The Goal of Maintenance

The critical aspect of effective maintenance is that is it justifi-able by the business, culture, and fundamental ideals of right andwrong. Ouch, once we talk about right and wrong we leave ourcozy domain of management and maintenance and go into thecomplicated, sticky, and ambiguous land of morality and ethics.Although I’m not qualified to speak in depth on these issues, it isclear that right and wrong must enter the equation. This news isvery bad for maintenance professionals because we may be givenbudgets that are too thin to reasonably guarantee safety and en-vironmental integrity.

Our position is very tenuous. Do we quit in disgust, “suck it up”and do what is asked, become the proverbially wild-eyed prophetin the wilderness, or find a new mode of expression? Of course, weare looking for the new modes of expression that deliver the mes-sage effectively and protect everyone from short-term stupidityand avarice.

Reliability: The Prime Directive of PM We will revisit the right and wrong part of PM several times in

specific areas of this work. Let’s get back to the discussion on reli-ability. We could be (and certainly would be) champions of equip-ment reliability. One could argue that reliability is the prime di-rective of the PM effort and not be wrong. Even knowing the primedirective, there are several completely different situations.

If you run a nuclear power plant, you might have all work in-spected and conduct video surveillance. You might keep all NDT(Non Destructive Testing) records for decades and require all doc-

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umentation to be signed and verified. You might be audited by fed-eral agencies as well as your companies and insurance carriers,Nevertheless, you and your task lists will be subject to intensescrutiny by the press, public, and politicians who have no trainingand understanding of the issues.

If you are an airline, you might have all work inspected, withall procedures validated, checked out, designed by qualified engi-neers (on the aircraft side), and so on. If a mistake is made, it is apublic event; your integrity will be questioned even if you followedevery procedure to the T.

If you run a manufacturing plant, you might have the computersystem printing out PMs that take four hours to do properly, butare being done in an hour because people are so busy with theblessing of management. If something goes wrong, managementwill be staring over your shoulder and exerting pressure to get theline back up—and even if someone dies it would only be localnews.

The Path Effective maintenance is not a destination, but the name of a

path—a robust path. The path to effective maintenance includespreventive and predictive maintenance but also more than that.PM maintains the status quo. Effective maintenance aligns a com-pany’s needs for increasingly efficient maintenance effort, realis-tic resources, and doing the right thing by the employees and theenvironment.

One way to accomplish these goals is to add a specific categoryfor improvement called Proactive Maintenance (or PrM) to thetraditional pie chart of maintenance expenditures (see Figure1.1).

Figure 1.2 shows what PM looks like when it is working. Eachtask on the task list calls attention to a known or potential failuremode. If the PM workers cannot replace it then and there (calleda Short repair) they write up a CM work order. The next mechanicthen replaces the worn part.

The new approach adds a few little extra steps (see Figure 1.3).The bit that is added in going from Figure 1.2 to 1.3 is Proac-

tive Maintenance (PrM). Although PrM is a project-type activity,it can be distinct from projects in general. Proactive Maintenance

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The Goal of Maintenance 3

Figure 1.1 Pie chart of maintenance expenditures with PrM (Proactive Maintenance—a fund for maintenance reduction and improvement)

How we would love to see it work!

Figure 1.2

includes Lean Maintenance, 5S, Kaizan, and 6Sigma projects.PM is the best approach, right? After 5000 years of Preventive

Maintenance (they used to do PM inspections on the great pyra-mids), why is the PM approach not the dominant one? Why do westill need to argue for resources? Why do over 70% of all organiza-tions with physical assets have only a rudimentary PM system ornone at all?

The keys to this mystery are in two related areas. One is in hu-man nature. As humans, we are very reluctant to invest time andresources in something that ‘might’ happen. We are mostly short-term beings, interested in results now, not a year from now. ThePM approach is all about what might happen. If there were anycertainty to PM’s predictions, then selling PM would be simple. Itis argued that you could spend all your time chasing what-ifs, andnever get any real work done.

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Figure 1.3 PM system flows with PrM added to insure that, available problems are brought forward and solved. Eliminating maintenance and repair is the

highest goal of PrM.

How we would love to see it work!

Extensive work has been done in decision making. Given achoice:

1. Lose $50

2. 10% chance of losing $500

About 80% of people tested would chose “2” and be willing togamble if they are facing a loss (ask yourself if this is true for you).Statistically the two choices are identical. So what is measured ispeople’s preference.

In the same series of experiments, the same number of peoplewould choose a small but sure winner like “A” below.

A. Win $50

B. 10% chance of winning $500

When the statistics are the same, people go for the smaller surewinner and gamble on the larger loss. You would think that peo-ple would either be attracted to risk (choosing 2 and B) or repelledby risk (1 and A). What does this mean to PM?

