Things to Think About and Do in 2011: Regulating Maintenance

Here is this week's installment of ReliabilityWeb.com's e-book, Things to Think About and Do in 2011. Can't wait for next week's topic? Thumb through the entire e-book for free at ReliabilityWeb.com, Happy Reading! 

 

 Regulating Maintenance—

Should maintenance be regulated? It is interesting that many comparisons have been made between maintenance and quality processes in business. Some past comments heard about quality include:

•  No one ever did anything about quality, until they figured out what the cost of non-quality was.
• No one paid attention to quality until senior management paid attention to quality.
• Quality first-unless it interferes with production!

It is interesting that the more companies realized how much quality processes impacted their business, the more attention they paid to it. Eventually, through the efforts of the European Quality Community, the ISO-9000 series of standards were established. As time went on, achieving ISO-9000 certification became necessary for a company to do business in the world marketplace.

Now that we have the maintenance function within a company we hear comments like:

• No one ever did anything about maintenance, until they figured out what the cost of equipment downtime was.
• No one paid attention to maintenance until senior management paid attention to maintenance.
• Sure we maintain our equipment-unless it interferes with production!

While they don’t clearly understand it, more business executives are beginning to realize that maintenance does impact their bottom line, whether they perform it or not. The European Asset Management Community is involved again. This time it is an initiative called BSI PAS 55:2008. It stands for the British Standards Institution’s Publicly Available Specification for the optimized management of physical assets. This standard is beginning to work its way through the same path that the ISO-9000 standards did as adopting them became a requirement for companies to do business in certain markets. There is now, as of January 2011, a work draft for an ISO standard ISO/PC 251.

Are we headed down the same path with maintenance as we did quality? Will we finally have a “Maintenance Standard”? Only time will tell—but hopefully we will develop one. We really need it.

—Terry Wireman

 

Things to Think About and Do in 2011: TPM

Here is this week's installment of ReliabilityWeb.com's e-book, Things to Think About and Do in 2011. Can't wait for next week's topic? Thumb through the entire e-book for free at ReliabilityWeb.com, Happy Reading!

TPM—

...My thing to think about and do in 2011 is to take a piece of equipment—something that is both meaningful, due to being a capacity constraint, causing significant downtime, or both, and manageable, being small enough for your team of five to nine people to complete in three to four days, and perform the first three steps of autonomous maintenance:

• Restore—bring the equipment back into its original condition by cleaning, inspecting and correction all deterioration.

• Improve—make modifications to the equipment to eliminate sources of contamination and causes of deterioration, and to improve accessibility for both operation and maintenance.

• Maintain—prepare an operator maintenance standard and visualize the checkpoints on the equipment itself. Review the current PMs in relation to this new standard.

Not only is autonomous maintenance an improvement process, it is a learning process—for you to learn about how far your equipment has deteriorated, and for your operators to learn about how your equipment performs its functions.

Performing an autonomous maintenance pilot with your team members from your engineering, maintenance and operations departments will give you new insights into the status of your equipment and maintenance operations. 

—Malcolm Jones

Check Out Our Summer Quarter Newsletter!

 This Edition's Articles Included:

• Webinars Transform into Webcasts! Check out our very first Webcast featuring MaintiMizer BlackBox™ Aug. 8th-11th!
• Ready for Summer Vacation? Assign Temporary Role Rights.
• MaintiMizer™ Web Edition Users: Create Custom Fields.
• MaintiMizer™ Client/Server Users: Back Up your Data.
• VM Servers and MaintiMizer™ Client/Server Edition: Not a Winning Combination, Yet.
• Upcoming MaintiMizer™ Training Classes.

Things to Think About and Do in 2011: SEIZE

I recently came across an e-book, Things to Think About and Do in 2011, published by ReliabilityWeb.com with some really good advise for the maintenance world. While it is available for free at ReliabilityWeb.com, I thought I'd repost the sentiments in a weekly series here at the Ashcom Advisor. I hope you find them interesting, intriguing, and inspirational, Happy Reading!


