Effective Maintenance Management at Doe Run

G.W. Lloyd and J.L. Grinder

What are the Benefits of Effective Maintenance Management?

The Doe Run Company is the largest producer of primary lead in North America with mines, mills (concentrators) and smelters all located in Missouri. U.S. Doe Run is at present entering the secondary lead recycling business by adding a lead recycling facility to the Buick Smelter.

Like many other companies during the later 1980’s, Doe Run experienced rising maintenance costs. The new general manager at Doe Run’s South-east Missouri Mining and Milling Division (SEMO) determined that inaccurate and incomplete maintenance data was a major contributing factor preventing effective management of maintenance costs. SEMO’s management then decided to obtain the necessary knowledge and tools which would allow implementation and operation of an effective maintenance management program. The company chose to pilot a program at one of the mines, and depending on its success, the program would be expanded to other areas within the division, as well as making the program available to the company’s Herculaneum Smelting Division

SEMO’s Operations

SEMO’s structure consists of six mines, four mills, and a central support group. Lead is the principal metal mined and milled with zinc and copper also being produced. All of the mines use primarily diesel powered rubber-tyred mobile equipment for production and development while most of the equipment used at the mills is stationary.

Since a labour strike in 1984, SEMO’s work force has been sharply reduced, while overall production has increased. The smaller maintenance work force and the lack of a formalized maintenance management system were not providing adequate preventive and corrective maintenance to ensure optimum equipment availability, nor were they providing adequate manhour and cost efficiency.

SEMO, using a high degree of mechanization with its attendant maintenance costs, was committed to obtaining a good maintenance management system. The company uses a main frame-based maintenance system at its Herculaneum smelter, and while it is basically a good system, it is not capable of managing mobile equipment maintenance effectively. SEMO was also aware of personal computer (PC) based maintenance management systems (MMS) used by other mining companies.

In late 1988, with the assistance and recommendations of two maintenance consultants from different consulting firms, SEMO decided to select a PC based system. A good PC based system would provide the flexibility needed to manage the maintenance of both mobile and stationary equipment.

In early 1989 SEMO engaged Performance Associates, Inc. (PAI), a consulting firm located in Danville, California, (now located in Tucson, Arizona) to provide PC based MMS software along with assistance during implementation to train the personnel who would be directly or indirectly using the system. PAI’s experience indicates that where MMS software is installed with little or no specific maintenance management training, the desired maintenance management program, as well as the computer system itself is doomed to failure.

PAI is committed to proper user training in both the use of the software and most importantly, effectively using the data to effect the necessary improvements to maintenance results. A customized maintenance management training and procedures manual is produced for each client. An experienced maintenance consultant spends sufficient time at the client’s site for proper system installation and specific maintenance management training. Each manual contains general information about maintenance management and specific information about the client’s maintenance management program.

Since proper installation of an MMS system and specific maintenance management training seemed to be the key to a successful system, SEMO agreed to the proposed program of implementing a pilot MMS at its Viburnum No 28 mine and mill in early 1989. The pilot program was so successful, in a short period of time, that SEMO quickly had the program expanded to all mining and milling operations in mid 1989.

Equipment maintenance philosophy

SEMO’s equipment maintenance philosophy and the MMS it uses are based on the following principles:

Proper preventive maintenance (PM) provides for safer equipment, better equipment availability for production, and lower maintenance costs;
Active planning, forecasting, scheduling and follow-up of most work minimizes downtime, and the need for emergency repairs; and
Accurate and complete recording of equipment maintenance activities and its associated costs (material and labour) provides the necessary maintenance data for maintenance managers to analyze and control maintenance costs.

The typical MMS hardware at each SEMO location consists of a personal computer. There is also a modem which allows for communication and outside support.

Performance manager

The software used for the MMS program was developed by Performance Associates, Inc. and operates with the R:BASE database interpreter. RBASE is a relational database available for PCs, complete with its own programming language. It also comes with a report writer, application generator and a gateway module which allows import/export of data to other programs such as Microsoft Excel. A major plus to this system is the ability of users to customize the system relatively easily, through a custom application module.

The system has been designed to provide maintenance planners with the necessary tools to plan, forecast, and schedule equipment maintenance (repairs, PM services, and lubrication of stationary and mobile equipment) while capturing equipment and component maintenance history and associated costs (material and labour). Reports on equipment data in the system can be made, as required, for any specified time frame.

The MMS software provides:

Equipment and component identification and inventory;
Equipment and major component tracking;
Work order creation and tracking;
Backlog status;
Job masters;
Job scheduling;
Collection of equipment operating units (hours, tons, feet, etc);
Equipment and component maintenance history recording;
Maintenance cost collection material and labour;
Preventive maintenance scheduling (by specified criteria);
Lubrication scheduling (by specified criteria);
Spare parts catalogue;
Tyre tracing and costing;
Fuel and lubrication tracking;
User custom applications program;
On-line, on request reporting of all maintenance data.

good software helps with effective maintenance management — **Fig 1:** A sequential flowsheet for a maintenance management system (MMS) of the kind used at SEMO and subsequently successfully introduced at the Herculaneum smelter.

