Elevating the Quality of Maintenance

John:

I enjoyed reading your article "Pro-Active Maintenance for Pumps" in the Feb. Pumps & Systems Rotating Equipment Magazine; an excellent story!!!

I work for XYZ Chemical (name changed by request) in a midwestern state in the US; I'm the engineering superintendent. In addition to my site engineering responsibilities, I also have responsibility for the maintenance department.

Our plant is a union facility. We have approximately 30 folks in maintenance, of which 15 of them work on pumps, seals, etc. People come into the maintenance department based on their seniority. Their maintenance training is gained by working with other maintenance personnel, learning from on-site vendor seminars, and from their maintenance supervisor.

I have been here at this facility for 4 years now. During the past 4 years, I have seen a lot of turnover in the maintenance department, due to retirements, etc. As you can see, I do not have an easy job keeping people in their positions and also providing them with the necessary training. It seems to me that any training we do here goes in one ear and out the other.

I have conducted training with my maintenance personnel in seal repair, pump repair, laser alignment, etc. but we don't seem to get any better at it. As you say in your article, we operate in the "Breakdown or Run-to-Failure Maintenance Mode".

I would like to solicit your opinion on what steps I can take to get our maintenance department out of this mode and move into the "Preventive or Time Based Maintenance Mode". I know this takes desire and a want to attitude, I have it, but they don't. Do you have any recommendations that I can use to make this shift?

Would appreciate your ideas / comments.

Regards,

Name witheld by request

Dear ... uh, people in this situation:

Thank you for reading the article "Pro-Active Maintenance for Pumps" in the February 2001 issue of Pumps & Systems magazine.

Due to the opportunities I've had in being able to visit and work at a wide variety of plant sites in virtually every industry, I'd like to reassure you that the problems you are facing in trying to get the maintenance personnel to get out the breakdown/run to failure mode and into something that is more effective is virtually a universal problem. Not that this is any consolation to you however. My recommendation is to move toward a Pro-Active/Prevention Maintenance approach rather than a Preventive or Time Based approach. I know that might be quite a leap but the benefits would be justified.

I'm not quite sure where to start. I remember an Engineering Manager at a plant I worked at once telling me, "We need to hire psychologists and sociologists and stop hiring engineers". As an engineer myself, I was crestfallen to hear him say this but there is some substance to his remark. Over the past 26 years in industry, I have seen many changes occur yet many things have stayed the same and in some cases, gotten worse. Here are some observations, comments, and ideas that hopefully may address your concerns and desires.

1. There must be at least one person in any organization who is willing to spearhead the movement to elevate the quality of maintenance work being done.

The buzzwords (Reliability Engineering, Pro-Active, Prevention, Predictive, Maintenance etc.) used to describe this effort is irrelevant. What is important is to have a leader who has devised a clear plan on what needs to be done and mechanisms to ensure that they will be carried out. At a minimum, this person needs to coordinate, and in many cases perform, the following efforts:

- Assume that there is a problem with every piece of equipment in the facility and devise a process to find every detrimental condition.

- Identifying existing problems with the equipment and determining the severity of the problem.

- Illustrate evidence to support the validity of the problem.

- Recommend a course of action to correct the problem.

- Investigate the cause of the problem or unexpected failure by performing root cause failure analysis.

- Suggest and incorporate changes to insure the problem does not occur again or at least not as often.

- Communicate all of the above to the production and maintenance personnel involved and have a way for others to communicate what they discovered during the repair/improvement process.

- Set standards for the quality of workmanship to be performed during the repair process.

- Financially justify the work that was performed.

- Become an evangelist who supports the reasons for the program.

Every company that is serious about minimizing failures and increasing productivity must be able to say that this person or that person is doing each of the things listed above. Who is doing all of this in your company? Where is it being done? What is missing? Why should we do it in the first place?

2. When a piece of equipment needs repair, the maintenance department should be in control, not the production department.

