The component importance measure is an index of how much or how little an individual component contributes to the overall system reliability. It is useful to obtain the reliability importance measure or value of each component in the system prior to investing resources toward improving specific components. This is done to determine where to focus resources in order to achieve the most benefit from the improvement effort.

Why us, why now? In years past, the engineer, manager or superintendent was responsible for improvement ideas. Maintenance people were “hands” hired to do what they were told. Today, organizations are lean and mean; we need the capabilities of all maintainers. The downsizing craze, however, has left everyone in a managerial role with too many tasks and too little time. There’s no one left to cut costs!

In Total Productive Maintenance small group activities are interwoven in each other. Autonomous maintenance is one of the most important pillars of TPM. Autonomous maintenance aims to educate the participants in the concepts and philosophy of autonomous maintenance and to give m opportunity to develop their skills and confidence. Read the learn why implementing TPM to improve OEE was recommended to the plant in question.

Even when a company has both the will and the money to spend, it is difficult to know where to start when considering the implementation of maintenance management systems. Probably the majority of smaller companies are still at this stage, which effectively means the majority of maintenance people. The prospect of developing suitable maintenance control strategies and policies from a standing start is daunting. There are many questions such as how much will it cost, where will the resources come from and how will we cope?

This call to action is being driven by reductions in resources, increased desire to maximize capacity utilization, the need to optimize operational performance, and the need to ensure that we are in compliance with company goals, targets and corporate responsibilities. We are being asked to do more with less. Data management is an essential element of the solution to this challenge.

The new general manager at Doe Run’s South-east Missouri Mining and Milling Division determined that inaccurate and incomplete maintenance data was a major contributing factor preventing effective management of maintenance costs. Management then decided to obtain the necessary knowledge and tools which would allow implementation and operation of an effective maintenance management program. The company chose to pilot a program at one of the mines, and depending on its success, the program would be expanded to other areas within the division.

Energy utilities require optimization of asset management as never before. Maintenance personnel bear the burden of sustaining reliability and availability and are personally in the spotlight the instant an interruption or failure occurs. Yet without the right resources and tools at their disposal, one can argue that it is not the staff but the focus on maintenance that is broken. This article addresses some of the challenges faced by utilities today and reasons to recalibrate your maintenance priorities.

Management today is never the same what was yesterday. And India, undoubtedly, has been one place that has witnessed radical changes in Management  – be it Man Management, Money or Material Management. And it goes without saying that concept of “Lean” in all fields is the name of the game. Lean Organization, Reduced Vendor base, Shorter Production Cycle, Market Micro-segmentation and Skinned Distribution Points are all globally accepted jargons of the present day cost conscious world.

Besides being the central hub for maintenance, the storeroom also provides functions that are absolutely critical to the maintenance operation. These functions are so important that when the storeroom is operating in a best practices mode, the rest of the maintenance operation can excel – the storeroom is the enabler. Put another way, if the storeroom is run improperly (such as poor inventory accuracy, parts unavailable when needed due to poor replenishment and procurement practices, etc), the rest of the maintenance operation has no chance of achieving high service levels of equipment availability and reliability.