As I visit various industry sites, I look forward to interacting with the shop floor to understand how they feel everything is going. The work ethic is usually very strong and folks ‘get it’. We all need to work smarter, not harder, and strive to improve equipment performance and cost structure.

When commissioning a brand new asset, the focus is very strong on getting it installed, debugged and into production. As we all know, these steps almost always require changes to the design, large and small, obvious and not so obvious. The need for making these changes is understood, but it is critical that all changes become incorporated into their respective equipment documentation records so that a clear history is established as to when and what was done relative to change. With the very complex equipment we’re now using to produce our products, these changes are critical when it comes time to troubleshoot issues and problems, no less train new folks on how the asset operates. Imagine trying to find the source of a problem when the very drawings you’re relying on to help you are out of date. Talk about a blind shot at fixing what’s wrong. Not only does this take much more time away from production due to increased troubleshooting time, but think of the unnecessary aggravation your causing your people as a result of making their jobs that much harder than  need be. 

This issue is found not only around the creation of new assets but is just as common and serious when working on existing equipment. We’re always trying to tweak more out of our existing equipment and this requires changes to be made accordingly. If the appropriate document records are not updated properly, we create a nightmare for the folks trying to care for the equipment. In addition, imagine trying to design the change and not have a clear picture of the current design of the area in which you are working.

As much sense as it makes to keep all of our documents current, it’s been a long time since I visited a site where document maintenance was being practiced. The pain is being self inflicted and only we can resolve this important area of neglect.

Are we really saving any money by not maintaining good equipment document records? I believe we all know the answer.

Go for it and good luck!

August 6th, 2010   Al Weber   Implementation Success   1 Comment »