ComputerHunter.org |
|
|
|||
|
 |
How To Decrease Downtime and Increase Productivity
All maintenance activities of the workforce must be documented, this includes breakdown repairs, callouts, preventive maintenance, replacement maintenance, overhauls, and Testing & Inspection work. Maintenance work by production line employees must be included, whether or not the employee is listed as in maintenance. These activities can then be mined for maintenance information "gold". List all repetitive work One of the first things that a maintenance supervisor should be concerned with is repetitive work. Any and all repetitive work should be identified and isolated. This list can then be prioritized as to criticality to production lines and plant effectiveness. After the list has been rearranged, each task item must be analyzed to determine if the repetitive work is actually aimed at fixing a problem or fixing a symptom of a deeper problem. Fixing symptoms has the immediate effect of allowing production to rapidly resume, but does nothing for the underlying problem. In fact, the underlying problem may get worse. Development of a solution As soon as a high priority problem has been identified and analyzed, work should begin on development of a solution to the problem. Once the solution to the problem has been developed, plans can be made for purchasing required parts and material and then scheduling the manpower and production time to implement the solution. Maintenance planning of machine repairs Complete documentation is absolutely essential for control of the maintenance process. How can the process of maintenance be under control if the person in charge has no complete idea of what the total maintenance activities and costs are? If needed repairs are not documented and planned for, a considerable portion of these needed repairs and modifications will be forgotten or ignored until production tries to run again. Justify machine repair cost Planning essential repairs and modifications requires documentation. It is easy to say that we need a modification to this particular machine and output of this line can be increased 25%. However, with no planning, six months later no work has been done on the idea. Even if the idea were actually to be somehow implemented, the output increase may not come to fruition. If no research was carried out on the rest of the line equipment, there is no certain way of determining line and equipment capacity. How would the machine be able to increase output 25% if its current output was already 100% of the lines actual output capacity? All the costs associated with increasing the one machine's capacity would have been wasted, unless additional work was undertaken to bring the rest of the production line up to the output of the one machine. A production line's output capacity is only as great as it's least piece of equipment. That bears repeating. A production line is only as fast as it's slowest piece of equipment. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Prioritize your maintenance planning list With documentation, the list of priority work problems to solve can be reduced fairly rapidly, at first. The list of easily solved problem areas will gradually be replaced by higher cost work items. Research and planning may reveal that the costs involved with eliminating some repetitive repairs are more than living with the repetitive repairs. Compare production downtime after solution After implementation of the solution, production downtime for that particular item can be documented and compared to pre-implementation production output. Maintenance time not spent on working on that solved problem can also be documented for the same time period. These savings can then be extrapolated for an entire year and presented to management to justify the cost of repairs. Without documentation, research, and planning, the person in charge of making the decisions is working in the dark. With documentation, research, and planning, the great wall of China can be built, or the Panama Canal, or the Aswan Dam, or a world-class maintenance organization. Maintenance Policy and Procedures is a plan to organize your maintenance department. Following the plan will cause you to document your department's activities. Other department's maintenance activities and interactions with the Maintenance Department will also be documented. With the documentation, planning can begin. For information on this article and Maintenance Policy and Procedures Manual, contact the author. Larry Bush About the Author: Larry Bush has been an electrician for 47 years, and in maintenance management for 22 years. Download his new e-Book "Maintenance Policy and Procedures Manual" !! http://www.reliability-consultant.com
Google News - Top Stories
|
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Creativity and Innovation Management ? Competition versus Collaboration There is much confusion as to whether competition or collaboration is most beneficial to creativity and innovation. Though there are negatives to collaboration and it is not easy separating the effects of time pressure and group activity, in general collaboration beats competition. This article will set out some of the arguments. Turbo-Charge Your Rollout with ERM Employees are the often-neglected stakeholders in the success or failure of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) initiative. But employees don't always resist new ways of doing business. If you factor in relationship management practices that engage people in the change process, you can circumvent significant resistance and actually speed up implementation. Hiring Your First Business Personal Assistant: Some Guidelines for Successful Hiring Hiring the first personal business assistant is an exciting time for new business owners. It means that the business is doing well enough that the business owner can no longer keep up effectively with the demands of the new business. Sales are exploding, and time becomes of the utmost