The Voyage of Life: Manhood by Thomas Cole, 1840

Quoted in Making Common Sense Common Practice: Models for Manufacturing Excellence:

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. For the man who knows not what harbor he sails, no wind is the right wind.

—Seneca the Younger

I picked this book up because it was recommended by the SMRP for the CMRP exam.

Ron Moore traces the transformative practices at Beta Manufacturing, a hypothetical manufacturing corporation with multiple plants. Beta is not the least efficient company in its industry, but it is a long way behind its top-tier competitor. Most of the practices at Beta will be familiar to anyone with 5 years experience.

The book is full of good practices and improvement opportunities, but it shines most near the end when personal experiences and insights are added. This begins in chapter 15 on leadership where Moore draws on his military and corporate background.

Key Concepts

• A rational economy is built upon a foundation of manufacturing. Trading, distribution, service, and support are necessary and value-added. However, they should exist in addition to, not instead of, manufacturing. [One is greatly tempted to add the FIRE sectors: Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate, to this statement.]
• As national success depends upon manufacturing, so does a company’s success depend upon aligning the marketing and manufacturing strategies. Manufacturing is not just the place that makes the stuff that marketing sells. Competencies and tradeoffs in manufacturing capabilities should tie in closely with marketing strategy.
• Everyone has a part to play in reliability. Design, procurement, stores, commissioning, operations, and maintenance functions are all opportunities to introduce defects and reduce return on investment in capital assets.
• Measure ALL losses from ideal production. Downtime, rate reductions, and quality defects are all permanent losses that can never be recovered. [Excellent details are provided on how to do this.]
• The commissioning process should be more than ensuring that equipment turns over and puts product out the end. Detailed performance measurements and baseline data should be collected and added to machine records.
• Nolan’s data on the high proportion of “random” failure patterns should not form the theoretical basis for maintenance practices at most manufacturing facilities because the data was developed from the specific experience of nuclear submarines, which have very different operating philosophies from manufacturing.
  
• Most manufacturing facilities also do not have the data or equipment history to reliably perform statistical analysis of failure patterns.
• “Religious” assessment of equipment condition leads to proactive maintenance approach without wasting effort replacing good parts
• Use of contractors is not a panacea for high maintenance costs. When used improperly, maintenance costs will actually increase. Special questions of term and conditions, financial issues, and intellectual property are raised to a greater extent than with permanent employees.
• A strong case can be made for having supervisors conduct training rather than have training specialists do all of the work.

Noteworthy Features

• Procedure for Developing Vibration Specifications (p. 142), Motor Specifications (p. 144)
• Worksheet for General Machine Information (p. 147)
• The Predestruction Authorization Form (p. 188)
• Operational Practices, including operator basic care (p. 206) and a shift handover process (p. 211)
• Maintenance Best Practices (p. 238)
• Best Practices for Use of Contractors (p. 305)
• TPM Principles as they Relate to RCM (p. 317)
• Strategic Training Plan ( p. 408)
• Reliability Manager/Engineer Job Description (p. 453)

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Manufacturing and Business Excellence

Chapter 2. Benchmarks, Bottlenecks, and Best Practices

Chapter 3. Aligning Marketing and Manufacturing Strategies

Chapter 4. Plant Design and Capital Project Practices

Chapter 5. Procurement Practices

Chapter 6. Stores/Part Management Practices

Chapter 7. Installation Practices

Chapter 8. Operational Practices

Chapter 9. Maintenance Practices

Chapter 10. Optimizing the Preventive Maintenance Process

Chapter 11. Implementing a Computerized Maintenance Management System

Chapter 12. Effective Use of Contractors in a Manufacturing Plant

Chapter 13. Total Productive and Reliability-Centered Maintenance

Chapter 14. Implementation of Reliability Processes

Chapter 15. Leadership and Organizational Behavior and Structure

Chapter 16. Training

Chapter 17. Performance Measurement

Chapter 18. Epilogue

Appendix A. World-Class Manufacturing—A Review of Several Key Success Factors

Appendix B. Reliability Manager/Engineer Job Description

King Leonidas

Quoted in chapter 4 of The Science of Success:

Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one.

