Asset Productivity Articles
Our expert staff is well known throughout the industry for its breadth of knowledge gained through years of practical experience. The following articles, written by members of our staff, have been published in industry journals and Web sites.
Why Do You Need a Systematic Management of Change Process?
Supporting data reveals that as much as 22% of reliability problems faced in manufacturing is caused by uncontrolled changes. These include process and equipment configuration changes such as alterations, modifications and new installations. Evidence of this correlation was apparent from as early as the 1960s, which led to what was then referred to as Configuration Management.
Why is Criticality Analysis important?
By Donald Ray
Have you ever wasted time and money replacing one electrical component after another on your car, only to find a loose ground wire? The problem would have been located sooner with less cost by using the recommended code analysis tool and information. Not utilizing analysis tools and information to manage plant assets also results in wasted time and money. Criticality analysis is the tool to use if you want to improve reliability and manage plant assets based on risk instead of perception.Applying Process Improvement to Customer Care
As appeared in the IMPACT newsletter
A customer is a person who purchases goods or services from another; the related word, custom, can be defined as a habitual practice as a result of prolonged patronage. Customer care is therefore the business strategy that exists to ensure continued patronage of goods and services. The success of customer care lies within customer relationship management, also known as CRM, or your organization’s ability to recognize when internal business processes have the potential to impact customer satisfaction and retention. If the organizational values are built upon strong interdepartmental, or cross-functional partnerships, then our customer relations strategies should be built on the same partnerships.Quality Assurance in MRO Materials Management
By Doug Wallace, CPIM, Life Cycle Engineering
Have you heard the one about the guys that burned up a brand new piece of rotating equipment because it was installed with no oil in it? That little oversight cost $80,000 for a replacement when proper lubrication would have cost less than $100. How about the guys that cut a section out of their raw material feeder line, and then found out that the replacement piece was just a wee bit too short to fit in the gap? That mistake cost thousands of dollars in unplanned repairs, and potentially hundreds of thousands in lost production!What’s the real cost of spare parts inventory?
By Wally Wilson, CMRP, CPIM, Life Cycle Engineering
It’s always disappointing, but no longer surprising, to find people who actually believe that once you pay for material and put it on the shelf in the storeroom, it no longer costs anything to keep it there. The fact is, there are significant costs associated with holding spare parts on the books.How does Reliability Excellence improve safety?
By R. Keith Mobley, MBB, CMRP, Life Cycle Engineering
As appeared in RxTodayOne does not need be an accountant or statistician to know that safety is good for business. The sampling of the annual cost incurred as a direct result of accidents clearly provides a clear business case—if not ethical mandate—that safety should be job one for every company...
How Do You Decrease Your Inventory Investment?
By Wally Wilson, CMRP, CPIM, Life Cycle Engineering
As appeared in Noria's e-newsletter, Reliable Plant Mail
Inventory requires an investment of valuable cash. Regardless of whether the investment is in raw material, work-in-process (WIP), or finished goods, the dollars invested will not be available until the inventories are converted into a value-added finished product for customer orders. The faster a business can convert a customer order to a cash payment for goods sold, the better their cash flow and long-term profitability of the business.Where’s the Fun in Waste?
By Bob Call, CMRP, Life Cycle Engineering
Two years ago when my heat pump went bad, my local air conditioning contractor suggested that I purchase the highest SEER rating (efficiency rating) available, even though the initial investment was a little more. To my surprise, the new heat pump was efficient enough that my monthly electric bill dropped by 25%. I eliminated waste and had the fun of banking the savings from my investment! I am certain that many of you are also looking for ways to eliminate waste in your personal lives in this current economy.Optimizing Outages Through Effective Task Planning
By Tim Kister, Life Cycle Engineering
We are all aware of the impact outages have on business. In many cases as much as one third to one half of the maintenance budget is consumed during this timeframe. Factor in the cost of lost production during this time and the costs are tremendous.11 Tips on How to Get More Out of Your EAM System
By Mike Willard, Life Cycle Engineering
As appeared in Reliable Plant Mail e-newsletter
It has been 12 months since you completed implementation of your plant’s Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system and celebrated the system Go Live date. You accomplished all the right things during the implementation: you employed an experienced EAM implementation consultant; you formed an internal implementation team to provide input and complete tasks; you documented business processes; you gathered data and entered it into the EAM; and you conducted training sessions. But the EAM is not providing the information required by the various function managers to support business decisions. What went wrong?Lean Thinking About People and Processes
As appeared in Noria's Lean Journal
When we think about variation, most of the time we think about our processes. You know, the equipment that goes around and around, what we manage every day, and the things that make us money. We create process control charts for our systems and quality parameters. We go through the project stages but how often do we look at the more general people effects on limiting variation?Supply Chain Management – Going Beyond Reliability Excellence
By Doug Wallace, Life Cycle Engineering
As global economies continue to be sluggish, customers are demanding even greater agility and flexibility from their suppliers. The pressure to reduce delivery lead times is more intense than ever as businesses try to reduce their inventories while maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction.Reducing the Total Cost of Ownership
By R. Keith Mobley, Life Cycle Engineering
Total cost of ownership is simply all cost incurred at the asset level from its conception through disposal at the end of its useful life. While many of these costs are determined during the design and procurement phase, this article focuses on steps to reduce the incurred cost of operations and maintenance.What Continuous Improvement Tools Can You Use to Reduce Energy Consumption?
By Paul Borders, Life Cycle Engineering
In today’s economic environment, individuals and businesses alike are being forced to scrutinize and reduce every possible expense in order to drive lower operating costs. Going through the list of expenditures, it’s impossible to skip over your energy line items, both because of their sheer size and the savings opportunities they represent.Designing for Sustainability: “Begin with the end in mind”
By Bruce Wesner, Life Cycle Engineering
As appeared in Noria's Plant Mail e-newsletterBusinesses today are challenged to find more efficient ways to operate. Energy costs are rising and present significant long term implications for the viability of many companies. Decision making, when it comes to the total cost of ownership, needs more focus than ever before.
How Does Training Limit Variation?
Too often in Reliability Engineering we focus narrowly on equipment and equipment-related problems when tasked with removing variation from our manufacturing process, but what about “Human Reliability”?
There’s Lean, and Then There’s Green!
While there’s no doubt that Lean Manufacturing will result in lower material and labor costs and greater production revenues, there is less discussion about the benefits of Lean in relation to Green Manufacturing.
Lean on Reliability
Despite widespread popularity, Lean Manufacturing isn’t meeting leadership’s expectations. The Industry Week/MPI Census of Manufacturers released in November 2007 reports that almost 70% of U.S. plants are using Lean Manufacturing as an improvement approach, but only 2% of respondents have achieved their goals fully and only 24% report achieving significant results. This suggests that 74% of the participants aren’t making meaningful progress with Lean.
Shift your Plant from Reactive to Reliable
Most businesses that depend on physical asset performance have a reactive maintenance department. Reacting to breakdowns and dealing with budget variance are routine events for these organizations. Turning the corner and operating in a highly effective, reliable environment is an enormous challenge.
Problem-solving Techniques for a High-performance Team
By Keith Mobley, Life Cycle Engineering
As appeared on www.reliableplant.com
While most people associate lean with tools and principles such as value stream mapping, one-piece flow, kanban, 5-S, Total Productive Maintenance and kaizen events, few people think about the more mundane aspects of lean. Problem solving is one of the keys to a successful lean implementation because it empowers all of those involved.
