country to country and from contract to contract.

For example, within the UK a company called Rail track had in place a comprehensive outsourced maitnenance program whereby billionsd of pounds were out to contract.

This is the classic Asset Owner / Asset Manager split and it is focussed on separating responsibilities.

In the contractual sense there were contracts in place that placed the reliability responsibility with the asset manager(s). (I can't recal the names but companies like Balfour beatty were almost certainly in the mix)

If Service level Agreements were not met there were penalties, and the assets were required to be managed to a certain standard and returned to a certain condition grading. (An entire arcane art in itself)

However, when the Hatfield disaster occurred, the Chairman of Railtrack as well as senior representatives of the contractor were charged with corporate killing.

These charges were later dropped and this has added new impetus to changes to the law on Corporate Killing within the UK.

But the point remains that regardless of the contractual obligations in place, responsibility for reliability lies with both the asset owner and the asset manager. Meaning a requirement for more stringent controls over maintenance regimes, a more participartive environment for deploying maintenance contracts, and a more focussed monitoring mechanism for managing the SLA's involved.

So, a long way around saying that it appears that the law says that it belongs to all of those who have any responsibility for operating, maintaining, or even owning physical assets.

Best regards,

All these dialogues, fine.
But yet an answer to be unearthed. When youtalk of an Asset and its reliability, th immediatly associted word is Assurance.
How would you correlate all these in terms of Asset Management in terms of Assurance of operations and cost implications??

Ravi:

Keep in mind, we MUST not think in terms of EQUIPMENT reliability, but PROCESS reliability. This does differ from Moubray's philosophy, but essentially, the process is why the equipment is there in the first place.

If a piece of equipment failed, but either minimally effected the process in which is is situated, then the criticality or importance of that asset is less than something that will shut the process down.

This is an extreme case, where there are a lot of other factors. I am not fully detailing this entire stance here. Just throwing it out for comments.

Ravi,
Your question is valid; reliability is one of the many elements we must get right to reach organizational goals, but it is also a very important one. What we are exploring in these threads is particaular aspects in which memmbers of the forum are interested at any given point in time. As long as we are not looking for silver bullets, each of these lines of enquiry lead (or should lead) to the business goals, be it safety, availability or costs.

May we know what are the elements of assurance of operations and cost implications?

I am back for a few days and am really pleased with the discussion here.

Daryl - I am not setting up maintenance and reliability professionals to use the lack of asset owners involvement or support as an excuse.

The language shifts you use were part of my Solution Oriented Asset Reliability presentations early on and were borrowed from brief therapy techniques (I figured we were all crazy so why not start with therapy!).

Yes - as professionals we have an obligation to communicate the needs of asset management in a language that asset owners understand.

As maintenance and reliability professionals - we also must affect what we can affect - do what we can do - even if that is not everything we would like to do.

That does not provide release of the ULTIMATE responsibility that asset owners have to establish the paradigm that will guide asset management.

Until we get it clear that the asset owner must lead and set the context for asset management - we are pushing a rope up a hill.

Perhaps asset owners do not know what they do not know. Perhaps they do not believe what we all think we know. Perhaps they are simply too busy in other areas to even pay attention an area that can only have a limited affect on cost or uptime. (We could start a new thread to discuss the ability of maintenance to affect cost and uptime).

In any case - we must find ways to communicate what we think about asset management and why.

I have seen lots of good business case presentations but I am no sure they are striking a resonant chord with asset owners who are presented with business case scenarios all day every day.

Perhaps we need to find ways to get the money to the bottom line quicker and financial training would go long way to forearm maintenance and reliability professionals.

Ravi - the product maintenance makes is capacity assurance or simply capacity.

Terry O

These shareholders have a pretty good idea who is responsible:

BP sued over Prudhoe Bay management practices

This suit will actually go a long way to ensure management worldwide pays closer attention to setting a valid asset management strategy.

These shareholders are saying there is something beyond quarterly profit to generate a value based return on investment.

Terry O

Who is responsible for reliability ?

I don't want to sound simple here.

But the only correct answer to this question is.


I am


Markalertanalytical.com

Terry,

I take you rpoint about getting to the ears of the asset owners and getting their attention via quicker means of hitting th ebottom line.

But I'm not too sure what this meant:

quote:

Daryl - I am not setting up maintenance and reliability professionals to use the lack of asset owners involvement or support as an excuse.

I don't advocate lack of asset owner involvement, nor do I see it as an excuse for failing in the responsibilities of asset management.

An asset owner can be a variety of people. For example; in a standard non-outsourced arrangement the production or operations department are often seen as the asset owners. (Not always)

In an outsourced arragement then things change substantially. For example, withimn the Highways Agency, of Local COuncil PFI initiatives in the UK, that I am aware of, the institute remains the asset owner, but the contractor becomes the asset manager.

Often, sadly, the resonsibilities of each are detailed in legalise in volumes and volumes of contractual documents. Where things such as "good industry practice" becomes defined in bland and sometimes frighteningly average terms.

So, asset owners would argue that through their contractual set up they are very involved. Only, not on a day-to-day basis.

With regards to BP, my personal experience of this organisation is that rpesently their senior management is extremely aware of the importance of asset management to both their bottom line and to their public image.

Best regards,

Terry,

quote:

These shareholders are saying there is something beyond quarterly profit to generate a value based return on investment.

I couldn't agree more. They are expecting, rightly, the risk to their investments to be reduced to a reasonably practicable level.

I talk about this a lot in my recent book The Maintenance Scorecard.

Safety, the environment and reduction of risk of loss of profit are all linked, and are all becoming very central to the asset strategies of asset-intensive companies.

I see a range o flinkages here between legal changes, shareholder actions, PAS-55 (sponsored by our parent company, the common framework in the UK water industry, and other initiatives.

We are seeing an institutional shift towards embracing risk management within asset planning that is hitting the board level with a lot of force at present.

Making the case for asset management is getting easier...

Best regards,