Maintenance Management Legends (part 5)

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7

Torbjorn Idhammar IDCON - Maintenance consultants
Posted 4

There are many paradigms and legends surrounding maintenance management in plants. Often, the legends are known to be untrue, but people live with them because it is politically correct, or simply convenient. To be successful in improving equipment reliability and maintenance management, plants must break the legends that exist in their organizations. Some of the legends will be addressed in this article. You may find that these legends are uncomfortably close to describing how your plant operates.

Legend 5: We can't motivate maintenance craftspeople to improve reliability because they make more money when things break down

Maintenance people typically do make more money when things break down. A perceived "Catch 22" by maintenance management is that crews can't be motivated to improve reliability and maintenance because higher equipment reliability will reduce the amount of overtime.

However, the answer to the question goes back to Legend 3. Only a minor percentage of people don't contribute as well as others; the rest of us want to be good performers. The key word is pride. Pride matters more than overtime pay. Pride drives a relatively low-paid U.S. Marine to risk his or her life for months at a time. Pride drives a maintenance craftsperson to spend an extra hour or two to align a pump to one thousandth of an inch even though few will notice.

Management can instill pride in an organization by developing clear expectations for reliability and maintenance, and by training and supporting people long term in achieving these expectations. For example, develop a clear definition of preventive maintenance and develop an action plan and training initiatives on how to improve inspection routes, lubrication, cleaning practices, operating procedures, alignment, and other preventive maintenance practices.

Since money also is a motivator, provide incentive pay for equipment reliability. One of the fastest preventive maintenance program setups we have seen was at a car manufacturing plant in Europe that offered its crews (operations and maintenance) a bonus on each percentage over 97% line efficiency. The results appeared on reports just weeks after the announcement — the actual equipment reliability improvement probably started hours after the announcement.

to be continued....