quote:

The way we are approaching it and the little buy in we currently have it is going to take over a decade (sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings but I am not planning on spending the next 10+ years of my life doing RCMs).

Sorry guys but what ever way you look at it RCM is a long term plan not a quick fix.
I agree with you saying you guys are probably going about it the wrong way.
But also I think we must get over the mind set that its a short term goal.

Even if your whole plant is "RCM'd" in say 5 years you need to be continually reviewing what has already been done - not to mention new plant - there can't be many factories out their that don't renew their equipment once in a while.

So often we can be in such a hurry to get something finished so we can move on to the next "project".

RCM is on and on infinitum - sorry to bore you types who like to move on.
It needs to be imbedded and stuck with.

Of course realistically speaking in todays world a number of things can happen to this concept.
1. New management
2. New reliability person
3. End of factory
4. End of world.

Unfortunately any one of these events can derail the continuity of our infinite RCM programme.

The main thread of what I am saying to everyone on this board is don't be "for the moment".
I think its a trait of todays culture that we (myself included) are wanting quick fixes, can not wait. I think they like to call us "the impatient generation".
P.S I am use to the fact I can go and buy a car on approved payment and drive around in it for 12 months without even owning it!
Mike.

I’m not familiar with the software, but that doesn’t matter. It sounds like you have some systems to focus on. That's good work for the RCM group.

I recently wrote a query to sum the PM labor, PM parts, CM labor, CM parts and other work types in use in our CMMS by subsystem. I also summed the subsystem costs up to the system. Now I was able to see the most expensive systems and subsystems in our plant. Then exported it to Excel and then applied Data Filters to worksheet. I filtered “Top 10” for each of the four column categories and added comments for the rankings 1-10. After doing that for each of the four columns I was able to see a good trend that the most expensive systems had multiple 1-10 comments in multiple categories mentioned earlier.

Since our company shares a central database, I was able to perform the study for all seven production sites without too much extra work- changing the site ID in the query was too easy to pass up.

I applied some rules, like:
1) PM cost is the most easily influenced, and historically we over PM equipment here so there are a lot of opportunities to save money there. We also cause CMs BECAUSE of our PM program. 1-6 highest PM costs received a Priority 1 designation.
2) 7-10 highest PM costs with hits in any placement of other category and 1-6 highest CM costs with hits in any other category received a P2 designation.
3) 6-10 highest CM costs with hits in any other category received a P3 designation.

I needed to rank them somehow. It was a rough assessment, but it will give us a starting point for our Maintenance Needs Assessment.

The CMMS and database query tool are the main tools for any study and metric study that we can dream up.

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

Hello Ctiger

Without wanting to give you extra work to think about:

Rather than attacking everything with RCM across site, maybe your first step should be to perform a site criticality analysis to identify which equipment is critical to your process. This maybe production, safety, environment, cost related etc...
This step will then identify which items of plant you need to focus your efforts on.

You may then decide to use a full RCM approach on the critical equipment. You don’t need to start from zero like Steve suggests with RCM, you can start with your current strategy and work with that. Within this process you will develop the full FMECA, assign failure consequences, failure rates and optimize your current maintenance regime

With the less critical plant items rather than do full RCM on these items you may decide to use a “maintenance task template” approach. These templates can be developed in Excel or you may wish to use some RCM Optimization software to store the template library. Within these templates you would review your current maintenance and update via a strategy challenge if required. The new strategy is then applied to the equipment within your CMMS.

RCM is a legitimate tool that can be and is used successfully in industry.


If you would like to contact me offline I would be willing to discuss some of the details of the criticality approach mentioned above gtyne@globalreliability.com


Cheers – Gary

www.globalreliability.com

Do a criticality assessment by all means but dont spend more than four hours on it. I know a company that has spent four months on it - in that time we could have finished analysing 60% of the assets!

I believe a criticality assignment is essential and serves more than one purpose. It can be used for analysis priority by the RCM group for sure. But its primary function is to be entered in the CMMS and used by the planning and work order admin groups to assign work order priority. I’m sure there are many more uses for it but I don’t care to try and list them. Steve, how can you say four hours without knowing the scope of the analysis? It’s a valuable assessment to daily operations that shouldn’t be discounted.

The analysis I recommend in concert with the criticality number is cost ranking by PM Labor, PM Parts, CM Labor and CM Parts. I included GM work type, which in our CMMS accounts for system redesigns. After I put the analysis together, I was surprised by how many of our most expensive sub-systems had top ten rankings multiple categories. Some were in the top ten of all six categories. Now there’s a system to focus on.

