There Are No Solutions
Quoted in Making Common Sense Common Practice: Models for Manufacturing Excellence
There are no solutions, only consequences.
—Gilbert Jones
Reliability Management
Strategies for Industrial Maintenance, Operations, and Engineering
Archive for February, 2012
Tufte’s Five Principles of Data Graphics
Edward Tufte provides five principles of data graphics in his book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
- Above all else show the data.
- Maximize the data-ink ratio.
- Erase non-data-ink.
- Erase redundant data-ink.
- Revise and edit.
Maintenance Management Techniques by A. S. Corder
Book Review: Maintenance Management Techniques
In 1976, it was the U.S. bicentennial.
Oh What a Night [YouTube] by the Four Seasons was near the top of the pops.
Computers were still the exclusive domain of geeks.
Gasoline, already subject to the ravages of early 1970s-era inflation, averaged 59 cents per gallon.
The Dow Jones, not yet the object of a stock market bubble, sat at around 1,000, denying options-traders and derivatives-peddlers their time in the sun.
New houses ran about $43,000, keeping the opportunity to package bad mortgages and sell them to pension fund managers from being quite the profitable enterprise it became in the early 21st century.
And it was in that auspicious year when A. S. Corder’s Maintenance Management Techniques
Oldsmobile Cutlass, Best-Selling Car in 1976
In those ancient times “reliability” had yet to come upon the scene as the popular new concept. CMMS was a figment of some geek’s imagination and EAM systems weren’t even that. Vibration analysis referred to something done with a screwdriver. Temperature measurement usually meant something akin to “laying on hands.”
But industry was moving away from pure reactive maintenance and toward planned maintenance, the subject of Maintenance Management Techniques
Actually, one of the great strengths of the book is that the subject matter is approached from a kind of age of innocence before the confusion created by computer systems. (Although the book itself presages the growth of computer use in tracking maintenance and compiling statistics.)
Most of the forms and examples presented would be used on paper. The forms are minimal – just what is needed and no more. The input is by handwriting or by typewriter. And yet, while quaint, wouldn’t this clarity and simplicity be ideal in reducing confusion and getting the information needed into our systems?
Key Concepts
- Procedures must not be static, but must be continually adapted to new organizational learning. [This concept is very similar to continuous improvement without referencing the term.]
Experience shows that too many firms, after writing their maintenance schedules, proudly bind them in a reference folder, forget about them, and send the related job specifications to the printers to be run off in their thousands. Thus the planned-maintenance scheme becomes stultified and management wonders subsequently why maintenance performance, costs and downtime, after initial signs of considerable improvement, show a disappointing leveling off at a point far sooner than was hoped for.
- Caution: the “type A” failure curve is referenced as the model for machine deterioration in section 5.3 on “predictive maintenance.” Although the Nolan and Heap study had been published by the time this book went to press, it apparently had not yet become common knowledge in England. This is a minor detraction for an otherwise good book. [The assumption of constant operating conditions is noted, however.]
- Collecting and analyzing data helps make maintenance cuts in the right place, when it is absolutely necessary for reasons of economy.
If economy cuts have to be made in maintenance expenditure, the best areas in which to impose these can now be worked out scientifically based on the known performance of the plant. The conventional approach to doing this by an arbitrary 10 per cent reduction, say, right across the board in so far as maintenance in concerned, simply does not make engineering sense, and as likely as not will result in increased downtime, consequently greater production losses and ultimately a greater loss to the company than the 10 per cent reduction imposed in the first place.
- Central workshops are an important part of the maintenance department. If enough work is going on in them, say 8-12
menemployees working full-time, then a separate supervisor may be needed. Workshop location and layout should, ideally, be planned from the beginning rather than placed in some remote corner as an afterthought. - What is the ultimate end of the multi-skill chain of logic? Why, with the same employees (and machines) working in maintenance and production of course! Corder addresses the issue thus:
Some companies endeavor to make economies in the use of men and machines by employing them on production work as well as maintenance and capital construction. This step invariably proves to be based on totally false assumptions, since at times of higher production the need for more maintenance is also greater. If the same men and machines are employed on maintenance as are on production, maintenance is always the first to suffer, followed ultimately by loss of the very production the company are attempting to achieve, due to lack of plant maintenance.