—Chinese proverb

From Machinery Lubrication:

The Optimum Reference State: Creating an Engineering Specification for Lubrication Excellence

From VitalSmarts:

Offering Advice Without Causing Offense

From HBR Blog:

Why Don’t We Act in Our Own Best Interest? [Someone with a Seven Habits vocabulary might have asked, "Why Can't We Focus on the Important Rather Than the Urgent?"]

According to an old story, a lord of ancient China once asked his physician, a member of a family of healers, which of them was the most skilled in the art. The physician, whose reputation was such that his name became synonymous with medical science in China, replied, “My eldest brother sees the spirit of sickness and removes it before it takes shape, so his name does not get out of the house. My elder brother cures sickness when it is still extremely minute, so his name does not get out of the neighborhood. As for me, I puncture veins, prescribe potions, and massage skin, so from time to time my name gets out and is heard among the lords.”

A Ming dynasty critic writes of this little tale of the physician: “What is essential for leaders, generals, and ministers in running countries and governing armies is no more than this.”

Area and Centroid

Moments of Inertia

Radii of Gyration

Tips for Reaching Contamination Targets

The Basics of Synthetic Oil Technology

From Reliable Plant:

Strategies for Overcoming Resistance to Change

6 Steps to Update Your Lubrication Program

From MindTools:

Role Playing: Preparing for Difficult Conversations and Situations

Thinking On Your Feet: Staying cool under pressure

Theory of Constraints: Strengthening Your “Weakest Link”

Swim Lane Diagrams: Mapping and Improving the Processes in Your Organization

Porter’s Value Chain: Understanding How Value is Created Within Organizations

Get Ready for Promotion: Showing what you can do

From Ryan Holiday:

I haven’t linked to this guy yet, but a lot of his posts seem modeled after Marcus Aurelius: reminders to the self in the stoic tradition.

Total Commitment

To reduce deaths, the government instead paid by the number of people who actually made it to Australia. Once properly incentivized to preserve their charges, the fatality rate plummeted.

There is a saying is attributed to Stalin: one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic. In the same sense, the fate of the convict ship prisoners is a mere statistic.

However, I recently ran into an old song called “Back Home in Derry.” I don’t know who sang the version I have, but it’s a fascinating story of one man who survived the journey.

The lyrics follow.

In 1803 we sailed out to sea
Out from the sweet town of Derry
For Australia bound if we didn’t all drown
The marks of our fetters we carried
From the rusty iron chains we climbed through the wanes
The good women we left in sorrow
As the main sails unfurled our curses we hurled
At the English and thoughts of tomorrow

At the mouth of the foil we fell ill to the soil
As down below decks we were lying
O’Doherty’s scream shook him out from a dream
Of a vision of old Robert dying
As the sun burned cruel they dished out the gruel
Dan O’Connor was down with the fever
Sixty rebels today bound for Botany Bay
How many would reach there this evening?

[Refrain]
Whoa….oh, I wish I was back home in Derry
Whoa….oh, I wish I was back home in Derry

I cursed them to hell, as our bow fought the swell
Our ship danced like moths in the firelight
Wild horses rode high as the devil passed by
Taking souls to Hades by twilight
Five weeks out to sea we were now 43
We buried our comrades each morning
And in our own slime, we were lost in time
Endless night without dawning

[Refrain]

Van Diemen’s land is a hell for a man
To end out his whole life in slavery
Where the climate is raw and the gun makes the law
Neither wind nor rain care for bravery
Twenty years have gone by and I’ve emptied my bond
My comrades’ ghosts walk beside me
Well, a rebel I came and I’m still the same
On a cold winters night you will find me

[Refrain]

A bug with a plug-in prevented me from making updates, so only previously-scheduled updates were occurring.

I still have to re-install some plug-ins, so you might temporarily notice some missing features. However, we should be back into the groove shortly.