The importance of effective maintenance management

SEMO has discovered that an effective maintenance management program plays a major role in reducing emergency repairs and their related maintenance costs. It also provides operators with higher equipment availability, resulting in steady production at lower overall maintenance costs. SEMO’s maintenance costs were reduced by some 20% with the new maintenance management program.

One portion of the reduction in maintenance costs came from the improvements made in maintenance management structure, procedures and activities associated with both maintenance and operations. The balance resulted from the implementation of the maintenance management system. The two factors complement one another and the substantial benefits are realized when both are implemented.

Three of the most important improvements were:

Getting equipment operators involved in effectively inspecting their equipment for maintenance problems and documenting them so corrective action can be efficiently performed prior to equipment breakdown;
Getting operations supervisors to participate in weekly work forecasting and daily work scheduling meetings, and
Following the agreed-upon daily work schedules.

The results of the maintenance management system implementation were startling. Approximately $2 million in reduced maintenance costs were realized by the operations during the first ten months of 1990 as compared to the same period in 1989.

Introduction at Herculaneum

As a result of the positive impact that the newly implemented maintenance management program had at SEMO, Herculaneum’s management requested it for their plant.

After a survey of the existing Herculaneum maintenance management system using a main frame computer, it was concluded that it would be acceptable with some enhancements. Some of the proposed enhancements included: weekly maintenance commitment forecasting; daily maintenance shift scheduling and specific equipment; and components maintenance cost reports. It was also decided that specific training would be given in the use of the system to manage the maintenance effort more effectively.

The maintenance management training program along with the system enhancements implemented in early 1991, are now experiencing initial success. The personnel who are actively using it are starting to realize maintenance cost savings each month.

Conclusion about Effective Maintenance Management

Doe Run’s new maintenance management program at SEMO and Herculaneum is proving to be very successful. SEMO and Herculaneum are now positioned to take full advantage of their new approach to maintenance to control maintenance costs. At both SEMO and Herculaneum, maintenance costs have been reduced with maintenance repairs being shifted from reaction to emergency breakdowns to scheduled preventive maintenance.

The remaining challenge for managers at both SEMO and Herculaneum is to make full use of their new maintenance management program’s powerful data handling capacity to make timely and effective decisions. Present and future production is based on today’s maintenance decisions and these decisions need to be based on factual equipment data. The company’s future could very well depend on how well maintenance is being managed today.

How to Fix the 70/30 Phenomenon

When you ask front line supervisors or team leaders if all people in their teams are performing to the same standards or if some are doing more work and achieving more results than others, you will often get the same answer. All over the world, the most common answer, after some analysis, verifies that about 30% of the people do 70% of the work.

Zen and the Art of Managing Maintenance

Unfettered expression and spiritual satisfaction? How does this relate to managing a maintenance department, especially one in the U.S. Postal Service? Open your mind. Take a page from the Zen Buddhist monks who preach: When you are quiet and listen, you become aware of sounds not normally heard. USPS maintenance leaders are listening and beginning to understand that maintenance success doesn't come through closed minds and closed doors.

Why do maintenance improvement initiatives fail to deliver? (Hedgehog or Fox?)

It is not uncommon that many reliability and maintenance improvement initiatives fail to deliver expected results. Why is it so? Some of the most common causes I have observed include:

Why Maintenance Improvement Efforts Fail

Why do improvement efforts fail or perhaps not sustain the gains? There are many reasons, but those most often stated are “lack of commitment” and not “following the process”. But why is there lack of commitment, and why aren’t processes followed? Here are a few of the reasons that I’ve seen:

TPM and RCM: Whirled Class

When a piece of production machinery broke down at the Whirlpool plant in Findlay, Ohio, several years back, it was accepted practice for the machine operator to call maintenance and then sit back and wait for the problem to be fixed. Critical information and knowledge was not shared between the operator and maintenance technician. Like many companies, these workers were stuck in traditional roles - operators run the machines, maintenance fixes the machines, and the two do not cross. As a result, productivity opportunities were missed.

Where Do Maintenance Professionals Come From?

Many managers are unaware that best-in-class companies routinely design-out maintenance at the inception of a project. That, clearly, is the first key to highest equipment reliability and plant profitability. Whenever maintenance events occur as time goes on, the real industry leaders see every one of these events as an opportunity to upgrade. Indeed, upgrading is the second key, and upgrading is the job of highly trained, well-organized, knowledgeable reliability professionals.

TPM and Tecate: The New Translation

The true translation — might it be proper to say a new and improved translation? — is being used today by Cervecería Cuauhtemoc Moctezuma, one of the largest brewers of beer in Latin America. Known throughout this company as Mantenimiento Alto Desempeño (MAD), or translated as High-Performance Maintenance, the concept of TPM is alive and well at the company's six plants in Mexico. Perhaps the best example is at CCM's brewery in Tecate, located a short drive from the U.S.-Mexico border on the Baja California peninsula.

Effective Maintenance Management at Doe Run