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    Reliability - A Shared Responsibility for Operators and Maintenance. 3rd and 4th Discipline of World Class Maintenance Management: 1, #3
    Reliability - A Shared Responsibility for Operators and Maintenance. 3rd and 4th Discipline of World Class Maintenance Management: 1, #3
    Reliability - A Shared Responsibility for Operators and Maintenance. 3rd and 4th Discipline of World Class Maintenance Management: 1, #3
    Ebook861 pages11 hours

    Reliability - A Shared Responsibility for Operators and Maintenance. 3rd and 4th Discipline of World Class Maintenance Management: 1, #3

    By Rolly Angeles

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    About this ebook

    This is the 3rd of a series of books on World Class Maintenance Management - The 12 Disciplines that discuss about creating a solid partnership with operators. This book had to be written for industries to realize what they are missing.  For as long as operators and maintenance in industries remain a separate function, Industries will continue to be reactive.  This book does not only cover the principles and concept of Autonomous Maintenance, but provides the nitty-gritty details on how it is implemented starting from Step 0 to Step 7 which took me years to understand.  My goal is to reach out to industries and convince them that these two cannot co-exists without each other and that it is time for both operators and maintenance to finally work together to improve not only the productivity but also the Reliability of their equipment and assets. Separating these two only creates feud and friction between them.  Some highlights of this book includes:

     

    - Why Operators are Important in the Reliability Strategy
    - What Maintenance is all About
    - Survey on Top Problems of Preventive Maintenance Revisited 2018
    - Why Preventive Maintenance cannot prevent "ALL" failures
    - Operations and Maintenance - Will the Feud Ever Stop?
    - Reducing Human Errors in Maintenance
    - Why Operations and Maintenance Went their Own Separate Ways
    - Understanding Human Errors
    - The Common Thing RCM and TPM Both Believes
    - Strengthening Operator and Maintenance Partnership
    - Detailed Guidelines in Implementing 7 Steps of Autonomous Maintenance
    - Tips in Implementing Autonomous Maintenance
    - Detailed Guidelines in Implementing the 4 Phases of Planned Maintenance
    - Tips in Implementing Planned Maintenance
    - Detailed Guidelines in Implementing RCM Analysis for Equipment
    - Tips in Implementing the RCM Analysis
    - Detailed Guidelines on How to Perform Root Cause Failure Analysis Probe
    - Tips in Implementing Root Cause Failure Analysis
    - Guidelines in Conducting Equipment FMEA/FMECA
    - Tips in Implementing FMEA/FMECA
    - The Biggest Missing Link in Any Reliability Strategy
    - Changing the Image of the Maintenance Function
    - It Will Definitely Take Time for Industries to Accept
    - The Separation Needs to End, and a Partnership Needs to Begin
    - How to Strengthen Operators and Maintenance Partnership
    - Tips and Guidelines in Implementing TPM Focused Improvement and many more.

     

    This book explains that operators will always the first line of defense on any equipment-related failures and breakdowns since they are the closest people that will experience the failure first before maintenance. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRolly Angeles
    Release dateJun 8, 2021
    ISBN9798201601553
    Reliability - A Shared Responsibility for Operators and Maintenance. 3rd and 4th Discipline of World Class Maintenance Management: 1, #3

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      Book preview

      Reliability - A Shared Responsibility for Operators and Maintenance. 3rd and 4th Discipline of World Class Maintenance Management - Rolly Angeles

      Introduction: Why Operators are Important in the Maintenance Strategy

      1.1: Operations and Maintenance, Will the Feud Ever Stop?

      IN A TRADITIONAL INDUSTRY, when capacity is high, and production is at its peak, operations people focus on just one thing and one thing alone, and that is output.  But when production people cannot deliver the required output for the day, they will get all the necessary details you have never imagined why they could not deliver.  During their operations meeting and review, they will always find a clever excuse and blame maintenance for the downtime.  Since maintenance people are just human beings, they will fight back in return and accuse operations people of flooding their equipment to death by waiving their equipment for their monthly Preventive Maintenance, and everything ends up in a merry-go-round, which makes me dizzy.  In short, these two groups will do everything at their own disposal to save their sorry ass, and I am really sorry for them.  It's always been the same old story among the two; nothing changes except that it gets uglier and worst every time.  There is a sort of love and hate relationship between them.  I think it is hate most of the time.  My message is simple, the more we blame, the less we understand while the problem simply repeats itself.

      Whenever I entered my training class, I always got this funny feeling that I have known each and every one of the delegates for a very long time as we shared the same issues and problems on maintenance.  In my native language, we called this lukso ng dugo, although I think there is no direct translation to that in the English language.  I even posted this on my Facebook account and asked my friends how do they translate these words into English, and these were their responses.  Just forget the last one.

