Project created, project team focuses on one area in the plant, conditioned based maintenance increased, time based reduced, failures avoided.   Success?  Ah, but then, project team moves on to second area of plant, in the first area compliance goes down, reliability goes down.  KPI’s are in place, the new maintenance program is not being followed, but nothing is done…

There can be several reasons for the above failure.

Maintenance and operations personnel report equipment between PF interval, equipment does not get repaired, i.e. report gets “backlogged”, result, over time personnel stop reporting condition.

Project team moved on, supervision and management after years of being rewarded for firefighting go back to what they know.  A quick overview of a reliability program to these individuals is often taken as the flavor of the month and heads node while in meetings but attitudes do not change.

How to avoid these problems?

When a reliability program is implemented the organization should understand that quite often work load increases until equipment condition is brought back to a maintainable state.  That is, there is often a significant amount of failure modes found as soon as new inspections are instigated.  If these reported issues are not tracked and a plan formulated to address them, confidence will be lost.  What is the point of reporting this stuff if nothing gets done!

1. Back fill reliability team members.
2. Have team members who can augment area maintenance during and shortly after implementation of program.
3. Monitor KPI’s and react quickly if proactive work load grows.  Execute PM first, Proactive work second.
4. Make sure maintenance program is periodically reviewed for appropriateness and operating context.

Everyone, and that means everyone, (Management, Operations, Maintenance, Engineering, QA, Etc.) must understand the importance of why the company started down the program path.  In addition, there must be clearly identified measures in place and everyone, top down and bottom up must treat those KPI’s as critical.  If routes are not performed or found issues are not corrected, failures will not be avoided.

1. Focus maintenance meetings on not just project status but sustaining progress.
2. Reward success, track avoided failures.  (Often reduced/avoided failures are quite difficult to quantify, another blog!)
3. If possible adjust compensation plans to match project objectives.If obstacles persist to the program, take action to correct.
4. Overall communicate, communicate, communicate.