Facilities
Maintenance Is Asset Management
Keeping your
building safe and trouble free, and your machinery running
up to speed, pays off in productivity as well as profits.
Forget the adage
that if something is not broke don't fix it. Facilities management
and maintenance professionals advise that if you maintain
your building and equipment, you won't have to worry about
fixing problems, especially at a time when you can least afford
it. Much of the general information and advice about equipment
maintenance applies to your building as well. Experts say
your plant, and its continued good health, is as critical
as any individual machine on the plant's floor.
The role
of facilities maintenance and skilled machine maintenance
managers is changing. As with most everything else, usable
knowledge in this field lasts months, not years as it used
to. There is a constant need to educate managers and people
doing the job. The skilled workforce, in general, is rapidly
facing major changes. It's estimated that by 2005 the automotive
industry will have to replace 250,000 skilled workers. Already
nearly 90 percent of the manufacturers in this country are
facing a skilled worker shortage.
You can't
fix what you don't measure and, as managers have learned,
without data you're down to emotions and opinions when asking
the "why" questions. The good news is that machines
are getting smarter. On-board data collection technology is
helping maintenance managers guide and direct programs of
predictive maintenance. Monitoring and diagnosing problems
have helped extend the life of machines and other assets in
the plant.
In general,
there has been an increased emphasis on maintaining the value
of assets as managers turn their attention to other related
problems such as employee retention, safety and training.
Mark Granger of Emerson Process Management says advanced maintenance
diagnostic tools "create effective work planning schedules
that minimize downtime and loss of productivity." Many
of the current crop of monitoring devices and programs can
be accessed from remote locations, allowing an off-site manager
to stay abreast of plants and machines regardless of location.
Maintenance's
changing focus
Smart
material handling managers have long realized that good maintenance
and support practices are an integral component of optimized
production processes. At the same time, maintaining production
floor equipment and preventing unscheduled downtime is a challenge
for maintenance organizations. Historically, the focus has
been more on keeping assembly lines and processes running
than on the preservation of assets. Today, managers are becoming
aware of the long-term benefits of plant floor support practices
that provide methods and procedures for keeping the production
lines humming, as well as preserving valuable capital assets.
The preservation
of existing production equipment is essential in an economic
climate where expenditure on capital equipment has been substantially
curtailed, making good maintenance practices more important
than ever. Companies across different industrial verticals
have unique processes and subsequently unique issues with
maintenance of plant systems.
There
has emerged a set of common issues and practices familiar
to maintenance operations whether the product is automobiles,
planes, consumer products, or food and beverage.
Profitability
linked to preservation
A new
best practices study from ARC Advisory Group, Best Practices
in Plant Equipment Maintenance Support & Services, provides
manufacturers and suppliers with guidance concerning best
practices in maintenance for production equipment and automation
systems. The study is specifically targeted at providing strategies
for support and maintenance for production systems, with recommendations
for implementing methods and procedures to improve maintenance
practices.
According
to the study, return on assets is becoming the primary driver
for capital equipment investments. Manufacturers are less
concerned about purchasing the newest and best technology
and are more focused on improving the efficiency of operations.
Manufacturers are looking for solutions that can provide the
greatest total value to the organization.
The cost
of performing maintenance is predicated on a number of significant
factors, including staffing, training, maintenance support
plans, contractual support, enterprise asset management and
computerized maintenance management plans. (We will cover
software systems for facilities management in our August issue.)
How well
all these components and methods are planned, executed and
translated into cost savings and additional profits, gauges
the level of maintenance a company has attained and where
it is benchmarked in regard to best practices.
Facilities
management experts warn not to confuse benchmarking with competitive
analysis. Terry Wireman, senior industry analyst, GenesisSolutions,
says there are differences between benchmarking and performance
indicators that you should be aware of. "The core of
every maintenance strategy must be preventive maintenance,"
says Wireman. "Fifty percent of machinery breakdowns
have root causes that could be caught in preventive maintenance."
He adds that many maintenance problems are actually training
problems. Benchmarking relies on cooperation and trust. You
have to define "best" in the term best practices.
Experts say best often means doing the basics well, regardless
of what your company's business is.
What are
the key components for establishing best practices of any
maintenance program? According to the ARC study, there are
five elements: best skills, best processes, best solutions,
appropriate resources and continuous improvement. The fundamental
idea is to capture and document that which constitutes the
aggregate of skills, processes and procedures necessary to
continuously improve the processes that represent a company's
core competency.
