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M A I N T E N A N C E
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Machinery & Equipment MRO
mented, the plant may still be in the firefighting phase. Past maintenance practices will still be in play as technicians and operators continue to fix equipment when they fail. It is important to foster a cultural shi¦ and mindset of the people who operate and maintain equipment. They need to be taught to think about and address the root causes of the failures rather than acting upon equipment problem symptoms. Many times, companies will enforce new strategies, like the WCM, without having a game plan to get out of the old paradigm. People need to be shown the way and need to under-
June 2021
with equipment information, preventive maintenance activities, equipment drawings and spare parts information. Then the documents are maintained in large binders that need to be updated during the complete lifecycle of the machine. The solution: although machine information still needs to be gathered, we developed data gathering forms in a digital format that can be easily uploaded, accessed and maintained in the CMMS. This has saved many hours, and, in some cases, days of not having to create manual equipment documents and binders.
WCM is a proven continuous improvement methodology that helps prioritize resources to attack problems and losses with the aim to achieve a safe, sustainable manufacturing process with zero loss and zero defects. stand the process. Ultimately, in order to get buy-in from the people involved in the project, they will want to know how it will improve their job. In the past month, being involved with a WCM project team, we have been reviewing our progress with WCM projects that focus on a single piece of equipment or process. These projects identify the elements needed to properly maintain and sustain the equipment over a long period of time; basically over the complete lifecycle of that machine or process. These projects are generally carried out on critical equipment and processes or on equipment that have poor reliability. Critical equipment makes up approximately 5 per cent of the total number of equipment assets. These projects can be very labour-intensive and even complicated to follow, and therefore can take several months to complete. Our project team has been reviewing the complete WCM process in order to make it simpler and faster to complete without affecting the integrity of the WCM system. We have reviewed every element in every step of the process and have simplified or eliminated non-value-added activities. Here are four actions we have taken to streamline the process:
1. Paper based systems
Projects can be very paper-based and require many manual forms to be filled out
2. AM/PM calendars and duty sheets
AM (autonomous / operator maintenance) duty sheets are the periodic inspections and checks that an operator needs to perform on their equipment. In WCM, these paper-based duty sheets and PMs (technician preventive maintenance) are normally tracked using AM and PM calendars. The calendars are posted on a display board near the equipment or process. We found these manually updated calendars rarely used due to their complexity and time required to keep them updated. The solution: once again we turned to the CMMS. In practice, all equipment maintenance should be recorded in the CMMS, which provides work history and tracking. Consequently, the need for manual calendars used to track equipment maintenance has been eliminated.
3. Project boards
During the implementation of a WCM project, it is common practice to document the complete project journey. A before and a¦er picture, graphs and documents as well as milestones and improvements details are displayed on project boards. The idea is to display the elements of the project in a visual format so people can see the project progress. The boards are also a significant part of a WCM audit. Though, these details storyboards are essential in early WCM projects, as they support the project process. However, as the team becomes more experienced per-
forming WCM projects, the question is whether we need all this detail. Updating the many display boards requires a lot of time and may not be value-added. The solution: simplify and reduce the number of display boards to only display specific meaningful information. This saves hours of updating the many documents and charts that are normally displayed. Our team found that it is possible to reduce the number of project boards to less than half.
4. Equipment contamination
Contaminants generally come from the manufacturing process or the surrounding environment. WCM requires a team to solve equipment contamination issues. This element of a WCM project is one of the most time-consuming activities. The solution: the team identified two distinct categories; equipment contamination and component contamination. Dividing contamination into the two categories allowed us to focus on the question, does all contamination affect equipment reliability? It was found that some equipment and area contamination would not cause adverse effects to the equipment wear components, and, therefore, were added to housekeeping duties. Contamination that would affect the lifecycle of the wear components were identified as high-priority items and need to be solved. Having identified these two categories and separating them has significantly reduced the time it takes to complete this element of the project. In conclusion, regardless of what equipment improvement program you use, take a step back and evaluate the process. Can non-value-added activities be modified or completely removed from the improvement project? Can the process be made simpler and easier to use and maintain? Can information be integrated with some technology or so¦ware you already have, like the CMMS? Everyone is busy in a manufacturing environment. Reducing the time it takes to complete the steps in a WCM project will save many labour hours and allow your facility to complete more WCM projects in a given time period. MRO Peter Phillips is the owner of Trailwalk Holdings Ltd., a Nova Scotia-based maintenance consulting and training company. Peter has over 40 years of industrial maintenance experience. He travels throughout North America working with maintenance departments and speaking at conferences. Reach him at 902798-3601 or peter@trailwalk.ca.