Maintenance Practice- A standard to be followed or adapted?
Preventive Maintenance? - The spine of maintenance
philosophy, we all do it, don't we?
Predictive Maintenance? - hmm..gadgets, graphs, analysis
etc. heard it's expensive, very expensive,
we don't even go near to it!
Reliability Centered Maintenance? - Strategy, an engineering framework, failure
mode analysis maybe..phew! Which fancy maintenance book are you reading these
days by the way?
You might be wondering what is this all about, right? So let
me tell you, this is an extract of conversation which I was having with one of
my good friends, a Manager at the equipment bank of a leading construction
company. Some candid responses which appeared contradictory to what I was thinking
about the latest maintenance practices being followed in leading industries.
Now what makes these evolving practices such as predictive maintenance and RCM
dreadful names? Why is there an inhibition in leaping the boundaries and
looking beyond practices such as corrective and preventive maintenance?
Over the years, we have convinced ourselves about existence of some standards or should I say a propagated notion about a certain
maintenance practice. We naturally start identifying these standards to be
synonyms for the respective practices. For example, preventive maintenance are
either time based or meter based and it appears that it has got nothing to do
with equipment dynamics in itself.
Similarly condition based maintenance has to be something like an
intertwined hi-tech device capturing some godly information and involving
analysis which is so expensive that one would rather scrap the equipment and
buy a new one instead! And RCM? Meant for strategists, the glass cabin folks,
who are assumed to be Asset doctors with the knowledge of some magic formula to
ensure a low cost maintenance with high operational reliability. The moment one
realizes the current maintenance spend or the knowledge is unable to
sustain these standards, they withdraw and assume that someone exist for whom
these standards really work, the cryptic analysis do wonders and the hi-fi
strategies get implemented seamlessly.
As a maintenance practioner, ones is in constant pursuit of
a standard to convert cryptic and myriad information to meaningful maintenance
output. They tend to seek help from external sources and expect these sources
tell them on what they could do best .But the fact is, such
standards is of less help and even best practices sometimes doesn't make a good sense of
things.
Adaptation is the Key
The application of a maintenance practice in an enterprise
is purely subjective. It depends a lot on factors such as type of Assets being
used, the conditions under which it functions, the operational reliability
expected and finally the financial sense which it should make for a business to
sustain itself. Now if someone brings in a standard or a widely accepted best
practice which does not find a parallel with the above factors, it's natural
that the acceptance will be limited, rather, a simple mind would start
questioning their own practices and start demeaning themselves in the whole process!
Possible and very natural again, so how can we establish this parallel? While
we know the maintenance practices have been evolving and there are some strong
evidences of positive changes being brought about by these advanced ideologies,
they need to be adapted rather than getting treated as rule books. There are
ample information available about an equipment just by the virtue of its
existence and all the maintenance history it had while working for years within
the enterprise. There are heaps of operational data in the raw format and in
some cases even well processed data such as vibration analysis, chemical
analysis etc. exist. These information can be a valuable contributor to
programs like Proactive maintenance and RCM.
It is time for some
serious introspection but definitely not through the prism of standards.
Looking at your own strategies and seeing how you can revive them by adapting
to evolving techniques would certainly help. Not suggesting any radical change
nor asking you to completely lose sight of changes happening around you.However, It
will be worthwhile so see how the external environment is shaping up without
losing your current maintenance context. Word of caution to follow is not to
get terrorized by the quantum of guidelines, methodologies etc. which come
along with the broadcasted ideas, they are destined to be like that. You never
know, with this approach you could set your own standards which would be revered and something
others would try to follow, and at that juncture advise them to adapt instead!
