Planned or Scheduled maintenance is a list of predetermined maintenance actions, carried out at regular time intervals, aimed at the prevention of breakdowns. It has been proven again and again that sporadic ongoing repair leads to asset deterioration, a shorter asset lifetime and increased long-term capital cost. The primary goal of scheduled maintenance is to prevent equipment failure before it actually occurs. This includes inspections, adjustments, regular service and planned shutdowns. Standard scheduled maintenance checks like this can help increase the lifetime of your assets and reduce the need for part repair or replacement.

So, when you’re faced with numerous overdue scheduled maintenance actions, or “PM’s”, how do you determine which PM needs to be done first? You have 2 PM’s on identical systems – the first is a monthly that is 3 days late, the second is a quarterly PM that is 5 days late. It would seem that the 5 day late PM should be completed first. By calculating the critical percent for the preventive maintenance action, we can determine which PM should be completed first.

Scheduled maintenance critical percent shows how late your scheduled maintenance work orders are in relation to the maintenance schedule. The higher the percentage, the more attention you should pay to that scheduled maintenance work order. It takes into consideration the number of days late versus the PM cycle. Critical % is calculated from the following formula:

(days late + PM cycle)/PM cycle * 100%.

Lets take a closer look at the example above:

Monthly PM that is 3 days late => Critical % = (3+30)/30 * 100% = 110%

Quarterly that is 5 days late => Critical % = (5+90)/90 * 100% = 105%

On first impressions, it may seem the 5 day late quarterly PM should take precedence but after we perform the critical percent calculation, the monthly PM becomes priority.

Why is this calculation important? Unplanned maintenance is generally more expensive than planned maintenance so by performing your PM’s on time or as close to on time as possible can help avoid any unscheduled breakdown, repairs and downtime. This calculation is a simple way to determine which overdue planned maintenance items should be completed first. Critical percent is easy to calculate but critical percent reports should ship with any good CMMS package.

The transition toward greater sustainability is impacting how hotels are approaching operations. As part of many green initiatives, more and more hotels are now implementing an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Computerized Maintenance Management Software (CMMS) system to gain better control of their energy usage and manage their carbon footprint. I will elaborate more on this later.

The definition of hotel sustainability has evolved over time from a simple going green idea to a philosophy that more and more organizations are recognizing as critical to their long-term success. For hotels and resorts the move toward sustainability issues is a win-win scenario.

Surveys have shown that an increasing number of guests are determining where they will stay based upon a hotel’s commitment to the world environment. So yes, part of the image building and branding of hotels is to be recognized by guests as being green friendly. Other reasons for having a sustainability plan include:

•    Evolving government regulations (across the globe) that are forcing industries to be more sensitive to the environment by reducing carbon footprints as well as lowering energy consumption.
•    Creation of a corporate culture where employees have an increased sense of well-being (lowering turnover/attracting new staff).
•    Investor relations and requirements. More institutional investors are trying to enhance their image by tagging projects as green.
•    Expense savings. This is the number one incentive that is discussed below.

The economics of cloud computing are driving down the cost structure of business so far and so fast that it’s scary, Google CIO Ben Fried says.

“It deeply disturbed me … in 2006, 2007 consumer companies were forcing efficiencies on a scale never seen before,” Fried said Thursday during remarks at the Bloomberg Link Enterprise Technology Summit in New York.

At the time, Fried was working in the technology group at investment bank Morgan Stanley, where he was a managing director of application infrastructure, in charge of software development, electronic commerce and knowledge worker productivity. In 2008, he left the bank and headed to Google, which was at the heart of the disruption that was emanating from the consumer market and beginning to spread through the business world.

Human factors are the largest contributor to aircraft accidents. In addition to the human cost of accidents, maintenance errors impose a significant financial burden on airlines, as they are a major cause of flight delays and cancellations. Poor aircraft maintenance, maintenance error or maintenance negligence are commonly found to be one of the top three causes of aviation accidents:

• Almost 12% of all aircraft accidents reporting a maintenance factor.
• When failure or malfunction of aircraft equipment is part of an accident or incident, fully one-third of these malfunctions relate to a maintenance error.
• Whenever engine delays are encountered, maintenance error accounts for nearly 50% of the causes.