If these experiments are true, then the natural tendency orpreference is for people to take the bet against PM. They reason“I’d rather have a sure winner (reduced expenses) and take mychances on a breakdown.”

They chose to gamble a 20% chance of a machine failure in thenext year against a 100% probability of loss of the PM investment.

By the same token, making the extra money from production (asure winner) is more attractive than a possibility of a largeramount of money from doing the PM and avoiding the future bigfailure. We are fighting an uphill battle against human nature—so be ready!

The second key is to address what top management reallywants from us (the maintenance function). This is a non-trivialconcern because many managers cannot verbalize the answer.Maintenance professionals are thus left serving many masters(different daily opinions based on the pressures of the day embod-ied in one person)

The Goal of Maintenance 5

Proactive Maintenance (PrM) The Goal of maintenance is (paradoxically) to get out of the

maintenance business. Your job will become clear when you un-derstand this! That is the function of the proactive budget.

Figure 1.4 illustrates three ways to manage physical assets.The x-axis represents time or utilization. As you travel to the rightmore time has elapsed, more product has been made, or moremileage has been driven.

The y-axis represents the number of breakdowns or disruptiveincidents. The more breakdowns that occur, the higher the curve.Eventually everything wears out. The plant’s first breakdown ison the left side of the curve, just where the curve becomes visible.Similarly, the last breakdown in that plant is on the right side ofthe curve, where it intersects the x-axis.

Each scenario reflects the average life of all equipment in thefacility under that program. For example, if you operate a fleet ofcars and don’t do any maintenance, the cars will have a certain av-erage breakdown rate. If you add PM activity, the average life will

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Figure 1.4 illustrates three ways to manage physical assets like your factory, facility, orfleet.You can let it break, you can PM it including TLC and inspection, or you can be

proactive and find the causes of the failures and eliminate them

be extended. In the last curve to the right, you re-engineer the carsto be more reliable. Every time you get some breakdowns you lookfor designs that are more reliable and further modify the equip-ment.

Curve Descriptions

BS: Breakdown Scenario

This curve is closest to the y-axis; on average, more events takeplace in a shorter interval. The breakdown scenario means that noPM is done—or no effective PM is done. In this environment,chaos reigns. Some days it is really quiet and some days every-thing is broken (and your most important customer visits!).

Don’t knock it; in certain industries, BS might be the best wayto run. Look for situations where equipment is low value and canbe replaced cheaply and quickly or where there are low productionneeds and low quality requirements. BS just might be a low-costalternative.

However, the breakdown scenario has consequences. The envi-ronment is usually chaotic and full of high stress; it routinely re-quires heroism just to get production out the door. The level ofsafety (incidents per 100,000 hours of operation) might be higherthan a PM-dominated shop of the same size and type. People tendto burn out. Almost all organizations start here when they aresmall. Unfortunately most organizations stay with this curve asthey react to what happens. The breakdown of machines createsthe schedules for both production and maintenance labor.

One other aspect in this scenario is that you are likely to get alot of breakdowns. There will always be excuses about why thismachine didn’t run and why that job is not complete.

PM: Preventive Maintenance Scenario In this scenario, you go out looking for problems. You take spe-

cific steps to extend the life of the equipment and to detect im-pending failure (all parts of P3). The focus here is on investigationof the critical wear points so that breakdowns are deferred as longas possible, and repairs or replacements are made before failureoccurs.

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Companies (and entire industries) can get very good at this sce-nario and experience fewer and fewer breakdowns. The nuclearpower industry comes to mind. A good maintenance process is thegoal for many of the top firms.

Equipment lasts longer with preventive maintenance, but thePM scenario requires money, thought, and management. Manyfirms are unwilling to commit the money or management talent tosuch a goal. The huge problem is that once money stops beingpoured into PM, the plant or building reverts to the breakdownscenario.

PrM- MP-MI-RCM-PMO: Proactive Maintenance, Maintenance Prevention,and Maintenance Improvement

The goal of the maintenance effort is to get out there and fix theproblems permanently. Fix them in such a way that the expectedfailure rate drops to a fifth or a tenth of what it was. This objec-tive is one of the stated goals of RCM, PMO, MP and MI. All aresubsets of Proactive Maintenance.

Solving problems permanently is one of the most rewarding as-pects of maintenance. Ask any maintenance old-timer and you’llfrequently have a long discussion of redesign, re-purposing, re-specification, and re-engineering.

Is it possible to operate without breakdowns? The same oldtimers who will regale you with stories of successful re-engineer-ing will tell you, “Never! “Not possible!” Yet all of us have equip-ment that never fails—in spite of a complete lack of maintenance,there is always the pump, compressor, or press that runs andruns. Why not look into the reasons for such longevity instead ofspending time thinking so much about breakdowns. In otherwords, let’s get out of the repetitive repair business. This visionmeans the death of maintenance, as we know it.