Leveraging technology
Equipment
manufacturers, distributors and third-party service providers
are beginning to use the latest communications technologies
to provide immediate information from the field back to the
office. For example, Advanced Handling Systems, Lakeland,
Florida, a material handling equipment distributor and systems
integrator, has equipped all its technicians with picture
phones. "With the new picture phones," says Jack
Phelan, president, "our technicians can take a picture
of the problem in the field and send it to the equipment manufacturer
or our office if they cannot solve the problem. It's leveraging
the current technology for the customer's benefit, not necessarily
your own."
Maintenance
Resource, a Grandville, Michigan, facilities maintenance contractor,
has completed implementation of a field service automation
initiative, equipping its service technicians with Intermec
760 Color Series mobile computers and PW40 workboard printers
with integrated credit card readers. The new system, which
includes Field Master PRO, an Internet-based service management
application by Aereon Solutions, is designed to practically
eliminate paperwork, enhance the efficiency of administrative
processes, improve billing accuracy, reduce invoice cycle
time and increase cash flow.
Maintenance
Resource serves commercial and industrial businesses throughout
Michigan and parts of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. The company
offers facility maintenance and repair services such as electrical,
heating and cooling, refrigeration and plumbing.
"Our
system gives management visibility into field operations,"
says John Weeber, president, Maintenance Resource. "For
the first time, this allows the technician access to customer
activity logs, including sales and service histories."
Service
technicians use the 760 mobile computers to gather customer
information in the field and send it wirelessly over the Sprint
network to the central database. Once the customer signs off
on a work order, using the signature capture feature on the
mobile computer, the technician sends the information back
to the main office, where an invoice is prepared within minutes.
No easy answers
A common
complaint of maintenance managers without preventive or predictive
maintenance programs is that most of their workforce is too
busy handling emergency repairs, to either machinery or something
else in the building, to even start a preventive maintenance
program. Maybe it's time to let someone else do the work.
The primary
reason for using an outside contractor for your maintenance
programs is so that you can focus on the core competency of
your business. Experts suggest you first identify what you
can do in-house and what makes sense -- or cents -- for someone
else to do. You must investigate all the contract options
and guarantees, and monitor the results of any third-party
service provider.
In machinery
maintenance or housekeeping, staffing has always been a problem
and will continue to be so. The irony is that as the labor
pool for these types of jobs shrinks, skill requirements have
increased. And tying the whole problematic package together
are employee retention and reimbursement.
A major
step in the right direction of employee retention is proper
training. With proper training people perform tasks more efficiently,
productively and, thus, with more satisfaction. A basic part
of any training program should be a clear path of advancement
for the employee. Extra training should be a requirement of
advancement and pay increases. Also, training should be viewed
as an investment, not a cost of doing business. Doing a job
a second time or extended downtime are not acceptable in today's
lean manufacturing scenarios. Current programs offered by
equipment manufacturers and third-party providers go beyond
teaching an employee just enough to keep the machinery running.
Major
material handling equipment systems suppliers are building
in predictive and preventive maintenance programs as part
of the initial sales proposal, says Todd Sermersheim, vice
president customer service, HK Systems. "As part of every
proposal we make," says Sermersheim, "we make a
service proposal and talk with the customer about outsourced
maintenance programs."
He adds
that part of the customer service program is to provide a
third-party service to customers new to today's more sophisticated
material handling equipment. Many of these customers are not
aware of the equipment's requirements.
"We
provide full-time on-site services," he says, "as
well as supplemental, quarterly or semiannual preventive maintenance
programs."
Sermersheim
adds that many customers are recognizing the value of predictive
maintenance programs that allow them to stay ahead of any
problem. "Customers are more aware of predictive programs
and more willing to explore the alternatives, and expecting
information that will help them determine when replacements
will be required." Allied Services Group, Lebanon, Ohio,
has opened a predictive maintenance school that goes well
beyond basic training.
The Allied
Training Center opened in Clinton, Indiana, in January. Its
12-week training program covers all aspects of predictive
maintenance and includes on-site experience at local industries,
says John Schultz, president. "We saw a need for a complete
predictive maintenance training program in our industry, and
this program is ideal for people who want to pursue a career
in this field."
Training
will take place in a non-traditional building, the former
Clinton high school gymnasium. It was purchased by Allied
a year ago and renovated to create classrooms, locker rooms
and a cafeteria. Allied also purchased the nearby Clinton
Nursing Home and renovated it to serve as a dormitory for
students in the three-month program. Each of the 18 rooms
has been renovated, fully furnished and equipped with color
television and Internet access.
The company
plans to use the training center as another way to recruit
employees to meet its demand for predictive maintenance services.