Everyone knows that disruption of service or production is uncomfortable and there is a strong affinity to "Get this up and running as quickly as possible." Productions job is to get a quality product out the back door as efficiently as possible and they are generally very good at that. In many cases the operations personnel do not know the intricacies of the machine or process that makes the product and are therefore not qualified to decide what needs to be done or how quickly it should happen. It is important for them to understand that it is not immediately evident what transpired to cause the failure and troubleshooting can take more time than the correction phase of a repair. They also need to know that if the cause of the failure is not determined, there is a good possibility that it will occur again and again. During the time the repairs are being made, frequently twiddling their thumbs, rather than continually ask "Uh, when do you think you'll be done?", they should be working on reviewing what transpired prior to the failure to determine if the mishap was process related and communicate their findings to the maintenance or engineering department for review. Sometimes we get very lucky and things happen quickly. More often we have to remove several thorn bushes before we can actually find the path. The maintenance people I work with are very talented but don't ask us to perform miracles.

3. We have a great education system in this country but it does not prepare our workforce for the specific tasks required by industry.

After four years in engineering school it took only a month working in industry for me to realize that I did not know what I was doing. I was taught how to go about solving a problem, not how to solve very specific problems. I probably studied harder for the next 16 years in industry than I did the previous 16 years when I was in a formal education setting. The one thing that I realized is that pretending that I knew everything alienated me from those who did know something. Working closely with the maintenance and production personnel on a daily basis, watching what they were doing, asking them questions, being a technical resource for them, having the courage to try something new, and learning from each failure was a key part of my continuing education. Thank goodness every company I worked for provided some way for me to expand my knowledge base. As far as I'm concerned, I'm still in school and so is everyone else.

I think that there should be a list of skills generated for every job in industry. Each list should have minimum requirements to perform the job and additional skills that should or could be acquired over time. I believe that those who acquire the additional skills should be paid more for these additional abilities. I also think that there should be some way to reward those who utilize these abilities to their fullest extent.

In my opinion, the last year of a maintenance persons time in a facility should be spent teaching others what they have learned prior to retirement. I also think that any retiree should be granted the opportunity to come back as a consultant / trainer on a part time basis and be paid well for their efforts.

4. There should be a mechanism to reward people for what they have done correctly and a process for inferior work to be done over by the people who did the slipshod work initially.

This is somewhat related to what was mentioned above concerning those who utilize these abilities to their fullest extent. I have noticed that some people do higher quality work than others. What is disappointing is that they don't seem to be rewarded for their efforts. Nor do I see those who do poor quality work held responsible for their shortcomings. In my humble opinion, if a piece of machinery fails within three months after someone worked on it and the failure was due to shoddy workmanship, that person should be required to work on the same machine again and continue working on it until it is done correctly. If that person is doing poor quality work because they don't know how to do the task, they should admit this and be given proper training on how to do it correctly.

5. It is important for people to feel that their contribution is valuable to their company.

One minute for what someone did right, one minute for what they did wrong, and one minute for what they are supposed to be doing. What I call the "Well Done! ... Not that, please! ... Which way do we go?" approach as suggested by Tom Peters.

We need to abrogate the industrial caste system. Everyones job is important.

In maintenance, the personnel need to be shown the results of higher quality workmanship and what benefits it reaps them and their company.

There are two prime motivational tools: fear and inspiration. Both work but inspiration works better. If fear is the motivator, when the tyrant leaves, the subjects will become idle or vengeful. If someone is told they are doing well, they have a tendency to continue when no one is looking.

6. Industry is not preparing itself for the long haul.

It's what I call "the under 40 void". What percentage of the maintenance department is between the ages of 20 and 40? What percentage of the population is between the ages of 20 and 40? Get the drift? Can we expect qualified maintenance people to appear from thin air when people retire? If we donÕt groom the individuals ourselves, who will? For those who decide that the workforce needs to be culled, their names should be at the top of the list for allowing the flock to get out of control.

