When managing your preventive maintenance program it is important to track the completion metrics of the program. Rather than collecting only the fact that the PM was completed or not take a look at sorting into more categories such as:
• Completed
• Partial – Lack of resource
• Partial – Lack of material
• Partial – Production requirement
• Not Complete – Lack of resource
• Not Complete – Lack of material
• Not Complete – Equipment not available
Analyze the partial and not complete categories to identify ways to improve your PM compliance.

Tip provided by AssetPoint
http://www.assetpoint.com
Phone: (864) 679-3500

RCA - “Listen for laughter”
When brainstorming for solutions during the RCA process – listen for laughter, and then work on it. Sometimes the solutions that raise a laugh can be ones that if worked on, are successful in preventing the problem from reoccurring.
Many of the world’s greatest discoveries came from simple beginnings:
• Gravity
• White out
• Yellow Sticky notes!

Tip provided by ARMS Reliability Engineers
http://www.reliability.com.au/index.asp?pgid=423

Please join us for a Live 1 hour Reliability Roadmap Web Workshop by Ricky Smith, CMRP
Title: The Economic Crisis – Making your Company Successful – What to do NOW
Date: Friday, January 30, 2009
Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EST

Fee: $0
Space is limited.

Reserve your Web Workshop seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/418345219

If You’re Going to Take the Time to Plan a Job, Put It All Together
When your Maintenance Planner goes through the process of planning a job, it’s ‘crucial’ (read: higher quality repair, less downtime, faster return to production or operations, and—of course—lower cost) for everyone involved if the plan consists of more than just a print-out of the backlog or open work orders that the Planner staples to the next PM. Maintenance planning is—at its core—the process of bringing all of the relevant information together.

The Maintenance Planning function is not complete until the following minimum information is identified:
1. Work required to keep the equipment running at the highest possible efficiency
• Work orders that have been approved
• PM or PdM tasks
• Estimates of the duration of the job
• Technical specifications
• Repair procedures
• Safety requirements or permits

2. People required to do the work
• The right crew
• The right technical qualifications
• The right task training to ensure effective and safe work procedures

3. Parts, materials, and special tools or equipment required to perform both maintenance and repairs
• Bills of Material
• Parts Staging
• Requisition or Purchasing information

Do not: When you have a piece of equipment or a line down, attempt to ‘get everything fixed that you can’ or you send the crew out to ‘see what you can do before the end of the shift.’
Do: Take a holistic view of the Planning, Scheduling, and Execution processes. As a Manager, part of your job is to make sure that your people have the resources they need to plan, schedule, and execute work effectively--helpful ERP/EAM/CMMS utilization tools are central to that success. Remember, if you ask a mechanic to ‘see what you can get done by the end of the shift,’ you’ve just sent that mechanic down that slippery slope to inefficiency.

Tip provided by Dave Koelzer
VP Process Improvement
Dimension Technology Solutions, Inc.
Englewood, CO
http://www.dts-global.com

Habit 1
Be Proactive. Highly effective maintenance organizations don’t wait for equipment to fail before deciding what to do about it. They proactively search out ways to identify potential failures well in advance. They implement those predictive methodologies, and then act on them when they identify potential failures. This allows the proactive organization to plan repairs in advance. Planned is always better than un-planned. Parts can be ordered, arrangements can be made with operations, necessary tools can be kitted, and task instructions can be spelled out enabling even a less experienced craftsperson to complete the job. Since proactive repairs aren’t done under pressure, they are more likely to be done correctly and there is also less of a chance for injury. This is a “win/win” situation (habit 4) to both operations and maintenance.
Proactive organizations also create strategy plans that outline – in writing – how they will respond to various situations that may occur in the future. These strategy plans will be discussed in Habit 2, “Begin with the end in Mind.”
“Seven Habits of Highly Successful Maintenance Organizations,” by Paul Swatkowski, MRG, is based on the book, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, by Steven Covey. These 8 tips will run in a series so be sure to look for each tip in the months to come.

Find out more about MRG Reliability Training
http://www.mrginc.net

There are a lot of sounds in this world and they often provide clues to the situation. The problem is we’re often too busy to listen or we don’t know how to interpret what we’re hearing. From handheld devices to remote monitoring services to reliability consulting and on-site services turn to Timken, we’re listening.