• Loss Accounting [Use existing databases to perform Pareto analysis and follow up to improve results. Since everything can't be done at once, this item is the foundation for prioritizing all others.]
• Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA) [Perform and/or facilitate RCFA and prospective solutions based on RCFA.]
• Managing the Results of Condition Monitoring Functions [Ensure quality data is being collected and that condition-monitoring technology is applied and used in an integrated way.]
• Overhaul/Shutdown Support [Review equipment condition to ensure the right work, and only the right work, is performed. Commission equipment during startup using applicable technologies.]
• Proactive Support [Working with all other departments to ensure good practices in design, purchasing, maintenance, stores, and operation.]
• Facilitator/Communicator [Deal with gray areas where responsibilities are shared by two or more groups. Find and implement solutions while avoiding finger-pointing.]

2008 Explosion at Imperial Sugar in Port Wentworth, GA

Quoted in Making Common Sense Common Practice: Models for Manufacturing Excellence:

So long as they are focused on events, they are doomed to reactiveness. Generative learning cannot be sustained in an organization where event thinking predominates.

—Peter Senge

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

—Aristotle

Predestruction Authorization

I, (insert name), do hereby authorize premature destruction of the equipment being repaired under Work Order No. (insert number), because I have not allowed adequate time for the performance of certain maintenance and/or startup and commissioning tasks (insert task numbers). I understand that not doing these tasks is likely to reduce the life of this equipment and result in its premature failure. I also understand that it may also increase the overall maintenance costs and reduce the quality of the product being produced.

___________________
Signature

___________________
Title

In my opinion, the inclusion of the words “likely to” and “may” make this authorization too soft and squishy. However, it is a problem easily remedied for application in your facility.

Nevertheless, the creation and use of this form is rather ingenious. I can’t think of many operations supervisors who would sign.

• labor costs with zero wasted time
• material costs with zero scrap, rework, or recycle
• energy costs is the most efficient available technology
• maintenance costs associated with proper preventive maintenance, lubrication, and appropriate scheduled replacements of wear items

Fixed costs (overhead) is not considered for this analysis: only variable costs.

Your total unit cost is equal to the minimum cost plus all associated waste:

• design problems that cause downtime, excessive maintenance, or are less efficient that they could be in terms of labor, energy, and material required
• purchasing problems such as excessive MRO inventory, or attempts to reduce costs by buying inferior parts and materials
• storage problems such as storing parts outdoors that cause infant mortality
• installation problems such as not using proper tensioning procedures or inadequate alignment tolerances that cause premature equipment failure
• operation problems such as running equipment outside its designed context
• maintenance problems such as too much maintenance, too little maintenance, or inadequate attention to detail

One best-practice metric for manufacturing lines is Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), which is the product of

• availability: uptime within the line’s control,
• quality: percent good product, and
• production rate as a percentage of ideal (or best proven) rate.

One advantage (depending on your perspective) of OEE is that problems are tough to hide. You can’t slow the machine down to improve uptime and expect to get away with it. You can’t slack on quality in order to improve rates. Any production problem will ultimately show up in OEE numbers.

OEE and Other Operating Metrics

There are many variations on operations metrics, but if you have the capability to measure OEE, you can learn from looking at other factors as well.

OEE can be seen in the context of many operational metrics in the diagram below. Definitions follow.

• Asset Utilization: % of ideal operating rate achieved. Would typically be used by business management, not operators, due to effect of market demand, which is mostly outside of their control.
• OEE: asset utilization plus market losses. By adding market losses back into utilization, certain forces beyond the control of operators and maintenance employees are backed out. Therefore, OEE will be meaningful to a wide variety of operations, maintenance, and planning employees.
• Quality Utilization: OEE plus changeover losses. Backing out changeover losses yields a metrics that considers downtime, production rate losses, and quality losses. Since retooling and changeovers are not considered, quality utilization is a measure of steady-state operations efficiency. If there are frequent changeovers, this will not impact quality utilization.
• Potential Rate Utilization: Quality utilization plus quality losses. Backing out quality losses measures only downtime and production rate losses. This metric has limited application, but might be used if systems to measure quality defects are not in place.
• Asset Availability: Potential rate utilization plus production rate losses. By subtracting only downtime (both scheduled and unscheduled), asset availability shows how much the equipment was available for production. This metric is commonly used as a measure of reliability.