Many other companies, however, offer training and workshops
on a smaller scale. Henkel Locktite Corp. offers programs
specific to its line of products as well as continuing education
and training programs approved by the International Association
for Continuing Education and Training. The program of advanced
training for the company's reliability process includes three
comprehensive modules presented in a single-lesson format.
Much of the training is devoted to plant-specific applications.
Whether
talking about machinery or the building itself, maintenance
managers agree that unplanned machine downtime is always more
expensive than planned downtime. An investment in maintenance
is an inexpensive way to manage change. MHM
Inspection Is
Also Part of Maintenance
Too often,
managers think as long as the rack remains standing you can
ignore it. Even though there are no moving parts, there are
important dynamics at work as the rack does its job.
Rack has
a specific, predetermined capacity, and this load capacity
is often reduced if the rack structure is abused and then
neglected. Danger increases if alterations have been made
to the original rack structure, or if shortcuts were taken
during the initial installation.
Rack misalignment
problems that can result in rack failure easily go unnoticed
during day-to-day operations. Minor accidents involving lift
trucks, for instance, often go unreported, so there is no
prompt for an inspection.
Abuse
is accumulative, maintenance is not Damage from lift trucks
is the most common rack maintenance problem. Even minor impact,
slowly backing into the rack, can cause misalignments, sometimes
referred to as micro shifting, that add up to a macro collapse
in the long term.
Dave Weaver,
vice president, sales and marketing, SpaceRak Corp., has seen
his share of rack abuse in the field. "When a rack column
becomes deformed," says Weaver, "it can cause the
load center to shift away from the center of the column. If
it gets enough hits and shifts, the rack structure becomes
so unstable that even a small impact may trigger a collapse
of the rack frame. Then a domino effect occurs where the whole
rack system comes down."
Instability
can also be caused from side impact that pinches the connection
between crossbeams and columns. This damage can be subtle
and hard to notice. A column's strength, and its ability to
resist bending, are determined by the thickness of the steel,
as well as the column's depth at the point of impact.
A rack
can be repaired with new labor-saving approaches. Dave Onorato,
repair services product manager, Atlas Material Handling,
says, "Today's repair systems offer a much safer and
economical alternative to physically dismantling the rack."
Through the use of a custom hydraulic jack system, one standard
frame repair can be completed in as little as 30 minutes.
Traditional cut-and-weld pallet rack repair kits, as well
as structural retrofit kits, are now commercially available.
Structural kits are used to repair frame damage and provide
further value by preventing future damage. Management control,
to a certain degree, can contribute if there is a problem
with careless lift truck driving. One company had enough issues
with abuse that it had its lift trucks repainted at the beginning
of every shift. The equipment could be checked for marks at
the end of the day, allowing any accidents to be documented.
Spend Money
To Save Money
Sometimes
you have to spend a little to save a lot, especially when
it comes to maintaining trolleys in power-and-free conveyor
systems. Acquiring and installing hundreds of trolleys in
a system runs counter to continuing production in most plants.
Establishing
an ongoing preventive maintenance program can be the best
solution to this problem. A major element of the maintenance
program would be to replace trolleys with remanufactured units
on a regular basis. Cignys (formerly Saginaw Products) has
been in the overhead trolley business for more than 70 years.
Its dedicated rebuilding and remanufacturing program began
four years ago and includes striping the trolley to its core
to determine if secondary machining needs to be done, as well
as inspecting and gauging of the final product.
Don Mastromatteo,
vice president, material handling products, says, historically,
industry found someone in the maintenance department to do
trolley repairs ? not an organized trolley remanufacturing
program.
"Proper
wheel lubrication and maintenance," says Mastromatteo,
"is inconsistent at most facilities where conveyor runs
three shifts, seven days a week."
A typical
replacement program, says Mastromatteo, includes trolleys
in the process of being remanufactured, trolleys being installed
and trolleys being delivered. It's a closed-loop system designed
to minimize production interruptions and to spread related
costs over a longer period of time.
Sources
For more
information, contact any of the following sources:
Advanced
Handling Systems, www.advancedhandlingsystems.com
Aereon
Solutions, www.aereonsolutions.com
Allied
Services Group, www.alliedservicesgroup.com
ARC
Advisory Group, www.arcweb.com
Atlas
Material Handling, www.atlasequip.com
Cignys,
www.cignys.com
Emerson
Process Management, www.compsys.com
GenesisSolutions,
www.genesissolutions.com
Henkel
Locktite Corp., www.locktite.com
HK
Systems, www.hksystems.com
Intermec,
www.intermec.com
Maintenance
Resource, www.maintenanceresource.com
SpaceRak
Corp., www.spacerak.com
(Reprinted, with permission from
Material Handling
Management, Copyright©2004
Penton Media, Inc.)
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