Al Weber

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Need to fix Planning and Scheduling before looking at Reliability? Think again…

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

As I visit with many sites across all industries around the country, I continue to hear folks say that they have to fix their planning, scheduling and work order data collection systems before they can go after driving improved reliability. In my opinion, nothing could be further from the truth.

Most organizations today do a poor job of writing out work orders for tasks being done and then providing the needed data after job completion to build a healthy history base. If you think about how long it would take to build a meaningful database, it would take forever to get a solid initiative in place. This is time that most organizations simply do not have.

I believe the key to getting a reliability program underway is to first determine baseline performance data for your most critical equipment that will be key to determining when an asset is starting to function outside of its acceptable boundaries. There are different processes such as Maintenance Task Analysis (MTA) that allow you to determine this in a very credible way. Once you know what data needs to be looked at, you can then decide how you want this information collected and processed. It can run from simple check sheets done manually or automated using handheld devices all the way up to online data collection and automated condition based monitoring to capture the necessary readings. The trick then becomes how to best analyze, correlate and act on all of this data, often being summarized from of thousands of data points. If you are able to look only at the data that falls out of acceptable limits, then it is a lot easier to manage. This is where technology like Ivara EXP comes into the picture.

EXP filters the data and calls your attention to the readings only when necessary and only to those readings that require attention. This in itself is an amazing aid and can save tons of time and resources. With this kind of information being conveyed close to real time to whomever needs to see it, will allow for proactive steps to be taken prior to failure taking place. Hence you have just caught a potential failure prior to it occurring and causing all the time and heartache that goes along with unplanned downtime. The key to remember is that all of this can be done on your most critical assets in fairly short order. The recorded information that helps you spot and resolve the potential failure also is applied to that historical database (that we started out talking about wanting at the beginning of this posting).

You can and, in fact, should give serious consideration to this approach if you’re looking for timely improvement without taking forever to get started. Improved RELIABILITY can be yours and the gains it brings shared with everyone in the organization in weeks and months, NOT years.

Good luck and enjoy the journey.

August 31st, 2010 Al Weber Implementation Success - Process & Practices - Strategy & Leadership 2 Comments »

Equipment Document Health- A Major Savings Opportunity

Friday, August 6th, 2010

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 »

Why is reliability so hard to get support for?

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

As I’ve discussed reliability with many folks around North America, I continue to hear about the difficulty in getting buy in for a healthy, aggressive reliability program to be put in place. So if it’s so important, why is it so difficult?

The trick continues to be getting senior management to understand what reliability is and what it can do for bottom line corporate performance. Since it’s not easy to get the ear of senior folks much of the time, there is another way to consider going about this…

If you can identlfy an asset or process in your area of responsibility that fails a lot and matters a lot when it fails, that might be a great place to try a pilot. If it is truely a problem area, and given you and the team you work with can make a significant difference in how it’s performing, it’s got to receive serious attention. Once you’ve achieved that, the natural question asked is “what made such a difference”? There lies your opportunity to show how your team made this happen. The fact that it was a team effort, proven successful and not too hard to accomplish has got to start getting the attention of others in your organization. What better way to get a program to take hold then to show success and value for all to see.

Give it a try, it just might make a ‘big’ difference.

May 25th, 2010 Al Weber Strategy & Leadership Leave a Comment »

Mending A Damaged Reliability Culture

Friday, May 21st, 2010

As I talk to many organizations on the topic of how they feel about their relationships within a site, it’s very clear that a large number of them feel their interactions in support of improving reliability are lacking. Often this has surfaced via the old way of managing the functions of maintenance and reliability by having maintenance work on their own to improve what they bring to the table and operations sitting on the sideline feeling they are the customer, not a partner. While sometimes Operations can be quick to criticize what isn’t going well, and slow to show a willingness to understand the existing issues, the best option is to work together to get back on track.

It’s all about teamwork. Reliability simply can’t be improved unless all parties understand the goals and work together to help make it happen.

In my opinion, this starts with leadership from both operations and maintenance being brought together to redefine what the needs of the site are as they relate to future health and success. Once there is agreement on these goals, then they have to lead by example which means ‘show by example’ to the rest of the organization. Jointly convey the agreed to goals to everyone at the site and explain why it’s so very important for everyone to join forces to drive improvement. It should also be made clear that it’s part of everyone’s job to help make this happen. By jointly working on improvement projects impacting asset performance and health, the climate will only get better and the culture stronger in helping form lasting improvements.