      • Bloody jump

      • Leap of blood

      • It literally means jumping blood.  It's an idiom in the Philippines that is used when you have a strong feeling that someone you just met is related to you.

      • Adrenaline rush

      • Rolly, as per my analysis, it's somehow equivalent to a feeling of exhilaration!

      • Like in the song of Michael Jackson, it means Beat It, although it's metaphorical

      • High blood

      When operations people are present during my training class since most of my delegates come from the maintenance function, I asked them if they were on good terms and relation with maintenance, and most of them were just laughing out loud (LOL).  Believe me when I say that their message was loud and clear.  I would like to write this chapter in an unbiased fashion, which I would try to do my best even if the Author is maintenance himself to provide the readers the benefit of the doubt.  While both operations and maintenance have their valid points of view about their disposition, they seemed not to get along pretty well most of the time.  When capacity had been delivered for the day, every bit of glory and recognition goes to operations and production people, but when capacity has not been up to speed, then all fingers point to maintenance.  Maintenance knows that everything they do is monitored by operations, and these people are simply waiting for them to make the wrong move so that they can have a valid reason for not reaching their goals for the day. Hence, instead of admitting that they too are part of the problem, operations people will always find a scapegoat, wash their hands and blame it always on maintenance.  In short, maintenance is treated like a stuntman in the movies. Let's say that we are filming an action movie and the leading actor, which of course is the operation guy, is in a fistfight with the villain, both were given instructions by the director, and as the villain is about to punch the leading actor right on the face in which he needs to fall (as included in the script), the director will shout cut, the fist of the villain is just a few inches away from the face of the leading actor.  The movie director tells the leading actor to take a seat and drink his orange juice.  At the same time, all the make-up artists are busy retouching the operator's face, I mean actor.  The movie director shouts, where's the stuntman?  Which, of course, is the maintenance.  The maintenance, I mean stuntman, will come along, take the position of the leading actor, and the director shouts Action. The maintenance gets punch right on the face and falls down, and that's the way it goes.

      During my last employment in the mining industry, I noticed that they have a room called war room; when I was still new around, I used to ask why they call it that name, which I already knew the answer to.  One of the maintenance managers asked me to sit in during one of their operations review meetings.  The meeting was presided over by their resident manager, the highest person in the mine.  The meeting started very calmly, but when the resident manager asked why the productivity for the week was not met, then this was the start of what they called war.  I was wondering why these people kept on shouting at each other.  Perhaps their oratorical hearing was not that clear as these people were exposed to the noise of their mobile equipment throughout their shift.  I have seen cups of coffee spilled on the floor, perhaps due to the excitement of one another.  I recalled hearing one maintenance manager said, If you want, I can place all my maintenance people to operate the equipment, and I can bet you that I can deliver the output you want. Your operators just don't seem to care about their equipment and operate them to destruction.  In mining, we simply called breakdown maintenance as run to destruct.  We have been providing these checks for over a year now for your operators to perform, yet nobody seemed to follow them.  And so the story continues with what needs to be done the next time around, and some action items had been generated.  But looking at it personally, nothing had actually been accomplished since they will always end up the same way they had started.  One of the problems, in this case, is that sometimes it can get ugly and personal.  When it gets personal, then good maintenance people resign or perhaps transfer to another industry only to end up in that same old situation where they once started.

      There was an industry which I taught last year which I learned from one of the delegates that one of their policies is that if a breakdown occurs on their asset or equipment, then the breakdown must be charged to a specific department (accountability issue), but there were departments that shared common equipment, and when this common equipment between the two departments failed, each group will find a way to charge the breakdown to the opposite department.  I have learned from this plant that there were people from these two departments who were not communicating for several years as a result of this policy. The communication gap had become worst and personal.