- To centralize or not to centralize? Corder advocates centralization, though with recognition of many of the difficulties that can accompany de-decentralization:
- large companies with corresponding amounts of plant and machinery
- large distance between production and central workshops
- physical barriers and infrastructure safety hazards (highways, canals, etc.) in highly congested areas
- Restrictive worker agreements that define in great detail “who does what”
- Detailed parts drawings should be insisted upon for all new equipment. This prevents “trial and error” parts replacements where maintenance job shops have to reverse engineer parts from old, worn, corroded, or broken parts where even the material of construction may not be known.
- Aptitude testing should be part of the craft and engineering education and career progression. [Ironically, and for reasons I will not elaborate here, use aptitude testing in the U.S. has declined dramatically since the publication of this book.] Corder also notes that “general management” skills are insufficient to make a maintenance manager. In Corder’s own words:
One of the most important requirements for young men embarking on a maintenance-engineering career, not only applicable to craftsmen and technicians, but also up to the highest levels in maintenance, should be some form of aptitude testing – aptitude for mechanical mindedness – in addition to the usual minimum scholastic requirements. This applies equally to those proceeding to electrical engineering, electronics or instruments. A latent aptitude is essential, since it is an indisputable fact that one can no more teach someone to become an artist who has no latent artistic ability than to train a maintenance engineer or craftsman who has no mechanical aptitude…
A maintenance manager worth his position should be capable of solving a maintenance problem and then going out onto the shop floor and putting the machine to rights with his own hands. He should be capable of doing this, not that the occasion should arise except under the most exceptional circumstances.
- In addition to aptitude testing, rudimentary skills testing should be employed. For example, a fitter should prove he can read a micrometer and vernier caliper while a painter should be able to identify different types of paint and their uses while understanding how to mix and thin them.
Useful Features
- Plant inventory card (p. 26) and electrical-equipment inventory card (p. 27)
- Maintenance request form (p. 59)
- Job specification example (p. 69)
- Inspection report (p. 75)
- Planned lubrication forms (p. 83)
- Work priority index (p. 87)
- Daily standby record (p. 96) [A temporary substitute for planned maintenance designed to collect information on maintenance needs while placating operations managers who do not want to give up standby personnel.]
- Maintenance reports: weekly labor tabulation (p. 98), weekly emergency maintenance summary (p. 100), four-week maintenance report (p. 101), and maintenance top-ten analysis (p. 103)
- Workshop planning flowchart (p. 156)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Maintenance Organization
Chapter 2: Costing
Chapter 3: Planning and Control – Preparation
Chapter 4: Planning and Control – Operation
Chapter 5: Planning and Control – Progression
Chapter 6: The Central Workshop
Chapter 7: Materials and Stores Control
Chapter 8: Education and Training
Chapter 9: Cost Studies
Appendix A :Staff Job Descriptions
Appendix B: Plant-Inventory Preparation
Appendix C: How to Fill in the Maintenance Request – Staff and Supervisors’ Instructions
Appendix D: Preparation of Maintenance Schedules
Appendix E: Preparing the Workshop Order Set
References
Index
Tufte’s Six Principles of Graphical Integrity
Regardless of decorative aspects, graphical integrity should form the foundation for illustrative statistics. Edward Tufte provides six principles of graphical integrity in his book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
- The representation of numbers, as physically measured on the surface of the graphic itself, should be directly proportional to the numerical quantities represented.
- Clear, detailed, and thorough labeling should be used to defeat graphical distortion and ambiguity. Write out explanations of the data on the graphic itself. Label important events in the data.
- Show data variation, not design variation.
- In time-series displays of money, deflated and standardized units of monetary measurement are nearly always better than nominal units.
- The number of information-carrying (variable) dimensions depicted should not exceed the number of dimensions in the data.
- Graphics must not quote data out of context.
Weekend Reading: Making Decisions & Change Psychology
From MindTools:
Hartnett’s Consensus-Oriented Decision-Making Model: Developing Solutions Collectively
Nominal Group Technique: Prioritizing issues and projects to achieve consensus
The Vroom-Yetton-Jago Decision Model: Deciding how to decide
Quiz Time!
Are you qualified to have opinions on scientific matters? Find out:
Are You Scientifically Literate? [H/T Lew Rockwell. My score: 35/50. It's been a long time since I studied biology or astronomy!]
From Evil HR Lady:
5 reasons employees aren’t sharing their ideas
From Seth Godin:
The map has been replaced by the compass [This short blog post will be of interest to students of MBM, particularly as it pertains to Vision.]
From HBR Blog:
Willy Shih: Just How Important Is Manufacturing? [Yes! Acknowledgement from Hah-vahd of the importance of manufacturing. Hopefully not too little too late. Key idea: A lot of manufacturing IS knowledge work.]