7. Installation of new equipment is frequently not being done correctly.

Just as you noticed that a maintenance organization can get into the breakdown or run to failure mode there is an equally disturbing and similar practice with construction work. A large percentage of machinery is being installed wrong or shoddily. The reason that this has gone unnoticed is because poorly installed equipment can actually run, it just doesn't run for long periods of time before failures begin to occur. Too often the quality of workmanship in construction projects is ignored by the end user. Usually the customer does not know enough about good installation practices to insure the equipment is installed correctly and no checks are made during the construction process to verify the quality of workmanship.

8. Any training should be quickly reinforced with jobs that reflects the material covered in the training session.

Several years ago, after conducting a two day basic shaft alignment training course at a food plant, the company requested that I stay for another day for on the job training with the students who attended the course. I arrived there early the next morning and all of us met back in the training room to discuss what we were going to be working on that day. We split the group up into two person teams and the maintenance supervisor handed me a list of machinery that was available for us to work on and we began deciding which team was going to work on which piece of machinery. After each team selected the machine they wanted to work on, I asked if anyone had any questions before we went out and began work on the equipment. One of the more outspoken students from the class raised his hand as asked, "Hey Teach, the information you went through over the past few days in the shaft alignment course was very interesting but now that we have to work on real pieces of machinery, what are we really going to be doing?" I was puzzled at his question but after a brief pause I looked at him and said, "The work that you were doing on the demonstrators in the training course is exactly what I would like you do to do with "real" machines in your plant." For a moment it appeared that he got the ... Uh-oh, I - should - have - listened - better - look on his face but he said nothing and just stared in what appeared to me to be disbelief.

As we left, the group of us went to each machine we decided to work on, discussed what needed to be done to get started, then that team stayed there and began work while the rest of us moved on to the next machine until the entire group was dispersed and working on their respective equipment. While this was happening, I noticed that many of the students, some of whom had several years of experience in industry, when arriving at their machine would ask, "Do you want us to do the same process on our machine?" "Yes, please.", I would answer.

After an hour or so, each team was at their machine and I began to loop back to the first group that we dropped off to see how they were doing. As I approached I noticed that they were busily working on the machine and as I walked up one of the mechanics noticed I arrived and with a big smile on his face said, "Hey Teach, look at what we found here!" showing me some problem that had not been observed before. "I bet this is what has been causing some of the problems with this thing", he said. "Now that we found this, do you think we need to do all of the other things you talked about too?". "Great job, and yes, please do all of the other things we discussed. You never know what other problems you're going to find until all of this is checked and corrected", I exclaimed. Throughout the day, I would go back to each team one by one to see how they were doing and answer any questions they had. There was a recurring theme all day long with every team. Things that had never been checked before on the machinery was explaining why certain machines were performing a certain way or why failures were occurring more frequently than expected. Some of the problems that were discovered were corrected on the spot, others required new parts to be purchased, and other issues that were revealed needed some major work or design changes.

At the end of the day, all of us reconvened back at training room to discuss what went on that day. It was bedlam. You couldn't hear yourself think! Everyone was telling each other what they discovered, what problems they corrected, and what else needed to be done. There seemed to be a contest going on to determine who found the worst problem, each team trying to convince the others that they did the best work or found the biggest problem. The maintenance supervisor looked at me and said, "I've never witnessed anything like this before with these guys." After things quieted down, the same outspoken student who asked "What are we really going to do?" before work got started, raised his hand again. "Hey Teach", he said, "I learned more today that in the entire 14 years I've been working here. This stuff is really great. I would have never believed what you told us would work, it just sounded too good to be true!"

9. Be explicit about what needs to be done and nurture the desire to exceed the basic requirements.

"It broke and you need to fix it" is not a satisfactory maintenace work request. Despite my best attempts to perform consistently high quality workmanship, I have the tendency to skip or forget items that should be done. I don't like having a itemized list of things to do on a job, but it sure beats the sinking feeling I get after assembling a piece of machinery only to find three parts lying on the work bench that were supposed to be installed inside the machine I just "finished".