      FIGURE 1.1: OPERATORS and Maintenance - An Endless War

      In my other book on World Class Maintenance Management - The 12 Disciplines, I wrote, Out of order again?  No wonder they PM it.  Maybe if the PM group did not touch this equipment, I'm pretty sure this will still be running smoothly!  I believe operations have a valid point here.  If maintenance performed Preventive Maintenance on their equipment, operators tend to have a hard time running it due to frequent stops instead of the equipment running smoothly.  Are we missing something here?  Not really.  These early failures are called infant mortality failures, and many factors contribute to them, but the main reason why infant mortality failures occur is due to human errors committed during the process of performing their scheduled overhauling and replacement.  Most maintenance people believe that the more often equipment is overhauled, the less failure will be encountered.  In reality, this is just the opposite. The truth of the matter is that Preventive Maintenance scheduled overhauls and replacements may actually increase the overall failures by introducing what we called infant mortality failures into stable parts and systems on the equipment.  This means that if we are not equipped with how to disassemble and assemble our equipment or lack training, skills, or tools to perform these tasks, then the best thing to do is don't disturb the equipment.  When maintenance dismantles the equipment, there is almost very little human error that can happen.  Human errors usually occur when maintenance starts to re-assemble the equipment back together again in one piece.  Their thinking is that they can put back the equipment together as it was before.  The bottom line is, if operators always complain about having a difficult time starting up the equipment right after a Preventive Maintenance or Scheduled Outage, then expect this as one of the reasons for waiving Preventive Maintenance on their equipment.  I think what maintenance should do is not to overhaul their equipment but to overhaul the lists of tasks they perform on their equipment.

      Operations people, especially management people, must realize the truth of the matter that their equipment is not a plug-and-play instrument, just like a television set you have at home.  For as long as parts are moving inside the equipment, these parts will always be subject to stress, and as the stress increase, the strength of the material weakens, and the process of wear begins.  Some parts need to be maintained.  For one equipment alone, there are perhaps more than a hundred ways it can fail.  What maintenance can actually do is prevent, predict, anticipate, control, manage, or prolong the duration of the failure itself.  But maintenance cannot do this alone since what I believe is that operators will play a very vital and important role in maintaining their equipment too.  The operator will sense the failure first and not maintenance, and whatever information the operator can provide maintenance is of vital importance.  If they sense something, saw something, hear something or smell something, these kinds of information must be fed directly to maintenance before repairing the equipment.  In fact, RCM believes that the first line of defense against failure will be its operators since they are the best source of failure modes.

      The bottom line is that the feud between operations and maintenance is pretty much alive in industries today.  I just can't tell when it is going to end.  It had already been part of their culture.  But the good news is that operations people are now listening.  I got delegates for the past couple of years from operations, which are mostly operation managers.  When I asked them what made them interested in attending this course as this course is for maintenance, they told me that they need to learn what maintenance is all about, which is a good starting point.  Believe me when I tell you that I have seen and met the worst operation's managers of all times, and they stink.  All I can say is I hate them.  You see, I used to work in an industry where the more people are afraid of you, the faster they get promoted.

      I believe that if both operations and maintenance set aside their grievances, politics, red tapes, ambitions, pride, position, ego, and that sort of stuff and start working out things together in a civilized fashion, that is a good start.  Operations and production people must understand that no industry can exist without maintenance, and those maintenance people must also understand that they cannot escape the vicious cycle of fire-fighting and they will forever remain trapped in the reactive mode if operators will not accept the fact that maintenance is always shared responsibility for both of them.  Maintenance is not a sole activity for maintenance alone.  Maintenance should be done by both operators and maintenance together.  Operations managers must understand that message since, in most cases, my experience tells me that they are the number one resisting force on separating operators and maintenance, especially if operations managers are non-technical people and do not understand what maintenance is all about.  One common sentiment of maintenance people is that they always complain about the lack of manpower resources, especially if there are so many breakdowns in the plant.  They are the only maintenance present to address everything.  I do not believe so.  It is just that operators do not accept the fact that maintenance is a shared responsibility for both of them.  Nobody can exist without each other.  Hence, instead of blaming one another for the failure, why not work together and not against each other.  Whenever we blame maintenance for the downtime, the problem has not been resolved, and everything will just get worst over time.  Being cynical and sarcastic is not the way to improve the equipment.

      Total Productive Maintenance developed a program for operators to address these issues, which is called Autonomous Maintenance.  Autonomous maintenance is simply making a transition on operators from just using their hands to using their brains as well.  Autonomous maintenance aims to allow operators to work in self-directed teams and empower themselves as they move up to the higher steps of Autonomous Maintenance, which will make their work no longer a routine for them.  Empowered teams provide a vehicle for operators to take on the responsibility reserve not only for maintenance but also for managers and supervisors as well.  Empowered teams change the way operators look at their work.  They are no longer limited to just operating their equipment regularly, but they can make decisions independently to improve their work.  They know what is best for their equipment because they are the people who spend most of the time with their equipment.

