Automated Bearing Wear Detection

Yesterday you were a happy camper.  Today you are told your Maintenance Cost (MC) as a percent of your Estimated Replacement Value (ERV) is 4.9%.  According to Consulting, Inc. and your corporate management 4.9% is way too high.  Good performers are under 3%, some operations are even under 2%.  So, the question is what are you going to do about it Mr. Maintenance Manager?

One of the major European postal services decided in the late 1990s to make a change in their plant maintenance organization. In my own U.S. Postal Service, there had been talk for years of combining the operations and maintenance supervision and reducing the supervisory ranks. It is easy to say, but how do you do it? Be careful of what you wish for!

Industry experts have for many years pointed to the low productivity levels in maintenance departments of most companies around the world. They cite anywhere from 30% to 50% as an average for “wrench time,” the productive time technicians spend actually repairing or replacing equipment, as opposed to walking to the job, receiving instructions, waiting for parts and other productive or non-productive activities. Do you know the average wrench time for your maintenance department and how it compares to others within and outside your industry?

Proactive organizations recognize that one of the critical success factors in achieving a best practices reliability program is developing a sound maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) spare parts program. That notion is quickly followed by the realization that there are potentially hundreds of improvement opportunities that typically could be associated with a materials management effort. As such, it becomes overwhelming to determine where to start.