From Precision Nutrition:
Okay, why would I be posting something from a nutrition consulting organization on a website dedicated to gear-head reliability and corporate change?
This series of videos for personal trainers and their frustrations regarding clients has so many parallels to a reliability professional trying to move an organization forward that it’s amazing.
The missing tool that some of us need is change psychology. We can blame management, blame production, or blame maintenance for failing to make the dramatic transformation. But if there is a lever you can apply to get people to do what’s good for them anyway, it’s change psychology.
Watch this series and enjoy.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Books Referenced:
Lesson Learned: Rebuilding an Assembly that was Different from the Drawing
Situation: “The Drawing” vs. “The Reality”
There was once a piece of equipment that consisted of two plates separated by several spacers. In between the plates there was a large pin and two large wheels. Due to wear in the pin and wheel bearings, this was sent to a fabrication shop to be rebuilt.
When I visited the fab shop with the drawing, we found that one plate had been welded to the spacers while the other plate was bolted into the spacers.
The drawing indicated that the plates were to be joined by bolting through the spacers to nuts on the other side.
The shop manager looks at me and wants to know how to build the new plates.
Behavior: “Stick with the Drawing!”
I thought about the problem in terms of design for operability. I could see no functional difference between bolted and welded construction.
I thought about the metallurgy of the plates. Although it was a hard steel, the shop had the pre-heating and slow-cooling capability to do the welding properly. The edge went to machining because the plates would not need an extra setup for the bolt-holes while welding would require an extra setup. Yet that wasn’t reason enough to favor machining.
I thought about maintainability and future repair complexity. If we bolted the part, it would be easier to disassemble. Aha! “Stick with the drawing” I told the shop manager, and gave him some extra instruction on how to fasten the pieces together.
Outcome: “Won’t Fit!”
When the assembly arrived back to the plant, it looked good. I was pleased… until I got a call from the mechanics who were less than enthused. Apparently, the bolt head interfered with a bracket that had been installed just behind the assembly. There was no way that assembly was going to fit as constructed, and we didn’t have the capability at the plant to do the welding properly.
The entire assembly would have to be sent back to the shop, delaying completion of the job by several days. And it was completely my fault.
Lesson: Always Ask Why
The primary lesson here was that I should have looked harder for a reason why one plate had been welded. Even under time pressure, I should have found someone who had first-hand experience with the original modification, or at least with installing this piece of equipment, to find out the reason it was different from the drawing.
Rather than expedite repair, my lack of research resulted in a delay.
However, in the spirit of taking the lesson that I had just paid for, the drawing was modified to reflect the new reality. One plate was welded to the spacers, and to facilitate disassembly the spacers were blind drilled and tapped to accept a bolt from the other side. There were several other issues that were addressed by creating drawings that had not previously existed. Future repairs will now avoid this problem without anyone having to take time to do the research, and without the shop having to try and reverse engineer worn parts.
Three Incentives Questions for Metrics
Unintended consequences and perverse incentives are as old as social organization. [See Wikipedia's unintended consequences page for an interesting and informative list.] Many of them could be avoided by asking a few simple questions ahead of time.
1. Can this metric be manipulated without improving the underlying business?
If so, employees are inventivized to take the short cut.
Example: PM schedule compliance
As commonly measured, PM schedule compliance allows dates to be moved or schedules to be adjusted or old work orders to be completed out in order to bring the numbers up.
2. Can this metric be improved through undesirable or unintended behaviors?
If so, then the benefits of improving the metric will be offset in ways probably not measured.
Example: MTTR
MTTR encourages maintenance employees to store and hide extra supplies or take short cuts in workmanship to get jobs done faster.
3. Can this metric be improved by sacrificing long-term productive capability?
If so, then short-term results will turn into long-term decline.
Example: earnings per share
If earnings per share is growing at five times the rate of revenue or more, watch out!
Are these metrics, therefore, invalid?
Not necessarily. But consider selectively sharing the information or de-emphasizing them in benchmarking efforts in order to mitigate the risks, MTTR in particular is especially useful for planning purposes, but not for incentive schemes.
5S for Operators: 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace by Productivity Press
Book Review: 5S for Operators: 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace
This is a simple book on 5-S for people who aren’t interested in a bunch of theory, but just want to get right to the two key points:
- What’s in it for me?
- What exactly do you want me to do?