      Autonomous maintenance aims to enhance the senses of operators to detect abnormalities, deviations, and signs of irregularities at the earliest stage so that catastrophic failures or even industrial accidents and disasters can be prevented.  Equipment competent operators should be able to do minor repairs and, more importantly, the ability of operators to detect abnormalities and deviations at the earliest possible stage will be even more critical and less costly.  To be truly competent, operators should be able to spot anything out of the ordinary and immediately recognize when to declare something as abnormal.  Remember that it is less expensive to address the failure when it is small rather than to wait for the failure to happen.  Autonomous maintenance aims to enhance and improve the people's senses operating the equipment so that these people can improve the very basic equipment condition of their equipment and assets.  Operators will play a very important role in maintenance since they will be responsible for addressing their equipment's basic equipment condition.  These small things such as improper lubrication, missing bolts, dirty equipment, leaks, and untidy equipment will eventually lead to bigger problems on the equipment.  When the problem is small, nobody seems to care, but when the problem gets big and breakdowns occur, then this is the time when everyone reacts.  When the failure reaches the media, then those crooked old politicians react as well that we should have done this and that.  It is less expensive to address a problem when it is small rather than waiting for a breakdown to surprise us all.  Remember that all breakdowns are caused by humans, and I mean every single breakdown, from how the equipment was designed, how it was commissioned, how it was operated, or how the equipment was maintained itself.

      If you ask me what Autonomous Maintenance can achieve, then hear me out.  One day walking into the plant, Johnny Thorr (This guy used to sweep dirt on the floor before.) was bothered with thoughts about one of their suppliers who was not meeting the standards because they almost lost an important client due to quality issues.  As he approached the production floor, he was met by Cindy, who had problems with temperature fluctuating on one of her equipment and told Johnny about the problem.  He and Cindy went to the machine and pointed out some possible causes for Cindy to check since Johnny knows how tricky these adjustments are to a new operator because he was exactly on the same spot when he was new to the plant.  Johnny advised Cindy to place some visual control to spot the deviation more easily.  At 10:00 am, he glanced at the production figures and was pleased to note that things were going well.  Johnny looked at his watch, and it was time to go for a production meeting.  When Johnny entered the room, first up on the list was to decide on the best applicant, and the managers asked Johnny about his opinion since he was the one who interviewed them.  Next on the list was the supplier who had problems with quality.  Johnny suggested meeting with the vendor and training them on Statistical Process Control, or SPC, and the management agreed with him.  After the meeting, he went back to the line and started operating the equipment.  You might think that Johnny is a manager or supervisor, which he is not, but rather Johnny is just part of an empowered operator and self-directed Autonomous Maintenance team leader.  Imagine having this level of operators in your plant.  An empowered operator has simply no limits and can decide, and that is what operators will become as they move to the higher steps of Autonomous Maintenance.

      1.2: Maintenance - A Scapegoat for Operation's Problems

      FOR MANY INDUSTRIES and organizations, the maintenance department simply does not exist.  What I mean is that they want to avoid the word maintenance.  Instead, they rephrase or change their department's name to Equipment Engineering, which is a very nice and fancy name indeed, even though not all people in that department are engineers.  I recall when I was just starting my training career; I was part of a training group in the Philippines that conducts regular training for semiconductor industries.  The head of the training institution changed all my courses from maintenance and reliability training to Equipment Engineering Trainings because that was the trend, and semiconductor industries prefer to use that term.  They simply wanted to avoid the word maintenance because, to them, it connotes a negative word.  But the funny part is that they called their maintenance technicians, mechanics, electricians, mechanical, repairmen, sustaining which is reactive in its very sense.  Suppose industries understand what maintenance is all about; in that case, they will not be calling them these names since the function of maintenance is to act before the failure and not after a failure occurs, and this is what is happening in almost all industries especially in manufacturing.  My apologies for being rude, but if this is a marathon race, manufacturing will always be on the last if this is a race to reliability because their priority is on productivity.  Being reactive creates more overtime for maintenance people, which gives them extra cash.  While it is good to have some extra money on hand, the downfall is that the pressure gets intense, and maintenance has left little time for their families and love ones.  After all, they are not proud to be called maintenance because industries perceive maintenance as an evil and negative word.  That perception needs to change.  In most industries, maintenance is always connoted as a cost center due to too much fire-fighting.  Cost-cutting is the name of the game these industries play, which is a very dangerous game with great repercussions.  Basic equipment condition is neglected on their equipment as a result of too much fire-fighting.  Today industries suffer from a high cost of doing maintenance because of a lack of structured and effective maintenance systems in place.  This means that if it takes 100 dollars to manufacture a product, in mining industries expect around 20 to 50 percent of that cost to be the cost of doing maintenance.  Recent surveys on maintenance management in different types of industries in the United States indicates that one third or 33 cents out of every dollar will be spent on maintenance which will be wasted as a result of unnecessary or improperly carried out maintenance, which results in ineffective maintenance management that represents a billion-dollar loss per year or even more.  Put it this way, most Preventive Maintenance will be done regardless of the condition of the equipment because Predictive Maintenance does not exist in their plant.  Even if it exists and industries have these instruments, the problem is that the basics equipment condition had not been well established.  One more problem is that only a handful of people use them where it is a fact that Predictive Maintenance can capture more breakdowns than Preventive Maintenance.  Look at it this way, it is truly useless to buy the top of line vibration monitoring if your equipment contains missing bolts.  Bolts, nuts, screws, and fasteners are strategically placed in the equipment to serve a purpose, and that is to minimize vibration.  Therefore if one or two bolts are missing, then expect the vibration to intensify and increase, leading to a very small fracture for a start.  For as long as the equipment is loaded, then this fracture will propagate.  Once the equipment can no longer bear, then it breaks.  Boom!!!  Together with their supervisors, operation managers rush to the scene and ask you for the root cause of the problem even if you were not the one that caused the breakdown, in which all you can think of is wear and tear.  What I am saying is that it is useless to buy the top-of-the-line Infrared Thermography from Flir if your motor is so dirty.  A clean motor will definitely last many years compared to a dirty motor, which can even last for months or even less.  Taking care of the basic equipment condition includes having clean equipment with no leaks, complete bolts, and correct lubrication.  This should be the starting point on any reliability and maintenance strategy, which I covered in my first book on World Class Maintenance Management - The 12 Disciplines.  Establishing these very basic conditions on the equipment is a shared responsibility for both operators and maintenance.  I remember what the JIPM consultant (Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance) told us that by just taking care of the basics of the equipment, expect around 80% or even more of breakdowns to be reduced, and I truly believed what he said because we experienced it when we were doing TPM in one of the industries I used to work in the Philippines.

