Maintenance Management

Maintenance Management

Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail

Over the past decade, I have watched more than 100 companies try to remake themselves into significantly better competitors. They have included large organizations and small ones, companies based in the United States and elsewhere, corporations that were on their knees, and companies that were earning good money. These efforts have gone under many banners: total quality management, reengineering, right sizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnaround. But, in almost every case, the basic goal has been the same: to make fundamental changes in how business is conducted in order to help cope with a new, more challenging market environment.

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Maintenance Management

Creating Reliable Equipment Information

Deficiencies in the integrity of equipment data and difficulties in accessing this data are costing asset-intensive companies millions of dollars a year in equipment downtime and business inefficiencies. Waste in the work management processes appears in the form of extended searches for parts and materials; wasted effort due to missing, inaccurate or out-of-date equipment data; procurement errors; and an inability to easily access data from a reliable source. The result can be expensive to these organizations.

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Maintenance Management

The ‘Maintenance Crisis’ and Innovations that are Changing it

A couple months ago, I wrote an article about the top five careers in facility management. I interviewed a broad range of professionals for that story. But it was during an interview with Joel Leonard, President of SkillTV, that I started to ponder what he referred to as “the maintenance crisis”–a depletion of skilled workers in the maintenance management workforce caused by baby boomers retiring and too few young professionals entering the field.

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Maintenance Management

World Standard Maintenance Skills through Assessment and Multi-Skilling

What makes the difference between success and failure in meeting maintenance task deadlines? How can equipment reliability and maintenance task completion times be improved? These and other maintenance related questions can be answered by the UCC International’s Skills Assessment and Multi-skilling approach to maintenance training. Certified Trades and Technical staff at the University College of the Cariboo have developed a process by which maintenance supervisors and decision makers can adequately address maintenance skills weaknesses within their organization.

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Maintenance Management

Some Dangers of Batch Processes

“At the end of every batch, my pump wants to go home!” These were the words said to me in halting English by a maintenance manager of a major brewery in Manilla during one of my trips to the beautiful Philippines. Although I was accompanied by a translator, the manager insisted on trying out his limited English. As we were obviously having some kind of communication breakdown, I asked the translator to verify the comment. Sure enough, back it came, accompanied by a big grin and lots of head nodding. “At the end of every batch, my pump wants to go home.” Obviously, this was a pump I just had to see!

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Maintenance Management

Skills Development of Craftspeople

Unless you’re lucky enough to own your own paper mill, chances are you sometimes have to live with management decisions that differ from those you might have made on your own. So let’s move forward and assume your company is going to implement pay-for-knowledge. It’s not all bad. Not only are there various ways to cut your potential losses; there are even some positive benefits you can achieve if you do things right.

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Maintenance Management

Refurbishing Aged MCCs Proves Beneficial

In 1999-2001, the New Jersey International & Bulk Mail Center (NJI&BMC) in Jersey City, one of the largest United States Postal Service facilities, was concerned about its eight 33-year-old motor control centers (MCCs). Events forced a decision to pursue options for replacing or refurbishing the 276 cells that provide power primarily to 58 heating, air conditioning, and ventilation air handling units (HVAC AHUs) for the 1.8-million-sq-ft facility.

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CMMS / Tech Database

Maintenance Management of Your Company’s PLC

You need to read this article on maintenance management of PLCs. Why? Because the PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) are the brains of your operation. When the PLC is not functioning properly, lines shut down, plants shutdown, even city bridges and water stations could cease to operate. Thousands to millions could be lost by one little PLC in an electrical panel that you never even knew existed. But most importantly, damage to machine and personnel could result from improper maintenance management of your company’s PLCs.

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Maintenance Management

Maintain Pumping Systems Effectively

Effective pump maintenance allows industrial plants to keep pumps operating well, to detect problems in time to schedule repairs, and to avoid early pump failures. Regular maintenance also reveals deteriorations in efficiency and capacity, which can occur long before a pump fails. Wear ring and rotor erosions, for example, can be costly problems that reduce wire-to-water efficiency by 10% or more. The amount of attention given to maintenance depends on how important a system is to a plant’s operations.

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