The five pillars introduced to operators (or supervisors) are:
- Sort: separating needed from unneeded items
- Set in Order: making a place for everything (that is needed) and putting everything in its place
- Shine: making sure everything stays clean (reasons for this are described in detail in TPM for Supervisors)
- Standardize: institutionalizing the first three pillars
- Sustain: making the first four pillars habitual
Key Points
- To Sort means more than to organize. It means to decide what is necessary for upcoming production and removing all else from the area. Items not needed are red-tagged.
- When an item is red-tagged, management can decide to choose between discarding it, selling it, returning it to the vendor, lending it, moving it, or centralizing its storage.
- To Set in Order means to decide on appropriate locations for all tools and materials that will stay in the area and improving the layout of parts and machines to reduce wasted motion.
- To Shine has several benefits and is more than janitorial work. Shine makes the workshop a more pleasant place to work.
- Cleaning equipment in the Shine phase is the same as inspecting. Cleaning for the purpose of inspecting means finding and fixing small defects that increase variability in the machine.
- To Standardize means to document and schedule tasks related to Sort, Set in Order, and Shine.
- Although we call the fifth pillar “Sustain” it is actually a form of continuous improvement. Once the first four pillars are in place, management can receive and implement improvement suggestions, post posters and newsletters, and designate focus months.
Useful Features
- Example Red Tag (page 37)
- Example Job Cycle Chart (page 85)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Getting Started
Chapter 2: Introduction and Overview
Chapter 3: The First Pillar: Sort
Chapter 4: The Second Pillar: Set in Order
Chapter 5: The Third Pillar: Shine
Chapter 6: The Fourth Pillar: Standardize
Chapter 7: The Fifth Pillar: Sustain
Chapter 8: Reflections and Conclusions
Further Reading About the 5S System
TPM for Supervisors by Kunio Shirose
Book Review: TPM for Supervisors
This simple, readable, easy-to-understand book for floor supervisors is an excellent introduction to TPM. While primarily written for an operations supervisor, maintenance supervisors will find it valuable as well.
This book is intended to give you, the shopfloor supervisor, the information you need to understand total productive maintenance (TPM) and your role in it.
Key Concepts
- Operators need to work toward identifying problems early. Maintenance needs to help teach operators the skills to do inspections, and then respond to their needs in a timely manner.
- TPM’s aim is to get the most effective use of equipment. To do this, it creates a comprehensive system of preventive maintenance designed to avoid accelerated deterioration and facilitate inspection.
- Operator PM tasks (autonomous maintenance) revolve heavily around cleaning, lubrication, and inspection. Development of these tasks is the primary responsibility of operator-led TPM teams after adequate skill-building. Management and engineering provide support.
- Designers and engineers must involve maintenance and operators early in the design stage in order to promote operability, serviceability, and safety while reducing maintenance requirements and improving energy efficiency.
- Accumulated small defects (such as a dent in a chute or loose fastener) and imprecise settings in equipment lead to quality defects small production delays that add up to significant chronic problems.
- There are six big losses that need to be addressed. Measure all losses and find/fix the biggest: breakdown losses, setup and adjustment losses, idling and minor stoppage losses, quality defects and rework, and startup/yield losses.
Useful Features
- Cleaning and lubrication standards summary for autonomous maintenance (page 51)
- Examples of visual control (page 57)
- TPM audit request form (page 63)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Causes of Breakdowns and Defects
Chapter 2: What is Total Productive Maintenance?
Chapter 3: Characteristics and Goals of TPM
Chapter 4: Eliminating Equipment Losses
Chapter 5: Autonomous Maintenance Activities in Production
Chapter 6: Companywide Cooperation in TPM
The Six Big Losses of TPM
From TPM for Supervisors
OEE Improvement Process
- Measure the extent of each of the six big losses
- Determine how much each loss affects OEE
- Find out what problems stand in the way of improving availability, performance rate, and quality rate
- Determine targets and orientations needed to solve problems discovered in step 3
- Find out how higher equipment effectiveness will affect cost-cutting and profit-boosting
The Six Big Losses
- Breakdown losses
- Setup and adjustment losses
- Idling and minor stoppage losses
- Speed losses
- Quality defects and rework
- Startup/yield losses
About Reliability Management
Here, you can get specific advice on maintenance planning and execution, operations reliability strategies, and reliability program management. We draw from diverse sources including Market-Based Management, lean manufacturing, Toyota, Harvard Business Review, Reliable Plant, and Ford. Contact me here.
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