      Also, Preventive Maintenance includes risks because there is a great possibility to replace parts and components which are still in working condition.  Why does this happen, simply because Preventive Maintenance uses the concept of JIC or Just in Case.  Preventive Maintenance will replace parts even if they are still in working condition because maintenance is complying with their Preventive Maintenance procedures and specs, but put it the other way around, isn’t it that if we replace parts that are still in working condition, then it is a clear indication that we are throwing away money from our industry?  Their line of thinking is that it will fail anyway, so they might as well replace it now.

      FIGURE: 1.2: DOMINO Effect of Being Reactive

      Most industries insist that all breakdowns can either be prevented or eliminated; hence, too much focus is given to Preventive Maintenance on their equipment and assets.  While most maintenance managers admit that even with a sound Preventive Maintenance strategy is placed in their plant, they seemed to realize that failures are inevitable and do happen.  They often strike without warning or when they are least expected to occur.  When this happens, maintenance will be called to troubleshoot and repair the equipment, and most maintenance managers will call a meeting to discuss what to do to prevent the failure in which the default will be to place activity in their never-ending and growing lists of Preventive Maintenance lists.  Hence, the lists of Preventive Maintenance activities never stop increasing, and the pressure on doing maintenance grows minute by minute, day by day.

      Most industries think that this is the right thing to do, but this is where they get it all wrong.  The traditional thinking is that all parts will eventually wear out, so the need to schedule equipment will be done for every single piece of equipment in their plant.  But when the schedule comes for a Preventive Maintenance, Preventive Maintenance will be waived because operations will not allow maintenance to do their stuff since the operation’s line of thinking is that all that matters most is just one thing and one thing alone, which is output, nothing more, nothing less.  Preventive Maintenance is missed out; more breakdowns occur and strike us right in the face.  They happen at a time when we least expect them to happen.  Maintenance will be left with no option but to put out the fire every time, all the time, including overtime.  They are busy recuperating and troubleshooting their equipment.  If a spare part is affected, most often, the part is unavailable in the storeroom, and maintenance is left with two options, which are either to cash advance and buy the part outside in excess while they keep the rest of the parts to themselves.  If not, they cannibalize other parts on idle equipment that are not being used since operations are pressuring them to get the equipment repaired at all costs.  Now once again, the equipment will be up and running with some Band-Aid fixed therapy solution.  These maintenance people will attempt once more to get the equipment for Preventive Maintenance.  Still, operations will again deny them of that chance since they needed to cope with their backlog.  The aftermath is that maintenance will be working for very long hours with more pressure on them to keep the asset running.  As a result, there will be a massive amount of breakdowns and failures suffered from their assets while the cost of doing maintenance increases.  The funny thing is that everyone knows the reason for the high cost of doing maintenance, but instead, the boss will question no one but you on why maintenance cost is high, and they want you to provide them with a very detailed answer for that.  Operations people are now looking for a scapegoat, an escape for not hitting their production for the day.  There is only one excuse they can think of: the maintenance people themselves.  The morale for maintenance declines, and life goes on for them.  And that is the typical life of maintenance in industries.