Good luck with this vital initiative.

May 21st, 2010 Al Weber Strategy & Leadership Leave a Comment »

Culture Change, A Truly Vital Part of Reliability

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

Many of us are working hard to create equipment reliability improvement in our various organizations. We’re working hard to learn about all the tools and techniques that will allow us to be successful. We know this will have an incredible impact on our operations with untold financial gains to be had by our respective companies. BUT, is this really going to help create the success we are looking for and will it sustain itself if one of us were to move on?

The key to this question focuses on our ability to create a culture change that will motivate everyone to embrace reliability improvement and keep it going even when we’ve changed positions.

So many of the companies I’ve been visiting are really struggling with how to accomplish this vital part (culture change0 that is needed for true success. This difficulty is created by those who don’t understand the importance of everyone in the organization learning about why reliability is important to both them and their companies. This learning has to be related to the ‘what’s in it for me’ and why is that important. In addition, we must do a better job of getting as many people involved as possible in helping define the needed changes and then being a part of making them happen. Now you start to see significant ownership develop and the program is no longer yours or mine but ours.

I believe that it’s possible to sustain equipment reliability in any organization with any group of people once you get your mind around how critical this element of your program truly is in order to establish success. That done, when one of us leaves the organization, no matter what our role, the rest of the folks will insure this effort continues. Good luck as you think your way through this process as it relates to your efforts and enjoy the benefits that will be achieved by all.

March 22nd, 2010 Al Weber Strategy & Leadership Leave a Comment »

Maintenance and Operations Partnership: The Secret to Success in Reliability Improvement

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

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 »

Is your PM program good enough?

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Upon visiting a very successful company a couple of weeks ago, I got engaged in a serious conversation with their management on why their PM program wasn’t enough to allow them to reach optimum performance. I believe the following findings can be repeated in many plants across all industries so wanted to share it with you.

It seems that the plants leadership has worked over the past 2 years to put in place a complete PM program for all of its process control equipment. To their credit, they did a good job of identifying key assets and drafting an outline of what needed to be done and how frequently they should do it but that’s where the effort came to a stop.

Though they took a good first pass at the mentioned program, they failed to involve shop floor personnel in defining key equipment and leveraging their experience and knowledge to define what needed to be done and how often the PM should be scheduled. As you might guess, this caused a credibility gap when the program was rolled out, one which they never really recovered from.

The next shortcoming was the lack of using a formal process to get at the root of what needed to be looked at based on cost to do and consequences of failure. This allowed a number of PM’s to be put in place that really were a waste of time and dollars due to the very limited payback that could be expected vs the outlay of resources to accomplish the work. This is where a structured approach such as Maintenance Task Analysis (MTA), or for key critical assets, the use of Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) would be a tremendous help in insuring the right work would be done at the right time.

Another shortfall to the approach that was taken was the lack of understanding for what Predictive Maintenance (PdM) concepts could do for them relative to seeing problems starting to develop prior to their becoming an issue. Time based maintenance is just to hit and miss for the majority of failures we try to catch when attempting to improve equipment reliability and performance. This is backed by documented findings that over 80% of all failure is random in nature.

Another shortfall that I would like to touch on is the importance of documenting the findings while performing a PM. Actually this needs to be done for all work, including the Reactive Maintenance carried out each day. This documented data allows you to understand exactly what and where your failures are occurring. This information really becomes the key to improving future performance. The data needs to be captured, documented and trended so as to be of the most value in sorting out what you want to focus on to drive improvement.

The company I’m relating to didn’t understand how critical these steps were and thus really evolved to what I call the ‘Poke and Hope’ approach to driving improvement.

As you think about the short comings listed here, I would encourage you to consider how your respective programs were developed and how well they are serving your needs. Does any of this sound like what might be taking place within your organization? I believe you’ll agree that this true story could be happening to you. Good Luck!

