RELIABILITY POLICY
Senior leadership determines what is “tight” through high-level guidance and metrics. Leaders should connect these goals and objectives of the company with the company’s needed response to maintenance and reliability practices. The “tight” classification implies that deviation from this guidance would not be in the best interest of its businesses, leadership and practitioners.
Values and policies belong to a company’s senior management.
The trick, of course, is constructing the guidance through values, policies and boundaries of how maintenance and reliability (M&R) practices are implemented. For instance, a company may choose to boost uptime from its current manufacturing network rather than incur the cost of expanding its footprint. The chosen uptime metrics and analysis procedures could be non-negotiable, or “tight.” But how a site meets the uptime challenge could be left to the plant, or “loose.” The power of this strategy is how it generates areas of M&R excellence. Practitioners can then develop the internal networks that are needed to share best practices and accelerate the timetable needed to meet their challenge. One caveat to the “loose” and “tight” approach occurs for enterprise infrastructure and business systems. By the nature of their inter-connectedness, a “tight” strategy should be maintained for the chosen functionality. The best example is SAP’s CMMS system. Because it interfaces with other corporate systems, its usage is a “tight” candidate. Software that is “loose” could be tools that support M&R practices, such as root-cause analysis, failure mode and effects analysis, and others.
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Reliablity policies The top two levels of a corporate reliability program—values and policies—belong to a company’s senior management. Values define the corporation through its vision and mission. They encompass the company’s cultural and ethical focus, EHS responsibilities and how the company serves its customers. Policies are the corporation’s guidelines, which generally do not include room for deviation. Most companies have policies for EHS as well as travel, accounting, human resources and others. Most do not, however, include a Reliability Policy in their mix. For any capital-intensive industry aimed at guiding the response to maintenance and reliability issues, a Reliability Policy should exist that connects expected behaviors with the business case for improving the reliability of the equipment assets and the manufacturing process. Adherence to the policy should carry the same weight as all other company policies. The Reliability Policy should provide clear line-of-site objectives from company values through to maintenance delivery. It connects and gives purpose to the execution of the asset-care plans for its equipment. The Policy standardizes the response for maintenance and reliability practices through guidelines for maintenance and reliability principles, criteria and work practices (setting minimum expectations), along with focus areas for improvement (such as equipment uptime). It should describe a measurement system that enables users to determine if progress is being made toward the time horizon established for reliability improvement. Here are two examples of how to word the beginning of a Reliability Policy: “Our manufacturing processes will operate without failure and will enable the extension of turnarounds to industry benchmarks.”
MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY & ASSET PERFORMANCE
“We will strive to achieve equipment process performance and reliability that drives quality and on-time delivery that meets our customers’ needs and delivers value to all our stakeholders. Reliability will enable us to manage the risks from environmental, safety and health incidents to our employees and the communities in which we operate.” Why are Reliability Policies a rarity in manufacturing? The answer lies in a lack of understanding among senior management. Members of this group often achieve promotion without exposure to the benefits of improved equipment and process reliability. The ability to translate the impact of this information to the company’s bottom line requires someone who understands manufacturing, reliability best practices and whose business acumen is respected in the board room—a rare combination.
Principles and best practices The two levels below Policy are “Principles and Criteria,” followed by “Best Practices.” Principles are the highest level of guidance that can be offered regarding the minimum set of practices a site should be implementing. This can include basics such as defect-elimination, criticality, attached bill of materials for critical assets, specific use of certain CMMS functionality, and lubrication and greasing practices, to name a few. It’s important, however, to stop guidance at this level. Being overly prescriptive can be detrimental to sites developing “pockets of excellence” in their implementation. They need to figure out how to meet the guiding principles. Best Practices are the “property” of the manufacturing sites and their various networks. They can be organized along the same lines as the Principles by company focus areas, work processes or by accepted industry standards (such as SMRP’s Five Pillars: Business and Management, Manufacturing Process Reliability, Equipment Reliability, Organization & Leadership, APRIL 2014