Plant Reliability and Maintenance
Getting the most out of your plant, property, and equipment.
- Does your maintenance organization operate in a reactive mode?
- How do you measure the effectiveness of your equipment?
- Do you know how to harness the strengths of the equipment operator for the benefit of machine up-time?
- Has a critical operation ever been taken out of service for an extended period of time due to a minor issue?
- Are you fully realizing the benefits of your preventive maintenance program?
Historically the maintenance function in any organization is viewed as a necessary evil. It is an overhead function that is often in standby to either fix a problem or be dramatically reduced in the operations budget.
The Marshall-Teichert Group views the maintenance function as one of the most critical support functions in the ongoing survival of any organization that is producing a product or providing a service.
In today’s new competitive global marketplace, there are several new philosophies that are causing a number of fundamental changes in how firms think about maintenance management:
- Maintenance excellence is being viewed as an integral part of the company’s competitive strategy
- Maintenance is being seen as equal to other operational functions
- Focus is placed on employee ownership of the equipment and the elimination of waste
- Ongoing skill-based, multi-craft capability and training is becoming a reality
- There is a much higher level of integration with enterprise-wide systems
- Working relationships are being based on clearly established expectations
- Organizations are developing “leaders” at all levels of the organization
More and more organizations are embracing the maintenance function as an excellent place to make improvements. Examples are the streamlining of maintenance information through the computerization of maintenance work systems; predictive, preventive, and reliability-centered maintenance programs; and institutionalizing the enterprise-wide management practice of total productive maintenance. These improvement efforts are designed to increase the effectiveness of equipment operations, increase the efficiency of the workforce through access to critical equipment and parts information, as well as impact company-wide cultural conduct toward maintenance practices.
The first step in the MTG approach to making these changes within the organization is to conduct an assessment of the current situation.
The Maintenance Assessment is a comprehensive review of the maintenance processes and practices as they occur in the client facility today. The assessment is customized to the client’s industry and focuses the results to establish an excellent baseline for understanding the gaps that must be closed before the benefits of any new technique can be fully realized.
In addition to gaining this valuable insight, the assessment serves as an excellent benchmarking tool to see where the organization is positioned with respect to others in the same industry.
The results of the assessment serve as an unbiased tool to clearly understand the overall health of the maintenance function and its relationship to other elements in the enterprise; i.e., manufacturing, purchasing, and engineering support. The assessment delivers a clear picture of the department’s true strengths and weaknesses, as well as identifying and quantifying recommendations for short- and long-term improvement opportunities.
We work to comprehensively evaluate the elements of the maintenance function and their alignment to business targets that are both strategic and tactical in nature. The assessment is structured to provide a two-way picture: top down, as well as bottom up. A number of the elements we evaluate in the assessment are:
- Work initiation/authorization
- Planning and scheduling
- Work measurement
- MRO stores management
- Predictive and preventive maintenance
- MTBF/MTTR/reliability
- Contractor management
- Time-on-Tools/productivity
- Tool/equipment control
- Shutdown planning and execution
- Leadership and vision
- Roles and responsibilities
- Skill versatility
- Problem solving/analytical approach
- Plant/equipment design, purchase, and installation
- Production/maintenance coordination
- Cost control
Outputs from the assessment include a business case that describes and quantifies specific improvement opportunities, along with an implementation plan to achieve the identified benefits, timelines, required resources, and anticipated activities.
Although up-front planning is critical to the success of the effort, execution is where the real results are achieved. It is during this time that MTG’s powerful implementation support is the most evident. We will be there every step of the way to assist in achieving the identified benefits of the optimization effort.
Demonstrated Results on Maintenance Improvement Projects
- Reduced overtime by up to 40 percent
- Reduced overhaul cycle time by more than 10 percent
- Reduced overhaul costs by 22 percent
- Increased planned work from 20 percent to at least 80 percent
- Increased maintenance productivity by over 50 percent
- Improved morale in both operations and maintenance
- Reduced maintenance labor cost by 42 percent while maintaining uptime levels
- Increased equipment reliability by 33 percent