      In a reactive environment, most maintenance people work occurs right after a failure or when a breakdown happens.  Repairs and fixes are done at the quickest possible time because if repairs are prolonged, there will be shadows and voices at the back, whispering and asking you how much longer it will take to fix the equipment.  Some planning and scheduling are done, which are well set in place, but the machine still fails even with all these done.  Mostly this will always be the accepted norm of a plant’s culture, and maintenance gets a pat on the back for being reactive or for coming to the plant very late at night fixing the equipment where everyone has given up on how to make it run.  This is always what the old maintenance from the University of Hard Knocks teaches to the new generation.  They have been doing this since the beginning of time.  Training is a complete waste of time and money for these industries since they existed with this culture line.  This is how they do things in their plant on a day-to-day basis.  They do not believe in using any Predictive Maintenance instruments or any other forms of non-destructive diagnostic tools since management thinking is that these are just expensive toys and some fancy nice to have features for the maintenance function.  Their line of thinking is, why do we need these instruments if we have been doing maintenance without them since the beginning of time?  What I cannot comprehend in my thick skull is why do all international airports have infrared thermography in place to scan people, and why not every single industry can afford to have one?  The truth of the matter is that not all failures can be prevented.  For the record, not all breakdowns can be captured by doing Preventive Maintenance.  In fact, increasing the number of activities on Preventive Maintenance will simply increase the chances of infant mortality failures.  It is as simple as that.  Many failure modes will provide signs and symptoms that it is on the verge of failing.  These failures can be accurately captured by these instruments with precision accuracy using these non-destructive Condition-Based or Predictive Maintenance instruments.

      In reactive industries, the longer they can tolerate the pressure from operations people, the better chance for maintenance to stay longer in this type of industry.  They just adopt Newton’s law that whatever comes in should come out.  It means that, what comes inside your ears, even if it’s unpleasant, should come out.  If not, then it drives you nuts.  There are many instances where the boss will call you and ask for the root cause of the problem.  You just cannot tell him that Boss, you know what, I think you are the root cause of the problem unless you still want to be employed in that industry.  Even if your boss is really the root cause of the problem, you need to think of other reasons.  The lamest excuse for maintenance is wear and tear."  The boss will tell you to make sure it does not happen again.  The default will be to add an activity in the never-ending lists of their Preventive Maintenance.  The saying goes true if you cannot change them, then just join them.

      Changing the name of your maintenance organization to other fancy cool names to get rid of the word maintenance makes it sound really nice, but technically, it does not really make your maintenance organization more effective or proactive.  I will still stick to the word maintenance because this is who we really are.  Maintenance should not be considered as a cost center.  If industries know how to adapt to the different disciplines on maintenance, then things will change for the better.  Industries can transform their maintenance into a profit center if both operators and maintenance people truly understand what maintenance is all about and the role they play in industries.  Maintenance is one area of any organization where cost can definitely be reduced dramatically.  I hope and pray that industries finally realize this message one day.

      Industries that do not understand the different maintenance disciplines will always have one option on cutting costs: retire or terminate people.  Maintenance only becomes famous when production people highlight them for a breakdown for not hitting their production of the day even if they did not cause the breakdown.  Maintenance people are always considered as scapegoats and will always be blamed for every single downtime on the equipment.  Operations must understand that instead of blaming and putting fingers on maintenance, every time equipment fails is not the right thing to do.  Instead of blaming them all the time, why not just sit down with them, work in harmony in solving the problem together.  Industries must understand that maintenance is not only for maintenance people alone; it is always shared responsibility for both maintenance and operators in industries.  The message of this book is simple and straightforward; it’s time for operations and maintenance to work together and not against each other.

      1.3: Why Operations and Maintenance Went Their Separate Ways?

      • Operations Sentiment: If we cannot deliver, I’ll just blame the maintenance guys.

      • Maintenance Sentiment: The problem with you is that you flock the equipment to death, and you don’t allow us to perform our Preventive Maintenance activities.

      Even with the smallest problem on the equipment, the operator tends to leave everything to maintenance for fear of making the problem even worse.  Besides, operators do not take that kind of responsibility for maintenance because it is not stated in their job description, which was provided by their Human Resources Department.  We are here to operate, nothing more.  That is not on my list of responsibilities and things to do.  I am paid to operate, and that is clearly stated in my job description.