Steps to Measure OEE

1. Select system boundaries. Managers need to clearly what lies within the responsibility of their areas.
2. Define the output. For the sake of calculating OEE, inputs do not need to be known. Therefore, wasted energy, materials, and labor do not factor into OEE. If there are multiple outputs that can not be consolidated, then there will be more than one OEE number.
3. Decide on loss subcategories. There are always three categories: downtime, rate reductions, and quality defects. In the example below, downtime is split into changeover time, scheduled downtime, and unscheduled downtime. Process rate and quality issues are not subdivided.  Depending upon the situation, management might want to split the “due to”s differently. Losses of any kind might be allocated to internal or external causes. Scheduled operator breaks might get its own category. It’s up to the management team to decide what is most useful and informative.
4. Record losses. Record and track the data.
5. Calculate metrics. As the data begins coming in, compile operational metrics on a daily, weekly, monthly, or other time basis.
6. Benchmark. A world-class facility is supposed to be around 95% OEE. Where do your assets stack up?
7. Improve. This is the most important step. Use the data to create a Pareto chart of operational losses and fix the problems.

Example Calculation

Widget, Inc.’s B line produced 1274 widgets in one day. Due to a lack of demand B line was only scheduled for one 12-hour shift. A lot of 75 widgets was found to be defective. Ideally, 200 widgets per hour are produced.

The shift log shows that 2.55 hours were down for scheduled breaks and a planned repair. 45 minutes down was caused by an unexpected actuator jam. 1.12 hours were used to change the size of the widgets being produced.

In the following table standard Excel cell formats are used: for input cells and for output cells. Calculated values are explained below.

Initial Calculations

•  Actual Production Rate = (Total Units Produced) / (Running Hours)
• Process Rate Loss = (Ideal – Actual Production Rates) / (Ideal Production Rate)
• Quality Losses = (Defective Units Produced) / (Total Units Produced)
• Nonrunning Hours = Sum of Downtime Losses
• Demand Hours = 24 – (No Demand Downtime)
• Running Hours = 24 – (Nonrunning Hours)

Calculated Losses

• Downtime Losses are calculated as hours down divided by the relevant time period, which is either 24 hours or Demand Hours.
• Rate and Quality Losses are equal to the given percentage times running hours divided by the relevant time period.

Calculated Operations Metrics

Operations metrics are calculated as described above using the given numbers.

Plotting Losses

The losses in the example can also be plotted to show the relative impact of each loss type. A waterfall chart based on both 24 hours and demand hours would look like this:

Challenges in Measuring OEE

1. Recordkeeping. OEE requires that all losses be recorded and correctly allocated. Depending on the complexity of the process, automated systems can help, but employees may need some convincing that correctly allocated losses will not simply become a stick to beat them with. The emphasis has to be on improving, not on placing blame. Once a system is in place, operators must be accountable for complete and accurate records.
2. Subdividing Categories. Too many loss subcategories creates confusion. Too few subcategories makes data interpretation difficult. Dividing the loss types into categories should be done based on need.
3. Analysis Not Performed. Data collection is a means, not an end. If the data is not used to set priorities and drive decisions, then it is wasted effort.

Ordering improvements in this manner has several advantages:

1. Credibility is gained for the efforts in the eyes of operators and mechanics, who are then more likely to participate and support further improvement efforts.
2. Standardization of tasks in the form of procedures institutionalizes best practices and spreads knowledge. Henry Ford’s take on standardization is the one to adopt here.
3. You can’t improve a procedure if the procedure is not followed. Once procedures are in place and respected as helpful and informative, they can be systematically improved.

One method I’ve seen employed successfully is after a morning safety meeting, the supervisor hands a procedure to a millwright to read aloud. Then the supervisor asks “what’s missing?” As millwrights give feedback about the procedure, the supervisor writes it down and passes it along to the planners. The planner then adds missing steps and specifications and updates the plan in the system.

One of the newer books out there on visual communication is Dan Roam’s The Back of the Napkin. This is a reader-friendly and un-intimidating book that makes a good introduction to drawing for the purpose of communicating and selling ideas.

