Maintenance or Fire Department

Over the course of my career, the company I work for has acquired numerous operations that I was called upon to transform maintenance departments from what is commonly called behind the maintenance curve to ahead of maintenance curve.

In many situations, I have found maintenance departments acting very similar to fire departments, in that, the alarm bell rings and the technicians go running to the newest or most serious plant emergency.   One of most common questions that is frequently presented to me is, how do you get from behind the maintenance curve to ahead of the maintenance curve, ie., how does a companies maintenance department become proactive and predictive versus mostly responsive?

World Class Results

If I were to write a book on this subject, it would definitely contain thousands of pages of useful information derived from many years of experience, however, regardless of what many so-called experts claim, every situation is different and requires different steps to achieve world class results.  That said, is there a game plan for maintenance managers to follow that will result in the closing of their fire departments in favour of a world-class maintenance department?

Total Productive Maintenance

Numerous other professional maintenance professionals and I have found that Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) offers the best game plan in transforming conventional or severely dysfunctional maintenance departments to becoming world class maintenance departments.

One of the greatest tools of TPM is the autonomous maintenance piece of TPM.  By bringing a companies production operators and maintenance technician together as team members with a focus on maximum equipment uptime, companies often achieve phenomenal improvements in their plants overall equipment efficiency, in relatively short periods of time.

Additionally, the benefits of pooling combined knowledge of equipment operations (operators) with maintenance best practices (technicians), will definitely result in decreases in equipment start-up and change-over times, unplanned maintenance events (breakdowns) and overall cost of equipment operations.   So how do I get my company started with a TPM implementation?

TPM Ready?

The fact is that many companies who choose to implement TPM are not ready to do so.  TPM implementations often fail leaving companies with expensive consultant bills and a rift between their employees that often creates more problems than what the company was facing with running a fire department.  So, how does a company prepare their operation(s) for a TPM implementation?

TPM readiness boils down to two main factors:

1.     A company must be committed to a culture of continuous improvement

2.     A company must be financially able to fix or replace defective equipment, safety and environmental issues.

Why Companies Often Fail at TPM Implementation

One of the main reasons many companies fail to implement a successful TPM program is that even though they may enjoy a top-down commitment to reap the benefits of a continuous improvement culture and world class manufacturing methodologies, many companies are unwilling to foot the bill for the same.

To truly achieve the autonomous maintenance piece of TPM, both operators and technicians must be convinced that the company is 100% committed to providing them the resources they need to take care of the equipment they are charged with operating and maintaining. 

In one instance, I walked in to a plant where seven of their eight labeling machines were on their last legs, literally kept running with tie straps and JB Weld, yet the company did not want to or could not afford to buy new parts for the equipment or replace it.  This type of company behaviour leaves both operators and maintenance technicians frustrated and with bad attitudes.

In another instance, I visited a plant where the companies plant manager was demanding that the plants employees spent numerous hours everyday cleaning up their work areas, yet the plant manager constantly refused the maintenance managers requisitions for brooms, mops and other cleaning supplies necessary to keep the plant tidy.  Ask yourself this question, how can you take your boss seriously when he demands that you keep your area clean but refuses to provide you with the essential tools you need to do so?

 

Should I Placate My Employees Granting Frivolous Requests?

No, it is not necessary for a company to give in to every employee’s whim, such as employee’s requests for 60’ plasma televisions on the work floor so that they can watch General Hospital at 2pm everyday and or some of the other trivial things that some employee’s will promulgate just to be difficult. Yet it is necessary that when a company asks for their employees to do things different or to do them better, that the company does not end up sounding like hypocrites, ie., is not ready to give their people the support they need to be successful in helping to make the company more successful.

It Is Easier Than you May Think

In summary, it is not as difficult as many people perceive it to be to transform a maintenance department acting like a fire department in to a world class maintenance department, that is way ahead of the maintenance curve.  Utilizing TPM and some other Lean practices, many companies can shut down their fire departments in a relatively short time. 

To achieve world-class results, it takes a full team commitment.  In the most simplest terms, it just a matter of a company being both organizationally and financially committed to support their people as necessary to properly operate and maintain their equipment while fostering a culture of continuous improvement.