What Happened? At some time, the old way of doing business died and went

away. We might mourn the loss of some of the positive aspects ofthat world, but, for better or worse, it is truly gone. The old para-digms and strategies are obsolete in light of the new corporate or-der. Our corporate sponsors (the same developments occurred inthe public sector too) realized that they needed something differ-ent from the maintenance function to face new, tougher, no-holds-

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barred competitors (or lower tolerance for increased taxes in pub-lic sector organizations). We must now ask fundamental struc-tural questions about what types of tasks maintenance personnelought to do and who should do maintenance tasks. The first ques-tion of this inquiry is what is the mission of maintenance?

What is the mission of maintenance? There used to be many different answers to this question—as

many as there were organizations asking the question. The mis-sion definitions ranged from quick reaction times in fixing break-downs to serving the customer more efficiently. Some firms are in-tent on reducing downtime; others focus on cost control or quality.A few focus on safety or environmental security. All these mis-sions are good, useful, and important. All of them ignore the deepissue that the organization has changed and that there is some-thing very simple that transcends these missions or values.

In today’s organizations the creed is that everyone must addvalue to the product. Everyone and everything is expendable, andcan be outsourced. There is a conflict between the old missionstatements and the new culture. The new mission is:

The mission of the maintenance department is to provide reliable,safe physical assets and environments and excellent support for its

customers by reducing and eventually eliminating the need formaintenance services.

New roles This new mission requires a re-thinking of traditional roles. On

one side, maintenance must merge with machine building and tooldesign to integrate maintainability improvements into designs onan ongoing basis. The accumulated knowledge and lessons ofmaintenance will be merged immediately into the design profes-sion. There will be a revolving door between the people who designand the people who maintain.

On the other side, routine maintenance activity will be mergedincreasingly into operations. The TPM model shows that opera-tors are capable of this integration and the whole maintenance ef-fort will benefit from operator involvement.

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It is the consequences of breakdowns must be managed! There is a traditional attitude on the part of maintenance that

all breakdowns are the same and all are equally bad. (After all, ifit’s broke, it’s broke). This acceptance of the status quo is now in-tolerable and unacceptable in maintenance. A breakdown shouldbe viewed with an analytical eye to see what difference it made (ifany). Any money spent must be justifiable in light of the conse-quences of failure. By the way, failures that result in death, seri-ous injury, or environmental damage are not acceptable at all!Any equipment that requires periodic attention to avoid break-downs is likewise a failure of design engineering.

Where do PM and Predictive Maintenance (PdM) fit into the new structure? There are two situations where PM and PdM are important.

One situation is when they reduce the probability or the risk ofdeath, injury, or environmental damage to zero or near zero. Theother situation is where the cost of the task is lower than the costof the consequences of the failure. If this rule sounds familiar, itshould because it has become the mantra of the RCM movement.That rule is the beginning, but not the whole conversation.

As addressed in the goals discussion, the fatal flaw of the oldtype of PM and PdM is that they require constant investment oflabor and materials. In most instances, no relationship is tracedbetween the cost of the consequences of the failure and the cost ofthe PM Service. The financial relationship between failure conse-quences and tasks must be built into the system from the begin-ning. PMO (PM Optimization) makes great strides in alignment ofthe task costs to the failure mode consequences.

There is another problem. PM institutionalizes the status quo.No permanent improvement will ever flow from a traditional PMorientation. When you are downsized and PM is deferred, theMTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) curve will return to its oldbreakdown frequency. Therefore, the third curve (the curve ofmaintenance improvement) must be added into the priorities ofthe department. This step returns us to the new mission, “to pro-vide excellent support for its customers by reducing and eventu-ally eliminating the need for maintenance services.”

In this context there is a place for PM in the new organization.First and foremost, view PM as a manager of consequence. Toeliminate maintenance efforts, look at PM as a way station or rest-

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ing-place on the way to maintenance elimination. When you don’thave the time, resources, or technology to figure out the root causeof a failure, you can use a PM approach to reduce your exposure tobreakdown and its consequences. Of course, you must also con-tinue PMs in addition to other methods where the implications ofbreakdown are deadly or very expensive.

How is maintenance to be created with the new mission? Continuous improvement (which we have lumped under PrM)

in the delivery of maintenance is the new goal. The bulk of man-agement time, money, and effort must go to reducing the labor,parts, utilities, and overhead or to increasing uptime. The stakesare high. What is at stake could be the survival of your organiza-tion. There are competitors who are eyeing your market share andthey are not standing still.

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