Our powers to be have decided to re-organize our engineering staff at our plant. One of the intial recommendations is to split up our Predictive Maintenance group. My personal opinion is the people who came up with this idea don't have a clue as to what it takes to be an efficient PdM program.

We have 6 PdM staff; 3 vibe, 1 oil, 1 IR, and 1 being cross trained for all three displines. The vibe guys would go into one group, oil to another, & IR to a different group, the cross trained looks like he might go with the oil guy.

I would like to hear your opinions on this matter. If this looks like splitting PdM might become a reality I would like to have some justification, from PdM peers, for not splitting up PdM.

Thanks in advance for you time,

Have they told you their reasoning for splitting you guys up? Will these groups still work together? Is this reorganization just for accounting reasons?

It seems to me that this would be contrary to the way all other businesses operate.

If you look at any industry, they are trying to figure out how to bring multiple technologies, groups and ideas together, not split them apart.

I believe that all of these technologies work together (as I’m sure most everyone on this board, does) and the more information you can put together about a particular problem the faster and more accurate you will be with your solution.

Red

Here is an article entitled "Maintenance is not a department" that may be of value. Maintenance is not a department

I think we are missing the big picture her.
What type of model has the plant adopted?

• Operation centric model
  
• Maintenance centric model or
  
• Engineering centric model

Who is the boss of PDM group, Engineering, Maintenance or Operations?

In our case, our vibe & oil are under Rotating section while IR is under Inspection group. TQ

I think it goes without saying that oil and vib need to stay together. Not only do they deal with the same equipment, but they are complementary technologies. If I see something strange on vib or oil, one of my first question is is: what did I see in the other one (oil or vib?) unless it's a greased bearing. Our oil and vib are all in the same group.

IR can sometimes be used on rotating equipment but that is not it's major function. The biggiest function is electrical. As such, I don't think you lose much splitting off infrared.

As I said above I don't see much synergy between infrared and oil/vib from an equipment standpoint.

However the may be a big synergy from an organizational process standpoint. They both need to schedule surveys, trend and evaluate findings, report and prioritize findings, etc. There is some synergy for putting people that do the same type of activities in the same type of group, even if they work on different equipment. For example design engineers... mechanical and electrical all in the same department because they all produce the same type of output and oragnizational interface with the rest of the plant, even though on different equipment.

Pete,
From what I understand, your management is not shutting down your group but expanding their influence even more. Each of the PdM individuals will still be in communication with each other. But now they will be sharing offices (and ideas) with other plant personnel that have not had the exposure to the PdM technologies. Your management is not trying to kill the PdM group, they have seen results and want to spread that to other areas. This is a stage that few PdM programs manage to reach and you should be very proud! It sounds like a great opportunity.

Perhaps your management has not taken the effort to inform you of the reasoning behind their decision, and that is unfortunate. Change is uncomfortable, especially when you don't know why. Simply have someone in your current group talk to management for the purpose of finding out why!

Take Care,

Let me add some fuel for a better discussion.

I think that splitting a group so that any of the members feels it as a split (of which you, Pete E., are the proof (Red, you are touching that subject, fine)), is just like shooting in your foot. Imagine a football team that never trains or plays together except during matches. Would you imagine that team to have a chance to win? Can you imagine a board of directors not working, talking, chatting, mailing, developing, negotiating together? Etcetera.
Chris, I wish the aim of the management is what you scetch. I think you are a bit naive, but on paper it is sure nice. But too much blabla and no workshop. Such a team never scores.

I have seen many attempts to do what Pete E. sees. Good examples of killing cooperation and synergy is to first split a double power station or a dual paper machine maintenance crew into two separate. Then make sure the individualists, not the team builders, are group leaders, one for each area. So you have two oil groups, two vibe groups, two IR groups and so on. Seen it twice now. I did not believe it until I saw the new phone number lists. The smart fellas leave for better jobs, the ones who must stay do so and the remaining ones with a solid knowledge go to early retirement. The efficiency on most levels sinks to an absolute minimum survival level, at very high costs, evident for all who have a perspective more than ten years on the sites. It even hits the individuals hard, some don´t even salute or chat in the canteen. Terrible to see old friends split for manager stupidity.

Pete E., I smell possibly an urge to find a quick accounting trick to short short fat profit and to get a good solid bonus for the manager. He will then leave quickly and could not care less for the plant. You all know about ABB, need I say more. There are several parallel cases in all sorts of branches. Sad, but a strong trend is there. In a wartime, such approaches are called treason and the guilty get executed. Regards Arne