Smurfit-Stone Pursues Profitable Path with Fernandina Maintenance Program
Clayton Smith and George Munn
Making money, not tons, has become the mantra of the pulp and paper industry in recent years. Consolidation moves in the sector have resulted in more effective management of inventories and supply, but the cyclical tendencies of the business remain. On top of that, the market is now a global one rather than being split up into regions. Managers today have to live up to the challenge of reducing costs to remain competitive in this global market. Mills face the real possibility of closure if manufacturing costs are no longer competitive in the global market economy. Future success will be achieved only by driving down costs and improving operating efficiencies.
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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.
