Joined-up thinking16 January 2013

Why waste the skills and first-hand knowledge of operators? Annie Gregory explores simpler strategies for involving them in asset care

I've got a 54-year-old Morris Minor for dry days and hill-free roads. I know every sound and vibration that Mungo makes. I know the difference between the rattling quiver that says his trunnions need greasing and the deeper clunk-shake that says I should have got new ones last week. I am Mungo's driver, not his mechanic – but he spends less time in the workshop because I can spot the early signs of problems.

It's no different on the factory floor: the person who best understands the machine is the person who operates – or drives – it. Breakdowns are often averted because an operator has told the duty engineer that 'it doesn't sound right today'. Many factories save hours of expensive craft time when operators who really know their machines take over frontline tasks such as cleaning, lubricating and replacing filters.

So, surely operator involvement in maintenance should be a given in most plants? Not according to recent research by Works Management magazine. Some 40% of sites think their operators only moderately understand their plant, while 45% have no formal maintenance training programme. Yet there is no doubt that many plant managers have real worries about the future of their maintenance operations – fears about an ageing workforce or over-dependence upon external contractors (91% outsource some or all of their maintenance) are common across the board.

Deeper operator involvement is an obvious solution to both current and future problems. Reality, however, is very different to theory.

Richard Jones, managing director of maintenance specialist MCP Consulting and Training, says the absence of a workable strategy is often costing manufacturers far more than they realise. He sees the same issues cropping up in so many factories. Management has cut back numbers and installed more automation in the name of efficiency. They may even believe they have put a strategy in place to extend the operators' role to replacing parts, handling changeovers and set-ups. But their training processes have been cursory, in reality equipping them to do little more than a push-button fulfilment of the basics. As a result, experienced craftsmen get pulled in as 'supersetters' which, in turn, means that important maintenance tasks don't get done. It's a syndrome that Jones calls PIG, or Production Is God.

This engineering/production divide is not so pronounced in sectors like chemicals, brewing and distilling, where there is a higher calibre of operator who tends to understand the controlling parameters of the equipment. "But in food and drink, we often see the results of expediency," says Jones. "Getting people is not easy and seasonal peaks make things worse through hiring temporary labour. So it makes the demand for hand-holding by the craft technicians even higher. They are spending up to half their time on it – time that otherwise could be used in maintaining and improving.

"And the irony is that the lost time and production is booked as engineering downtime," he exclaims. "There's a belief that, because the solution came through the engineers, engineering must be the root cause of the problem. But it's not engineering that's broke – it's the skills and the processes behind the way the operators work."

Even sites that understand and value the role of maintenance often fail to involve their operators successfully. MCP's own research, among sites using its AMIS (asset management improvement service) audit as a benchmark, showed that a large percentage had tried autonomous maintenance and failed.

Autonomous maintenance is an essential ingredient of TPM (total productive maintenance), the gold standard of resource management, with responsibility firmly shared between production and maintenance. Through the work of lean improvement teams, maintenance activity steadily moves away from reactive to preventive/predictive work, bringing stability to the entire planning process.

It incorporates technical disciplines such as RCM (reliability centred maintenance), a process to establish the safe minimum levels of maintenance needed to ensure that assets continue to perform as needed.

TPM is an all-pervading philosophy that – put into action through the appropriate techniques – tunes the entire manufacturing environment to peak performance. But TPM is also a daunting challenge: it affects every aspect of the manufacturing and support operations. And many organisations, with some justice, doubt their own ability to see it through. So they've got a straight choice – find someone to help them through it or adopt a less taxing approach that will still bring some, although not all, of the advantages.

There are, of course, a number of good consultancies that specialise in TPM support. Bearing in mind, however, the growing trend for outsourcing, it is interesting to see how the work of a third party maintenance company can be effectively dovetailed with an operator engagement programme.

TPM in practice
Advanced Technology Services' (ATS) clients include Caterpillar, Ford, Dell and Honeywell. Keith Edmonds, its head of business development, sees the whole range of capabilities: "Some companies manage their assets well through TPM, with a good regime and process. They use a maintenance company to do what they do best – respond to reactive or proactive work orders. Others really believe they have a TPM culture, but don't practice it. I visited one recently who actually thought TPM was the responsibility solely of the maintenance department."

Third party involvement in operator development is a bit of a contradiction – after all, manufacturers who engage maintenance companies usually do so to take the whole issue off their plates. But Edmonds says that ATS's role is to reduce the overall cost to produce and, in some cases, that clearly has to go beyond proactive maintenance.

