Asset Reliability Maintenance… Getting Production More Involved!

In an industrial environment, maintenance is generally considered one of the most important activities utilized for improving reliability, and as such, the first one to be blamed for the lack or poor performance of it. If production goals are not met, or there are quality issues, or if there are safety or environmental issues, etc… maintenance is often seen as the guilty party.

Today, managers are feeling the pressure to respond to these changes and a continuously increasing pressure to achieve higher plant availability and lower costs; as a result, there is a growing awareness of the effect of maintenance in safety and the environment, accompanied by a growing awareness of the connection between maintenance and product quality and a continuously increasing pressure to achieve higher plant availability and lower costs.

However, everything said above in association with reliability, typically refers to the maintenance function, not just the maintenance department. The maintenance function is a responsibility shared with every department in the plant. The production department is responsible for operating the equipment within its established parameters, to perform certain tasks to maintain the equipment within those parameters and to report operating anomalies to maintenance so corrective action can be planned and scheduled. In this day and age, Production/Operations must be more involved in the whole asset care (maintenance) function. They must work with the Reliability/Maintenance department as “partners”, forgoing the old “customer/supplier” relationship.

Before any effort to improve asset reliability has any chance of success, all departments and all personnel, managers and workers alike, must have a complete understanding of the process and a firm commitment to support organization asset care.

In this upcoming workshop, "Basics of a Sound Asset Reliability Maintenance Management Program...Getting Production and Operations More Involved," we will explore three main ways to accomplish this objective:

1. The principle of the Production/Operations Maintenance Coordinator
2. The basics of Operator Basic Care (OBC)
3. Production/Operations use of EAM


Jim H. Davis, CMRP
VP-Business Development
Performance Consulting Associates, Inc.