While talking with a wide variety of companies, I believe that many still think that the whole reliability improvement effort belongs to the maintenance organization and it alone. In reality, that has been tried for many, many years with very limited success. It’s all about operations and maintenance working together to understand what has to be done and then working jointly to make it happen.

It’s no different than our automobiles. The mechanics can work their hearts out to have our cars in peak condition but then we have to do our part and work with them in learning how to care for our auto if we want that condition to sustain itself. This includes tasks we can help with such as checking the fluid levels, tire air pressure how we drive it,  etc. 

It’s all about us working together. We collectively need to have all our personnel understand how the equipment is supposed to function, all the many ways that it can fail, and their respective roles to keep the failures from occurring. There are incredibly straight forward processes that can be used to help this happen. Maintenance Task Analysis (MTA) and Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) are two that come to mind. They are designed to help bring together all those that we want to care for and operate our assets and get at the root of how to optimize equipment performance. By now most folks have heard of these approaches to improving performance but how many have really gotten into ‘making it happen’. The value to both the shop floor and the company itself are unbelievable.

If you happen to be one of those that hasn’t taken this type opportunity to the next level, please give it some serious consideration. The success that you’ll enjoy just might be your own.

 Enjoy the journey and good luck.

February 2nd, 2010   Al Weber   Implementation Success - Strategy & Leadership   Leave a Comment »