In one customer's case, that means helping them to generate a TPM framework. This manufacturer "knows it is just paying lip service to TPM through a few checklists and diagrams by machines. We are going to help them build a culture where people take ownership and accountability for that area of the operation."

ATS's master black belt will facilitate operators' workshops to help them understand their role in asset uptime. Some things will stay the same – when a bearing fails or an electric panel goes down, ATS will be the next port of call. But ATS will also be working with the operators to formulate their own checklists, formalising their knowledge of the asset's performance. It will also play a big part in developing PM (preventive maintenance) plans. "When our technicians are called out for a reactive job, they are required to identify at least two other PM routines for that machine to go into the plan." ATS aims to close the loop between call out, root cause analysis and progressive refinement and improvement of PM routines, through direct involvement with the operators.

MCP is also working with manufacturers to make better use of their operators' ability, without necessarily eating the entire TPM elephant, through the process of Operator Asset Care (OAC). Its objective is simple: to combine industry best practice and equipment owners' knowledge to raise OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) and reduce production costs. Just like autonomous maintenance, it demands the integration of process activities and maintenance inspections. Unlike autonomous maintenance, however, OAC needn't be part of a company-wide change programme.

"You can do it in a discrete area, pilot it, tweak it, make sure it works, before you roll it out to a bigger area," says MCP's John Saysell. "It's all about teamwork between production operators and maintenance technicians."

So when do you use it? "It's for when our customers want to involve their operators in maintenance without a massive programme or all the training, education, quality integration and new equipment management of TPM," he explains. "But even though it's much more limited, it still needs the same wholehearted backing of senior management that TPM demands. And we still need the full engagement and awareness of operators, technicians, engineering and manufacturing managers. It's the scale that's different – and that's what makes it attractive to customers."

Saysell says that plants that have taken it on with full management backing are doing really well. Most get a measurable improvement in six to eight months and one customer's OEE climbed by 10% on the chosen line only eight months into the process. And this is a pharmaceutical company – not normally a sector that distinguishes itself with new approaches. It is, however, a relatively young plant staffed by recruits who – without the baggage of longer established plants – are enthusiastic about new techniques.

MCP says OAC can be used to start the ball rolling before moving on to full-strength TPM. "If you do TPM properly, it addresses every part of your business," Saysell adds. "But I've come across a place where TPM is done on Friday afternoon by the middle managers. That is not TPM. A lot of people say they have good TPM processes and, indeed they look quite good cosmetically, but when you scratch below the surface, it's just not there."

An OAC programme limits risk. Typically, MCP will spend time at the outset to understand the existing culture of the business and to pitch the initial OAC training correctly. But the main focus is on getting the operators to articulate what the business needs to do to improve. "If it all comes from them, facilitated by us, it's much easier to get them started and committed," Saysell comments. By the third day of an OAC programme, all parties should have decided what they need to do and have arrived at an outside project plan.

Achievable aims
A pilot needs to be challenging but not impossible, aimed at quick deliverables. Jones insists that the choice is particularly important when operators need to unwind the sour disbelief left over from previous failed initiatives.

"Too often, managers tell everyone that they are going to do something without even considering how they are going to manage 400 people over three shifts," he explains.

"So training doesn't take place, stickability doesn't happen, and changes aren't fully implemented let alone sustaine." The limited scope and positive achievements of an OAC pilot can go a long way to resurrect enthusiasm.

Jones is particularly proud of the achievement at Diageo's St Francis Abbey Brewery at Kilkenny, where OAC activities have now widened into a plant-wide asset care programme with an AMIS score of 80%.

That puts the brewery into the top 3% of all AMIS sites and makes it the top performing plant in Ireland. "At Kilkenny, the front end teams have ownership," explains Jones. "They tell their managers what they need. This level of managerial sponsorship is vital. Command and control will never give you the engagement you need."

Golden rules for asset care

MCP recommends a number of golden rules for operator asset care:

- Don't even start making changes until you are sure you have overcome the barrier of 'I break, you fix'. Operators need to feel motivated to share responsibility for machine condition and performance.
- Do not assume that the operator knows what is needed. Invest the time to train and get the buy-in of operators and supervisors.
- l Establish a framework to solicit their opinions and support their new activities. Feed their observations into the planned maintenance checklists and acknowledge their contribution.
- l Choose a pilot that has challenges but also the potential for rapid gains. Make sure that all shifts participate and promote the successes across the business.

Annie Gregory

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