I thought of a few things on my motorcycle ride home...
We certainly don’t need to reinvent data that already exists. If the CMMS already has criticality numbers assigned, by all means use them. If they do exist, a good query writer can extract the data and have it in a nicely formatted spreadsheet in about an hour or two for the whole plant. If its only partially entered, it will show up in the report.

I’m starting to connect a few ideas I’ve been formulating.

The internal RCM technician will, or should, become the liaison between the equipment, the CMMS data, Operations (the customer), Maintenance (our co-worker customers), Quality, the vendor, the manufacturer, and anyone else who needs intimate useful information about equipment in the plant. We are in the unique position to relate the CMMS data and apply it meaningfully to something physical. The other group that comes close to that understanding is our planners and some plant engineers (process and system compliance owners). But they still come to us, as we also go to them, because of our unique understanding of the data to equipment, or data to schedule, or data to compliance relational experience. I hope that made sense. It takes a lot of work and time for the internal RCM technician to get there. I said it before- data are your most valuable tools. Create reports, comparisons, cost analysis, failure analysis, problem code analysis, any valuable metric that you can dream up to get some attention and move solutions forward. Start with manager level and their reports. They are a group that can feel the effects of their budget and poor performing equipment.

RCM consultants (forgive me) are selling a product. They sell an idea, swoop in, swoop out, and fly off to... where ever. They are not at the plant to make the long term connection with the equipment that takes time to make. Many are trained as facilitators and don’t know the nuts and bolts about the equipment, that’s the SME’s job and the company supplies them. I certainly don’t want to dis the facilitators out there. I admire their talents.

quote:

I believe a criticality assignment is essential and serves more than one purpose. It can be used for analysis priority by the RCM group for sure. But its primary function is to be entered in the CMMS and used by the planning and work order admin groups to assign work order priority. I’m sure there are many more uses for it but I don’t care to try and list them. Steve, how can you say four hours without knowing the scope of the analysis? It’s a valuable assessment to daily operations that shouldn’t be discounted.

Hey Wally,
I agree... there are many very important reasons to have a criticality assessment done. The order in which to do your RCM studies is not one of them. If someone cant nut out which systems to do RCM on and in which order, in four hours, then they are taking too long in my opionion. RCM / PMO programs should not be delayed four months while someone does a criticality analysis.... just wasting time.

Also - dont do RCM on all the assets in order of criticality. You need to create productivity so you should analyse things that you have lots of and cost a lot of labour if you get the maintenance wrong. You can save many man-years of labour in looking for productivity items as well. I like to order the analysis to achieve both capacity and productivity so I sequence some low criticality / high productivity analyses early in the program.
Rgds
Steve

When you have a plant with 15 production areas and 8000 assets what equipment should we focus on first and which improvement process should we use - RCM, TPM, RCA, PMO etc?

Every production area has its own maintenance supervisor and operations supervisor and each one of them know what’s critical in their own section of plant.

What about the big picture? We need to be able to prioritize and plan what equipment requires what improvement process, if any. This needs to be performed efficiently, with data and subsequent justification.

What is critical in one production area may end up having no significant impact on the final production requirements of the whole plant.

Doing a criticality analysis in 4 hours – good luck!

You can analyze 60% of the plant assets in four months, which could also turn out to be valuable time and effort wasted if some of the equipment did not need analyzing in the first place.

I know we have detracted from Ctigers original question but maybe what I’m trying to encourage CTiger to do is maybe step back and re-assess what they are doing and how they are doing it.

Wally, whilst I appreciate your take on RCM Consultants who are trying to sell a “product”. I prefer to think that some of us are involved in developing a “solution” that will assist in the “long term” management of your assets.

Cheers Gary

www.globalreliability.com

what makes the forum live is/are different opinions. Thanks for yours Gary.. they are different to mine

Ctiger and others,

Ct, you say

quote:

The culture is a challenge, the supervisory staff was greatly reduced with the help of consultants a few years ago, therefore the management team is constantly watching their back. The operators and craft are aging and have been told how great they are doing, not much incentive to change.

