Enhancing Overall Equipment Effectiveness Through TPM

Many managers are unaware that best-in-class companies routinely design-out maintenance at the inception of a project. That, clearly, is the first key to highest equipment reliability and plant profitability. Whenever maintenance events occur as time goes on, the real industry leaders see every one of these events as an opportunity to upgrade. Indeed, upgrading is the second key, and upgrading is the job of highly trained, well-organized, knowledgeable reliability professionals.

Like most mature job functions, facilities management regularly face the scenario of senior employees retiring, more so than newer industries like artificial intelligence or electric vehicles. Everyone of us can related to throwing a surprise party for a fellow colleague, and then it hits us, when Tim walks out that door, along go 4 decades of knowledge. But Tim's job is done, he has earned a well-deserved retirement and it's time for new employees to take the reins.

A plant shutdown and turnaround is defined as a major plant maintenance shutdown, typically involving the entire plant or multiple areas and lasts for several days (or if not properly planned and scheduled can last longer than expected). Some organizations have both Major (more than 24 hours) and minor (24 hours or less). In many cases, minor shutdowns can have a bigger impact on lost production.  

Organizations that are predominantly reactive typically do not believe it is possible to perform work any other way. Overall, they are frustrated, which in turn impacts morale. Maybe it is a training issue or maybe it is a leadership issue. Either way, it is affecting worker productivity due to the majority of work being unplanned. Unscheduled work also affects job safety. When workers feel rushed, bad things happen. Lastly, those organizations with poor reliability typically waste 10 percent of their revenue.

If you are managing a large facility using blueprint floor plans and spreadsheets to track assets, this article is for you. If, the last time you had a water leak during off hours and it took the emergency repair tech a half hour to get to it after wading thru paper maps, this is for you. If your HVAC repair technician got lost on the roof while looking for unit #34 that required maintenance, this might be useful. If your employees have your facilities management team on speed dial, then this was written for you.

Over the years, I probably asked this of several hundred employees, and many of the answers related to the interaction of management within the plant. They wanted the magic fix to be management that worked together, shift changes that were transparent, maintenance to work with operations, supervisors to be knowledgeable about expectations, and to feel part of the team. In essence, they wanted to perform like the USS Lincoln.