      On the other hand, maintenance will be called if equipment fail since that is what they were hired for, and it gives them some extra pay during overtime.  Maintenance people know that they have become a jack of all trades since they have been assigned to different places in the plant.  Maintenance thinking is that repairing failures and working overtime will assure them of a stable job income.  What they are missing is that their industry is losing money big time due to the massive amount of breakdowns.  And as the vicious cycle goes on and on, the aftermath of which is an immense amount of waste in man-hours, production time, loss of opportunity, and increase in maintenance, repair, and operations cost.  It is sad to note that in most industries, many operators have not been allowed to learn more about their equipment rather than just to click the switch and operate the equipment because it is what their job description tells them and what their operations managers told in the very beginning of time since they were employed.  When these operators were interviewed during the employment process, these operations manager was holding a pendulum that swung back and forth and told the operator to look at it until they were hypnotized, and the operations manager told them that if they want to work in this industry, then think of only one thing, and that is output.  No matter what other people told you, just think of one thing, output.  In some plants, operators do some walk-around checks without knowing how to realize abnormal conditions and irregularities on their equipment and assets because they have not been taught by maintenance.  It creates situations in which major breakdowns and the possibility of industrial accidents are much more likely to happen.  Much worse is the lack of communication between operators and maintenance because their roles were separated, creating a gap between them.  When a breakdown occurs, operators will call maintenance, and when maintenance arrives at the scene, the operators disappear just like Harry Houdini.  And when the concept of operators and maintenance partnership is bought forth on the table, the operation’s manager will kill the idea immediately and tell maintenance that this will not work here.

      I remember a friend of mine from maintenance who told me that when he discussed this particular topic during one of their operations meetings on having an operator and maintenance partnership and bringing the concept of Autonomous Maintenance in place, one operations manager told him to sit down and shut-up.  He told him that these things will not work in this plant, and what they need is output and not some fancy Japanese stuff.  He was shot right in the middle of his eyes, and that’s about it.  He never uttered a single word about it, ever.  The case was closed.  You see, it takes years to build an empowered workforce since we are changing the operator and the culture of the whole people in the industry.  In implementing Autonomous Maintenance, expect a lot of pressure and resistance initially, not only from the operators themselves but also from their operation’s managers.  My experience tells me that operations managers will always be the number one resisting force to face, especially if they are non-technical people.  At the very beginning of this strategy, they will do everything at their disposal to stop Autonomous Maintenance from happening.

      They think that operators are just here to operate and not to maintain.  The maintenance function is to repair, so do not pass the burden to the operators.  Empowering operators requires a change in culture and a change in mindset.  It is a discipline.  It is a way of life.  I blame neither operators nor maintenance for this situation since both have their own set of excuses, and if you ask them individually why they cannot work together in harmony, it will always end up in a merry-go-round, which again makes me dizzy.  Both departments have some sort of sacrifices to do to make things happen.  It will always be the maintenance of people who will make the first move.  Like in a game of chess, maintenance will take on the white pieces.

      Production people must understand that maintenance is always shared responsibility for both of them.  There are maintenance activities that must be done by the operators themselves and not by maintenance.  Likewise, maintenance must understand that having an operator maintenance partnership can only work if they teach operators about their equipment.  If you own a car, try to ask yourself who checks if you have enough fuel?  Who checks the pressure of the tires?  Who checks the water or coolant in the radiator of your car?  Who checks the temperature of the car if it is normal or increasing while you are driving?  Who checks if the car still has fuel?  Who checks this and that, and so on?  If you know the answer to these questions, why can’t these things be done in the equipment?  For operators and maintenance partnerships to work, culture needs to change from the traditional thinking, I operate you fix syndrome.  Our operators and maintenance are both responsible for taking care of our equipment.  Blaming and finger-pointing have to be stopped, and culture needs to be changed; otherwise, just forget to implement this kind of initiative in your plant.  There are maintenance activities that must be done by the operators themselves and not by maintenance, such as inspection, cleaning, establishing basic equipment conditions, and even lubrication.  For this to work, one function maintenance must realize is to teach operators about their equipment.  If operators know their equipment intimately well and know what is important to check, these operators will perform their checklists consistently and will not fake them.  It will become a reality because operators know how to operate and why it is important to do these checks and inspections in their equipment.

      For a start, when equipment fails, don’t allow the operator to leave you.  Instead, ask them to assist you, and while you repair the equipment, explain to them the failure, what part was damaged, what is the function of this part, and things of this sort.  This will be the start of better communication between the two.