Roam presents a systematic framework for approaching complicated problems with simple figures and drawings in several ways and then combines them into a large codex.

The codex consists of two dimensions: the six ways of seeing, based on the six types of problems, and five characteristics of the drawing.

The Six Ways of Seeing

1. Who/what problems and questions are best illustrated through portraits.
2. How much problems and questions are best illustrated through charts. This is where most communication happens in business. While it is a perfectly valid tool, it is often overemphasized.
3. Where problems and questions are best illustrated through maps.
4. When problems and questions are best illustrated through timelines.
5. How problems and questions are best illustrated through flowcharts.
6. Why problems and questions are best illustrated through multi-variable plots. These plots are more complicated than the other drawings and might take more practice for the average user than the book provides. However, the book makes for a good starting point.

S.Q.V.I.D.: Picture Characteristics

• S: Simple vs. Elaborate. For any of the above problems, a quick and bare picture can be drawn. Also, we could draw a picture rich in detail.
• Q: Quality vs. Quantity. The picture could emphasize the subjective (quality) or objective (quantifiable, numerical) nature of the subject.
• V: Vision vs. Execution. The picture could be of the end state (vision) or of the means of achieving the vision (execution).
• I: Individual vs. Comparison. The picture could be of a standalone person or object, or it could be of the subject and other people and objects with differing characteristics.
• D: Delta (change) vs. Status Quo. The picture could be of the change expected, or of the subject as it is.

Putting it Together

Most of the frameworks can be combined with most of the picture characteristics. (An exception is qualitative representation of a “how much” problem. It just doesn’t work.)

Generally, you’ll use the codex because you have a problem, so that’s the place to start. Pick which kind of problem it is, then try to draw a picture of it using circles, lines, words, and other simple shapes.

If you have difficulty, you refer to the S.Q.V.I.D. model to generate ideas.

The book contains detailed examples of the process, and is well worth a look. As a sort of “Visual Problem Solving for Dummies” book it will be most useful to people unacquainted with the subject. But if the exercises are performed and the content absorbed, the reader will not be a “dummy” on the subject for long.

The full story is here.

Lara’s company, Bushwackers, had been hired to clear brush from a rural home outside of Nevada City when the line became wrapped around the professional landscaper’s neck.

The rope was attached to some wood and was dragged by the chipper, beheading him, CBS Sacramento reported.

His body was pulled towards the cone of the wood chipper, but a colleague stopped the machine before his body was dragged inside the rotors.

Here’s is an interesting reader comment:

As a supervisor in a tree service, I would like to know why the rope was still in the brush he chipping?! Before ANY chipping is done my guys must remove any ropes or tools or anything that might make the job more hazardous! There are enough dangers in this job, use your head and eliminate as many of those as possible!

—troy b, grand island, NE. USA, 13/1/2012 18:59

We don’t know what was going through Mr. Lara’s head. Was he rushing to get the job done fast? Was he distracted or frustrated thinking about something else? Was he complacent because he had done similar jobs a thousand times? Was he fatigued from the hard labor involved?

If you were a failure analyst or safety specialist, how would you approach the problem? How would you run your investigation? What questions would you ask the crew? What would you look for in company safety records?

Beyond Training: How to re-order the brain to achieve remarkable result

From Management Craft:

Meaning: The “wolf” of control in trendy sheep’s clothing? #leadership [It isn't clear from the title, but the link is contrarian advice NOT to try to make work meaningful for subordinates. H/T Rooted in Prosperity]

From Wikipedia:

Reliability engineering

Burn-in

Human reliability [See also: Human Factors Analysis and Classification System]

From VitalSmarts:

How to Eliminate Sarcasm [Unlike much of the web, many of the comments demonstrate great integrity and humility. Apparently this newsletter has attracted a quality following.]

From Rooted in Prosperity:

Ann Zerkle: What’s the Market Solution? ["There ought to be a law?" Maybe that isn't always the best way to get what you want.]

From Machinery Lubrication:

When is It Hot Enough for a Synthetic? [Despite the title, this article is a perfect example of the importance of "Asking the Right Question." Rather than "an answer," it provides "the right questions."]

You don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time.

—Vince Lombardi