With management watching their backs, you may have a nice opportunity to get your reliability program going places. If you mean management not merely at the top but also at intermediate levels, you've got it made in terms of the right scene.
Focus your 'selling' to all levels of management by explaining what is in it for them, $$$, less hassle of production stoppages, higher safety levels etc. Aging craft may be bored craft - you can make their work more enjoyable by showing them how their work produces results. Feedback often motivates people, especially bored people.
In my experience, evangelical sales pitches on RCM, RCA etc. do not stick. While you need the sun to shine (i.e. management support), we need to 'grow the plants' from the ground up. The soil has to be prepared (i.e. get the craft on board), invest in some gardeners (i.e trainers and facilitators) and get the show on the road, ramping it up past pilot studies to serious ones. Making sure the plants grow and are well supported (i.e., proper implementation of results) can make or break the program. Finally, get the fruits exhibited (i.e., measure the results) and enjoyed (show up on the bottom line).
On a more practical note, people love to solve problems. Consider an initial focus on RCA work. Results come fairly quickly, and the craft will appreciate learning methods they can use in their private lives as well. Then move on to the more sophisticated RCM etc. Like Mike66, I think you need to prioritize the work; an 80:20 rule works quite well. And please stop at the level of failure mode or cause that you can actually influence. Stopping at a clutch assembly is often enough, there is no need to go into the clutch plates, springs or rivets.

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

I have enjoyed the lively conversation. I have another observation/question after finishing Moubray's book and reading the posts here.

- I believe the Reliability groups do/should not own the RCMs. We may be custodians and provide guidance but until Operations takes ownership we are going to see minimal gains. RCM or whatever maintenance program, needs to be a living program. While it should be driving the majority of the maintenance activities, Operations is going to be where the results will be evident. In this respect Operations should be driving maintenance (not always a happy subject on the shop floor).

I have read in numerous places the goal of 80% PM/PdM to 20% Corrective work for the maintenance craft as being the ideal balance. Has anyone actual seen this balance in a production facility? And I am assuming that ratio as actual wrench time and not number of WOs.

I agree that the biggest thing we can do to improve production (since that is the overall goal) is to create a culture of ownership at the lowest achievable level. This will vary with type of equipment and even from operator to operator as turnover occurs. I was spoiled in the service because that was constantly installed. Most people would ahve a position job for 1-3 years and there was a 3 step cycle that you went through, you learned the job from someone, the became proficient then you taught. In a production facility, if there is no motivation to change and evolve then a culture change is difficult.

Just some ideas to beat up.

I’ve been trying to understand the PM/CM ratio rule as it applies to our data. I believe the usual published PM/CM ratio is based on work order count. Using count as your base seems pretty one dimensional to me. What if the 20% CMs have the largest cost factors associated with them? Obviously 20% is not acceptable when you consider another dimension. So far, I’ve only brought work order labor and parts costs into my worksheet. It would be interesting to also bring in work order count against each sub-system and ratio both data- cost and count. I still don’t know if I’d know ratio nirvana if it hit me in the side of the head. I do know that my cost data showed sub-systems are drawing large amounts of PM money and still have large amounts of CM money going to them.

History has shown that there is a portion of CMs that have a PM root cause. Unfortunately, we don’t have a work order type, standard wording, or some other method in place to categorize this effect accurately. Future work to be sure. I don’t know whether I agree or disagree with the ratio. It takes extremely good CMMS data practices to understand your own particular situation. CMs can be a long-time lagging indicator so to optimize the ratio for a particular system’s operating context will take a long time. I would like to learn more about it and see how it applies to our real life situation.


Our vibration program was set up by the RCM group, but now the mechanical group runs the program here, with only minor direction from our internal RCM vibe experts. They are one of the most significant stake holders in the program so it is in their best interest to run it well. They have done an admirable job. From what I’ve seen, it is definitely good to have stakeholder ownership in any program.

Another thought on the PM-CM ratio subject. The ratio depends on your maintenance strategy.

RTF = 0% PM, 100% CM
Highest Criticality (Failure Not Acceptable Systems) = 100% PM, 0% CM
Midrange Criticality Systems = a sliding scale somewhere in-between lowest and highest

I’m not sure I see how the 80%, 20% rule can be applied in general terms. Maybe someone can help enlighten me.

Ctiger,
A google search on "reliability pm/cm ratio" returned this link at the perfect reference page.
http://books.google.com/books?id=BnQN2ODPHNAC&pg=PA227&...03QNh4C0kuf0eU&hl=en

It think it says CM+PM is a better indicator than ratio or individually. That using a ratio is too abstract to get meaningful data from. I’ll have to think some deep thoughts about that.


Here’s another PM/CM ratio rule I just read about.
It states that the 6:1 rule is PM inspection time versus correction time. That you should find something “wrong” about one out of every six times you PM a machine. That works out to about 15%. It says if you are at a higher ratio then you’re inspecting too often. It makes sense to me for inspection tasks to work towards the metric.