January 11th, 2010 Al Weber Process & Practices - Strategy & Leadership Leave a Comment »

Our challenge for tomorrow-Replacing today’s diminishing resources

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

As most of us are well aware, our skilled resources are quickly moving towards retirement and will do so whether or not we’re ready for that to happen. Our equipment is becoming more complex each year as we install the newest technology to optimize our manufacturing processes. The challenge for all of us as I see it is to figure out how to sustain or better yet improve asset performance while we’re going through this tremendous change of technology and personnel, the very same people who best know how our assets should function.

This sounds like we’re moving into a real doomsday environment but I would suggest that we have two key considerations that can help us through this time of concern. First is to recognize that we have new technology available to us which can monitor all aspects of our assets health and help us understand the type of failure that’s evolving and guide us in understanding the best ‘fix’ to resolve the problem prior to a failure occurring. I believe that anyone not looking into this technology and truly learning how it can fit into their environment is truly missing a vital component needed to move towards improved reliability. We just don’t have the resources needed to do this via any other way!

The second consideration that can help resolve this problem is that of today’s economy. With times being what they are, there are many very capable, hard working and talented folks available that normally we couldn’t begin to hope seeing as potential candidates to join our workforce. By using the latest technology and proven methodologies to better care for our respective assets, we can quickly help these new folks to climb the learning curve and faster than ever take over the task of keeping our respective plants running without missing a beat.

So in summary, yes we know caring for our assets has some unbelievable challenges ahead but given the availability of technology, proven methodology and some mighty fine folks available out there, we can and in fact MUST start looking real hard at what all of this can mean to help insure our success. GOOD LUCK.

November 11th, 2009 Al Weber Strategy & Leadership Leave a Comment »

Reliabilty Engineers-Why not just grow them?

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Having just returned from this year’s SMRP conference, a conversation that I had with a large number of folks from many industries was that of having/ or not having enough reliability type engineers to meet our needs both now and in the future. Granted, the traditional route of developing these types of resources is limited today from advanced learning sources such as our universities but I would offer that doesn’t have to be a roadblock for us.

There are a large number of individuals we work with every day that can and should be considered, that is, our technicians and tradespeople. If we think about it, who else knows our equipment really well and all that’s NOT so right about it! From my experience, most all of our work forces have key individuals who not only could, but would love a chance to expand their scope of responsibility, grow their careers and make a world of difference in improving reliability in our respective plants. I also believe these folks would be easy to identify and would really appreciate a chance to explore their interest in becoming involved with this critical role in helping to insure our company’s future. Their skills include the ability to think through problems, to work well with others, and possessing a strong interest in learning about new ways to help improve asset performance. What a great way to help maximize how we use the resources we have all around us. Give it some thought, it really could be a significant part of the solution.

October 27th, 2009 Al Weber Strategy & Leadership Leave a Comment »

Your Asset Maintenance Program-Fact or Fiction?

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

Many of us have created maintenance programs for our assets over many years and with the help of many different people. Often the adjustments made to these are driven by a reaction to a given problem that “bit us” without fully understanding:

what created the problem in the first place
the bottom line true financial impact of the failure and
if it’s worth doing something different, what is the best method to monitor that aspect of the assets health.

Too many times these changes/additions are driven by what “someone thinks” and not by truely looking at the facts. Over time these behaviors lead to an asset maintenance program that has reduced benefits and can create questionable feelings about the kind of job maintenance is really doing.

What I would suggest you consider (if the above sounds all too familiar in your organization) is to step back and take a fresh look at what you feel really should be the appropriate program. I also believe it’s critical for both operations and maintenance to work on this together with the added assistance of engineering as appropriate.

There are several processes that take you through an excellent review of how an asset can fail and what can, and in fact should, be done to seeing the problem evolving to a point of concern. Maintenance Task Anaylsis and RCM are two that you should at least take a look at as they might relate to your environment. Using MTA for all but the most critical assets can promote a very effective and resource smart approach as you get started. The use of RCM can then be considered for the most critical balance of the assets that you are concerned about.

Taking advantage of your personnel’s experience coupled with these processes WILL result in a very credible and effective program created by the shop floor and driven by facts, not speculation. What a great way to both clean up a program and get your folks on board. You really can’t lose! Good luck.

July 30th, 2009 Al Weber Process & Practices - Strategy & Leadership Leave a Comment »