“Sound off on what’s giving you trouble and we’ll listen to see if we can help"

Bearing Greasing
Every lubrication technician should have some sort of listening device to detect problems while on their lubrication routes. There are all sorts of devices out there to listen to bearings from high-tech devices such as sonic and ultrasonic devices to the low-tech such as a mechanic’s stethoscope or even the common screwdriver with the handle held to the ear. After training your ear and getting used to your listening device you can detect all sorts of issues before there are problems, one such issue is failing bearings.
Bearings vibrate and make noise; it is often difficult to tell the difference between a bad bearing and a lack of lubrication since both sounds are generated by metal to metal contact. In both cases the addition of grease will quite the bearing down, the difference is with a bad bearing the bearing ‘squeal’ will return within a short period of time after the excess grease is purged out. While on your bearing greasing route, make notes of which bearings are squealing and return a few hours later or even the next day. When you return and if the squeal returns again, chances are you have a bad bearing.

Kristopher Sonne
Predictive Maintenance Technician
Trico Corp.
http://www.tricocorp.com

The three primary causes of thermal anomalies in electrical systems:
1) Resistance to the flow of electricity
2) Resistance to the flow of magnetic energy produced by flow electricity (induced heating)
3) Higher load or current

Tip provided by Wayne Ruddock, Workshop Leader
Reliability Roadmap Web Workshop Infrared Basic Level 1
No Fee Web Workshops schedule and registration online:
http://www.reliabilityweb.com/ww/09_schedule.htm

IR Web Workshop and Tip sponsored by:
The Academy Of Infrared Training Inc (AIRT)
http://www.infraredtraining.net

Be Sure the Grease Tube is Cleared
When following the procedure for greasing bearings with an ultrasonic data collector, one recommendation is to switch to half shots from the grease gun once the ultrasound level decreases. This will avoid over greasing; which can be done with just one full shot.
A lube tech noted that after the initial first shot of grease no noticeable change in the ultrasound level was observed from the measured dBµV display, nor was any change noted in the headphones. Looking closely into the matter he realized that the grease tube between the grease fitting and the bearing had recently been changed and was empty. After 2 or 3 shots (dependent on tube length) the decibel reading started to decrease.
Be aware when greasing bearings where the fitting is located on a grease tube that additional grease may be required to fill the tube, and, that the tube may be blocked with old, dry grease. Once the dB level does begin to decrease, follow the half shot rule to avoid pressurizing the bearing or rupturing the grease seal.

Tip provided by SDT North America
http://sdtnorthamerica.com

By Ricky Smith, CMRP
Companies around the world are facing an economic crisis, which most have never experienced before. If perception is reality then……do you perceive this as an insurmountable problem or an incredible opportunity?
When the economic drivers in the world economy slow down, the world seems to come to a screeching halt! You and I both know that it doesn’t! You may not realize it but, there are companies in the world who see this economic crisis as strategic advantage to overtake their competitors’ position in the marketplace. Having worked with executives with global corporations, I have witnessed this in the “think tank” of strategic planning sessions.
What they are determining behind closed doors is not “how do we keep our doors open” but “how do we grow our market share, take the leader position and shut down our competition”! In essence, they are working hard at closing the doors of their competitors and they are leveraging the economic crisis to do it. They are achieving this through optimizing process reliability and asset reliability.
Here’s how it works:
If you drive down the cost of units produced to a level where you can drop your cost of sales per unit, which is below what your competition can produce, a product success is on the horizon.
How many companies have large amounts of cash reserves where they can “wait out” the economic crisis? Very few would stay this course…even if they had the money in the bank. Why? Why change anything if you can lean out a little and coast till times are better?
Let’s imagine that a competitor (your competitor) can optimize their assets’ reliability, optimize their processes and begin selling (for a profit) their product below the cost of what you are producing your product at….doing so - they CAN control the market and thus drive YOU out of business!
Do you think this has ever occurred? It is occurring right now and most companies either do not know it or are sticking their head in the sand. You know what it looks like? First you lose a few business opportunities because the competition underbids you and you probably think it’s just that they are taking a lesser profit margin.
Facts are, they’re optimizing, cutting their production costs, selling quality product for less and cutting into your market share. Very soon, probably after it’s too late, you’ll ask how they can do that and stay in business. By the time you’re asking this – you probably won’t have much time to work out an optimization strategy and you’re facing a vortex that is going to be hard to pull out of.
If you think it can happen to your company, you’re right! What do you really think?

Watch Ricky Smith’s 8 minute iPresentation - Economic Crisis – 6 Slides What to do about it NOW