"S.E.I.Z.E."

My personal goals for the upcoming year involve more training and education. No matter what age or stage in your professional career, I don’t think there’s a time when you can sit back and say “Well that’s it, I’ve arrived, and I know all I need to know.” So I’, kick-starting myself. There is no aspect of both my personal or professional life that is more important that learning.


My new personal watchword for the year is S.E.I.Z.E.
My co-workers and customers deserve the best from me. I want results and yes, I deserve them also.

Search for training opportunities. Don’t be picky at first. Brainstorm or make lists by subject or availability.

Evaluate training opportunities. Is it appropriate? Does it further company or individual goals? Can it do both?

Initiate preliminary research, study, or find other ways to familiarize yourself with the scope and benefits of the training opportunities available. Ask yourself how it will advance your goals and your company’s goals to pursue these opportunities.

Zone in on the right training for you. If you’ve done your homework right, it will benefit you and your company.

Encourage yourself. You can do it. You have the abilities. Encourage your company to expand the training agenda. Address financial considerations or other concerns that hinder the consideration or development of training. TAKE THE LEAD ON YOUR OWN TRAINING. Don’t assume others will do it for you.

—Steve Mislan

We're Gearing up for Training!

Our summer training sessions are quickly approaching and we are getting things ready! We love training classes for a few reasons:

1. Smiling Faces. We get to meet you, our users, face-to-face! A lot of our business is preformed over the phone or Internet so having the chance to actually meet you is really special to us. 
2. Lightbulbs. We love passing on MaintiMizer™ knowledge! It is a great feeling to teach someone something new and know it will have a positive effect on their life/career/organization. When we have those "Ah-Ha!" moments in class everyone wins!
3. Elbow-Bumping. Ever wonder: Who else uses MaintiMizer™? What do they use it for? and How do they use it? By coming to our in-house training sessions you will meet other users and have the opportunity to foster working relationships. Our users are awesome, we're sure you'll agree!

If you haven't had the chance to be formally trained, or even if you have but it's been awhile, check out our summer training dates, or start planning for a trip this fall!

MaintiMizer™ Web Edition Training Sessions:

June 20th-23rd

September 19th-22nd

MaintiMizer™ Client/Server Edition Training Sessions:

July 11th-14th

September 12th-15th



Of course you don't have to register for the whole sequence of classes, you can pick and choose which sessions to attend. For more information please check out AshcomTech.com or click here to register today!

Things to Think About and Do in 2011: "ENGAGE"

I recently came across an e-book, Things to Think About and Do in 2011, published by ReliabilityWeb.com with some really good advise for the maintenance world. While it is available for free at ReliabilityWeb.com, I thought I'd repost the sentiments in a weekly series here at the Ashcom Advisor. I hope you find them interesting, intriguing, and inspirational, Happy Reading!

ENGAGE—
"Engage your staff with an open and objective mind to improve their morale and reliability. Be prepared to hear the unheard of an to hold ideas until they are ready to be acted upon. Provide feeback to staff so they know the status of their ides. Not all ideas can be taken, but too often we allow suggestions to go into a black hole, never to be formally responded to. Consider configuring an internal portal of social network of sorts to all staff the freedom too both make suggestions and to track the status of their input.

Engage other professionals online, at conferences or at their place of employment. Keen maintenance and reliability professionals will often make themselves available to you if you are equally keen. Borrow bright ideas that have worked for them for an issue you are trying to resolve, and adapt it to your circumstances.

Engage your colleagues, particularly in those in other departments or disciplines. it is said that some of the greatest innovations come when two distinct disciplines come together. Make it happen.
Engage your leaders to discover their visions for the way things can and should be. Bring fearless enthusiasm to the table, backed with well-researched ideas, as well as financial and soft benefits. Be open to their comments and critiques. Preserve.

Engage yourself. Go beyond your usual mindset, and learn something new, complimentary to what you want to accomplish in 2011. Life lessons transcend singular disciplines and provide a portable form of wisdom."

—Abayomi Carmichael