      Operators themselves must provide some form of continuous communication with maintenance because it is important for maintenance to understand what actually happens to the equipment before the failure or breakdown itself.  If there were some sort of noise, smell, or anything that the operator senses before the failure occurs, then maintenance should know about this.  Always remember that it will be the operator who will witness the equipment's breakdown first and not the maintenance.  These people are the first line of defense on any failure or breakdown of the equipment.  Our goal is to develop operators who can sense problems on the equipment at the earliest stage possible.  The message is pretty much very simple.  Suppose the operators know the symptoms and deviations on their equipment; in that case, the problems can be treated very early, which will not result in catastrophic failures in our equipment and assets.  That is why they are the first line of defense on any equipment-related failures and breakdowns.

      THE MESSAGE OF MAINTENANCE and operator partnership is simple and straightforward; instead of operators fighting, blaming, and finger-pointing maintenance on the fault, they should work together in harmony to address small problems on the equipment before they become big.  Big problems are just an accumulation of small problems that are always left unattended and unchecked in the equipment.  So going back to the basic question, why did operators and maintenance go their own separate ways in industries?  According to Fredrick Taylor, the best way to manage an organization was to standardize the activity into simple repetitive tasks and closely supervise them to do these tasks.  In effect, management people do all the thinking and decisions, while the supervisors act as the watchers making sure the decision is followed to the letter.  Operators are focus on doing what they are told to do and just follow instructions until they get bored to death.  While Western countries focused more on producing big volumes, capacity, and production, Japanese people learned that the surest way to run an organization was to focus more and listen to their people's voices by making decisions to perform their work better.  Western countries slowly realize that they are being beaten badly by their Japanese competitors. However, many industries today are stubborn and still remain trapped in the old Taylor paradigm.  Because of this, most American and Western-style factory management clearly separated the roles of operators and maintenance departments by creating separate job descriptions for both of them.  Managers were convinced that this style of management was the most effective way to utilize human resources.

      Operators concentrate on production with little or no knowledge of the structure and function of their equipment. Concurrently, maintenance receives work orders and performs trouble-shooting and quick fixes on the equipment.  As a result, both operations and maintenance went their own separate ways instead of following the path to mutual cooperation and shared responsibility.  That is why today's feud is pretty much alive on both sides.  More than a hundred years ago, since Fredrick Taylor passed away yet, his principles are still alive and followed by many industries.  In fairness, perhaps his principles may work 100 years ago, where equipment was made simple when it fails, it will be fixed, but as time passed by, equipment becomes more automated and complicated, and the demand for industries products and services increases.  What I believe is that there is a need for a permanent partnership between the two.  This separation between operators and maintenance must end, and the partnership should begin immediately.

      1.4: Why Operators Can Never Be Maintenance Customers?

      I OFTEN HEAR THIS STATEMENT from maintenance people that operators are their customers and from the traditional saying, which states that the customer is always right, and when the customer is wrong, then you go back to the first rule, which states that the customer is always right after all.  I would like to quote from the book of Anthony Smith, RCM - Gateway to World Class Maintenance.  View maintenance as a Profit Center.  This suggests that the maintenance organization must be treated as a key element in your business strategy and plans for achieving profit targets.  Maintenance, like any organization function (design, marketing, manufacturing), incurs a cost in performing its routine tasks but recognizes that routine (i.e., scheduled) maintenance tasks, when properly performed, can dramatically affect the ability to achieve or exceed targeted production output.  This means, among other things, that Operations (Production) and Maintenance must be treated as equals.  No longer should Operations dictate when Maintenance can or cannot do their job.  Rather, there must be decisions made for the common good, and each must respect the other’s role in meeting the customers’ demands. (i.e., the real customer are the one who pays your salaries)  No longer should maintenance feel that it’s one, and the only customer is operations.  It is not. Unquote.  I tend to agree 100% with what the author Anthony Smith was saying.  Therefore, if your company's policy or culture follows the rule that operators are maintenance customers, then I believe they need to rethink and change course while there is still time; otherwise, that industry is indeed in a lot of trouble.  Here are some reasons why I believe that operators are not maintenance customers:

      1) Reliability is a Shared Responsibility for Both Operators and Maintenance

      First, operators must accept the fact that maintenance is not only for maintenance alone to perform.  There are minor maintenance activities such as cleaning, inspection, and basic lubrication that should be done by the operators themselves and not by maintenance.  TPM refers to this as addressing the basic equipment condition.

      As I have said many times, the second point is that operators are the first line of defense on any failure that can occur in the equipment since they are the people closest to the asset during the time of failure.  They will be the ones who will encounter the failure first before maintenance arrives at the scene.  With this, maintenance can only advance on any continuous improvement effort if the operator accepts the responsibility that they should play a major part in establishing Basic Equipment Condition, which aims to keep the equipment clean with correct lubrication and complete bolts on the machine.  Operators must provide continuous communication with maintenance because it is important for maintenance to understand what

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