At an electric generating plant where I worked recently, every maintenance job had a written "work packet" describing the tasks to be done. At the beginning of every shift all of the participants got together for 15 to 30 minutes and the step by step instructions were discussed by the front line supervisor and the maintenance personnel. As each step was completed, it was checked off the list. When problems were encountered, the front line supervisor, an engineer, a manufacturers representative, or outside consultant(s) were contacted to assist in rectifying the concern. Near the end of the shift, the completed items were discussed with the next crew who had a 30 minute overlap time with the personnel on that shift to discuss what was done and what yet needed to be done. When the job was finished, a complete review of the work was conducted by the front line supervisor(s) with the maintenance personnel, engineers, and the individual who wrote the work packet. If things were missing or wrong with the work packet, it was changed. If things went badly, suggestions were made to improve the process. Often the mishaps were due to a lack of knowledge, experience, or skill and the people realized that training was needed and then the appropriate training was immediately scheduled. If things went well, accolades were distributed to the appropriate personnel which boosted morale. For me, it was a very enjoyable process and the time flew by. If it feels like you've worked for eight hours instead of eight minutes every work day, something needs to change.

One final note. This work was initiated not because there was a failure on this pump but because there was higher than desired axial vibration at the outboard bearing of the pump and the rotating machinery engineers wanted to determine the cause of the excessive vibration. This pump was a safety backup pump for two other pumps and had logged six hours of operation in the last twelve months. In fact, the six hours were test runs that were conducted to insure proper operation of the unit. The level of vibration prior to the work was not threatening, but it was near a predetermined alarm limit they set and it bothered the people enough to investigate the cause. In the first of the two different visits I made to the plant site to investigate the source of the vibration, we decided to include some additional checks not mentioned in the work packet. When we suggested that the additional work be done, there was some resistance from the mechanics who did not want to deviate from the scripted plan but we explained our concerns to them and made it understood that we might not find anything and we were willing to "take the blame" for slowing the work down. I remember three of them staring at me when I said that and the group leader exclaimed "No, we will do what you ask and still try to get all the work done. You're here with us and we will accept any blame together." These additional checks led to the discovery of a locked up gear coupling. The shaft alignment was checked with their laser alignment system and it was slightly out of their specifications but well within traditional alignment tolerances. The gear coupling was replaced in a few weeks and another test run confirmed that there was no change in the vibration.

They could have quit right then, and explained the vibration as the "nature of the beast", but they didn't. Another work packet was generated for further investigation. On the next visit the thrust of the work was to improve the alignment to near perfect conditions to see if that would reduce the vibration. One of the first tasks was to use the laser alignment system to check for a soft foot condition. The check was made and the laser indicated that a soft foot condition was not present. As they began to move onto the next step, I asked them if we could again deviate from the work plan and conduct another soft foot check by loosening all of the motor foot bolts and attempt to slide a feeler gauge between each of the motor feet and the frame contact points. Again, they resisted and again they agreed after hearing my plan despite the fact that "We never had to do anything like this before" exclaimed one of the mechanics. When one of the mechanics slid a 30 mil feeler gauge under the inside edge at one of the inboard feet everyone stopped what they were doing as he said, "Uh, you better take a look at this because something is not right here". That was the understatement of the day. As it turned out there was a soft foot condition at all four feet of the motor which took the remainder of the shift to correct. Not a single person flipped out because we didn't get through the eight steps scheduled for our shift. No one from production asked why the machine wasn't ready for the scheduled post realignment test run. Instead the conversation was centered around the fact that the laser alignment system was unreliable in determining a soft foot condition and that some major changes were needed in the alignment procedures and that everyone needed additional training in alignment. The final test run showed that the axial vibration of the pump had decreased substantially. Without the resolve of all of the people at all levels from the Plant Manager to the apprentice mechanic in this particular facility, this work would have never been done.

That is the kind of commitment that is needed to elevate an organization to superior maintenance excellence. It takes just one or two key personnel to choke this process.

Well this was a long winded reply and I hope this helps you. Best of luck in all your endeavors!

John Piotrowski