Good Maintenance Practices

By Balaji Radhakrishnan

BalajiRadhakrishnan is a B.E with more than 25 years of rich experience in Plant Maintenance. He worked for companies like Asian Bearings limited, Fenner India limited, EID Parry limited, Rane Brake linings limited before coming to his present company Elgi Equipments limited.

Balaji is a passionate TPM , TQM practitioner. He was part of the team that won Deming Prize in Rane Brake Lining limited.

Here, he is sharing his version of the “Good Maintenance Practices”.

I would like to share the “Good Maintenance Practices” and how it is being adopted in day to day industrial life. From Business perceptive, Maintenance plays the critical role and the impact on Asset Management is so important for Organization

Say Example:

Sales – Variable cost = Contribution of the Product

Contribution of the Product – Fixed Cost = Profit before Tax

Profit before Tax – Depreciation = Profit after Tax.

The above said calculation is deciding the performance of organization and it is being published in website/ Annual reports,but the reality in the machine shop floorsaresomething different. Say example Depreciation could be calculated in terms of straight line methods of 10% depreciated and year on year or some mathematical calculation is being used and finally arrive the asset value may be INR 1 in books of account after some years. This may not be 100% true on the shop floor!

Over view ofGood Maintenance Practices

Autonomous Maintenance

It consists of 7 Steps which is very critical to ensure the machine’s basic conditions

-          Cleaning and Tagging

-          Hard to access

-          CLIT Stds ( Cleaning/ Lubrication/Inspection and Tightening)

-          General Inspection

-          Autonomous Inspection

-          Standardization

-          Self-Management

Individual Improvements or KobetsuKaizens:

This will deal with 16 losses

-          Equipment failure loss (7 types of losses): 

Down time loss / Set up loss/Start-up loss/Power cut loss/Want of operator loss/Want of material loss/quality rejection loss

-          Human Efficiency Losses (5 Type of losses):

Line Organization losses/ logistic loss/ Measurement loss/ Management loss/ motion loss/ Distribution loss

-          Production resource losses (3 Type of losses):

Energy loss/ Yield loss and Mould/Die loss

-          Shut down losses( 1 type of loss)

The above said 7+5+3+1 = 16 losses. All the losses are hidden inside the shop floor and we need to make people aware of these losses. A lot of training is needed for this!

Planned Maintenance:

 This will deal with the following

-          Support to Autonomous Maintenance

-          Failure analysis and counter measures

-          Condition based Maintenance

-          Predictive Maintenance

-          Time based Maintenance

-          Oil Management

-          Spare Management

-          Maintenance information system

Quality Maintenance:

A Type defects

B Type defects

C Type defects

Health Safety and Environment :

To ensure the Occupational Health of the people, we need to ensure the Safety and Environment in place at machine shop floor.This has a huge correlation with Maintenance. This system will get addressed through ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001

Initial Control :

Whatever we learned at Maintenance and improvements carried out at shop floor which needs to address the improvements on new machines.

Education and Training:

To improve the competency of the existing Maintenance people and Production Operators.

Office TPM :

 It is very critical to the staffs are being maintain the office well

Execution of Autonomous Maintenance at Shop floors: Case study

Cleaning and Tagging:See the machine conditions physically, it is not in basic conditionsbut it delivers the production results without any break down. But the basic conditions were eroded due to lack of ownership withProduction and Maintenance. If there is no autonomous maintenance in practice, the machine may not be worth the value that is written in the books of accounts!!

It’s very important to execute and ensure the Autonomous Maintenance by tagging by involving all the employees, and take these machines back into original condition. This ownership lies with Production and Maintenance, top people visions are very important to see the plant in different dimensions and enforce the autonomous maintenance. The reality of the valuedeclared by the account department could be almost same or much better in shop floor by ensuring the autonomous maintenance.

Hard to access:

Cleaning the machine is important part and we need to modify such that we should reduce the cleaning time from XX time to YY time, so that Production operators can ensure this cleaning process

CLIT Stds

Every shift, CLIT needs to be followed as per machine manufacturers’ recommendations

General Inspection:

We need to train the people especially for Hydraulic pumps/ Motors/Pressure switches. So that people can able to understand the behaviour pattern of the machine elements

Autonomous Inspection:

Machine operator can do the setting by himself without depending on the shop floor engineers.

See the machine conditions before and after of executing the Autonomous Maintenance. Autonomous maintenance will ensure the machine basic conditions as like a new machine. Hence, we can improve the life time of the machines and yield the profit to the organizations. This Autonomous maintenance will reduce the down time by 20 to 30 %.

Autonomous Maintenance: Before and After

The important part is top people needs tovisit the plant very frequently and asked the production operators about the Autonomous Maintenance.

The Autonomous maintenance will continue with Kobetsu Kaizen and eliminating / reducing the Sixteen losses