importance. Scheduling of business chores and personal chores can become very demanding and complex. This is the time new business owners often find themselves considering a personal business assistant. Taking Care of Middle Manager Bounce Off How many times have the management consultants been 'in' and after leaving, have left little or no trace of their passing? The Measurement of Manager Training THE MEASUREMENT OF TRAINING: Evaluation is one of the most valuable - and challenging - aspects of a training manager's job. A well-planned and on-target evaluation process can be the tool which separates a superlative training department from a merely satisfactory one. Auditing Improves Effective Planning Speak of operations assessment, and we'll hear its significant value. Speak of an audit, and we'll run for the nearest emergency exit. There's no difference between the two, yet that word audit chills us. But is an audit really designed to help us or hurt us? Motivation - You Get What You Reward There's a programme currently running on BBC Television in the UK called - "Little Angels." It's a series that offers help and advice to parents who're experiencing behaviour difficulties with their children. I'm sure there are similar programmes in other parts of the world. The children are often out of control, won't do what they're told and generally dominate the family. Business is About Making Money Ask most people why they are in business and they will give you any number of reasons. Things such as wanting to improve the lives of others; make the world a better place; provide for their family; have more free time; the list goes on and on. How to Prepare for Your Companys Financial Future Sooner or later, most business owners need to look for outside financing. Whether it's a line of credit with a bank to handle predictable cash crunches or a significant capital investment to improve plant and equipment, virtually every business will need access to additional funds at some point in its life. Executives and Emotional Self Awareness A major problem impairing an executive's performance is his Emotional Blind Spots. Emotions, whether we like them or not, have a significant impact on one's decisions. An example is the Enron case where executives ran into severe ethical and legal consequences after falling prey to the destructive negative emotions of greed and self-interest. It is perplexing how many success driven executives, choose to fear addressing the impact of negative emotions on personal and organizational performance. Business Innovation ? the Value of Work Processes Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation. Lets Flourish and Prosper! Some say that in business as in sex: if it is good, it's great and if it is bad it's still pretty good. This does not happen to be true. If business is bad, it can get very bad. There are personnel problems, production expenses, overhead, laws, taxes, fines. Faulty financial decisions, inability to accurately evaluate the situation and quickly resolve problems all lead to an extremely high mortality rate among new business: up to 95% do not survive past their first 12 months. Its All About The Customers, Baby If you want to ensure a steady stream of customers in your business, you must always remember why you're in business in the first place. Its All In The Systems Have you ever noticed french fries taste the same at every McDonald's? The same can be said for Subway and its Italian BMT. How do these fast food icons replicate themselves at nearly 40,000 locations when some eateries struggle to get it right in a single restaurant? The answer is simple: it's all in the systems. Business Relationship Germs In management seminars I often compare debt to an infection. A reasonable amount of debt will not kill a business, but too much debt will. While most businesses carry a substantial amount of debt from time to time, it must be maintained in an acceptable relationship to stockholder's equity. What is Knowledge Management Anyway? When you think of all the things companies have, you do not always consider the knowledge they have. For instance, a company is only as good as its employees, its resources, and its knowledge. But, where and what is that knowledge? How is that knowledge managed within the company? The Crisis of Modernity Since the beginning of the industrial era our world has been facing what some historians call an ongoing "crisis of modernity". As fast as we adjust to new circumstances, the circumstances change again, and, the rate of change seems to be multiplying exponentially. Of all the demands imposed by twenty first century leadership, perhaps the toughest is the ability to not only manage change but to instigate it, control it and to be it's master. Dealing with the ever increasing rate of change may be the leader's most potentially overwhelming task. Today's Change Agent is an agressive forward thinker. Organizational Culture and Creative Blocks ? the Similarities Few Decision makers see the link between between creativity and innovation management, as performed by MBA's in firms, and creative endeavours such as screenwriting. In fact, there are very strong linkages. Cold Water Comments - What They Are and How to Manage Them! Cold Water Comments - What They Are and How to Manage Them! Are Your Marketing Pieces Up to Date? The other day someone asked me for one of my informational brochures. As I was giving her the piece I stated that if I were printing these today it would be a little different. The piece was only about two months old and already the way I wanted to communicate things had changed slightly. Then I got to thinking. If I were to print informational brochures six months from now, they would probably be a little different too. Don't get me wrong. I am a big believer in consistency of marketing. However, in today's business environment especially as fast a pace as our business develops, things change...sometimes minutely and sometimes in a big way. What do you do?
|
|
|
|
|