From 1994 to 2004, maintenance problems have contributed to 42% of fatal airline accidents in the United States (excluding the 9-11 terrorist attacks). Maintenance related accidents and incidents are caused by a breakdown of the organization processes, decisions and culture. Maintenance operations are also affected by human input that shows up as weaknesses in organizational processes leading to

• lack of motivation
• fatigue and stress
• time pressure
• misperception of hazards
• inadequate skills

Some famous airline maintenance failures are outlined below:

Japan Airlines Flight 123 – On August 12, 1985, suffered mechanical failures 12 minutes into the flight and 32 minutes later crashed into two ridges of Mount Takamagahara, Japan. A photograph taken from the ground some time later confirmed that the vertical stabilizer was missing. The aircraft was involved in a tail strike incident at Osaka International Airport on 2 June 1978, which damaged the aircraft’s rear pressure bulkhead. The subsequent repair of the bulkhead did not conform to Boeing’s approved repair methods. Their procedure calls for one continuous double plate with three rows of rivets to reinforce the damaged bulkhead, but the Boeing technicians fixing the aircraft used two separate double plates, one with two rows of rivets and one with only one row. This reduced the part’s resistance to metal fatigue by 70%. When the bulkhead gave way, the resulting explosive decompression ruptured the lines of all four hydraulic systems. With the aircraft’s control surfaces disabled, the aircraft became uncontrollable. The root cause of the accident again was a maintenance related failure.

Aeroperú Flight 603 – Shortly after takeoff from Jorge chavez international airport in Peru, Aeroperú Flight 603, the airliner crew realized that their basic flight instruments were giving erratic and contradicting readings. With the lack of reliable basic flight instruments, constant contradictory warnings from the aircraft’s flight computer (some of which were valid and some of which were not), and believing that they were at a safe altitude, the pilots declared an emergency and turned to head back to the airport. However, the pilots lost track of their location and altitude and crashed into the ocean, killing all on board. The cause of the instrument failure was a maintenance worker’s failure to remove duct tape covering the static ports installed during a routine wash necessary to provide correct instrument data to the cockpit. The static ports are critical to the operation of virtually all of those flight instruments that provide basic aerodynamic data such as airspeed, altitude and vertical speed, not only to the pilots but also to the aircraft’s computers, which provide additional functions such as warnings when flight characteristics approach dangerous levels.

On Dec. 19 2005, Chalk’s Flight 101 lost its right wing shortly after takeoff and plunged into a shipping channel off Miami beach, Florida. The plane, which burst into flames, was captured on video during its final moments. Everyone on board was killed, including three infants. The cause of the accident was a metal fatigue failure in the right wing initiated by a crack. The crack had been detected and seemingly repaired earlier by the maintenance team, but the repair was eventually to prove ineffective. The safety board, in its final report on the probable cause of the crash, noted numerous maintenance-related problems on the plane and another company aircraft, raising questions about Chalk Ocean’s maintenance practices. The NTSB also found evidence of improper repairs and undocumented maintenance. After the accident, the remaining fleet were found to be suffering from severe corrosion with many showing signs of sub-standard repair during maintenance.

Alaska Airlines Flight 261 plunged into the pacific ocean during a routine flight from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to Seattle-Tacoma airport. The cause of the accident was the loss of the airplane pitch control caused by thread failure on the jackscrew assembly controlling the horizontal stabilizer trim. The failure of these acme nut threads was the result of insufficient lubrication of the jackscrew assembly by Alaska Airlines during preventive maintenance schedules, despite airline paperwork indicating it had been. This was the result of Alaska’s extended lubrication and maintenance inspection intervals.

American Airlines flight 191, a DC-10, crashed moments after takeoff from O’Hare Int Airport in Chicago. Moments earlier, while speeding down the runway, engine number 1 and pylon structure separated from the wing, flipped over the top and fell to the runway. The airplane took off but shortly after take off, the aircraft rolled left and the nose pitched down before crashing in a nearby field. The root cause of the accident was maintenance-induced damage leading to the separation of the no.1 engine and pylon assembly procedures which led to failure of the pylon structure. The mounting for the pylon had been damaged during routine maintenance performed 8 week previous. American Airlines, without the approval of the aircraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas remove the engine-pylon as one unit during an engine change using a forklift. The airline maintenance team modified the recommended engine and pylon replacement procedure to save man hours and get the job done quicker. The pylon, the rigging holding the engine onto the wing, had been damaged during the makeshift maintenance procedure.

These examples outline major aircraft disasters resulting from the failure of maintenance processes at various airlines. As airline operators move towards second and even third tier outsourcing for their maintenance activities, the complexity of the maintenance-related aspects of accident and incident investigations continues to increase. Airlines are spending less to maintain their planes. Mechanics are checking them less often. At stake is the safety of one of the world’s most reliable transport systems. 2011 was a good year for fatal accidents, however, emergency landings caused by engine or landing gear maintenance failures are rampant. The airline industry needs to focus on improving maintenance or expect more disasters. The author has the following recommendations:

1. Continuous maintenance re-training for aircraft technicians.
2. Create mechanisms for reporting, investigate reports, and provide legal protections to the people who informed them
3. Human factors training for airline management and aircraft engineers

Business of different types, sizes and purposes realise that maintenance costs are a necessary area of expense. In order to better plan and account for maintenance costs that will occur, it is advantageous to have an understanding of preventive and predictive maintenance. An understanding of these matters will help a business to better plan and prepare for maintenance and, as necessary, utilise maintenance software or a computerised maintenance management system (CMMS).

The Costs of Maintenance Management

Many businesses are surprised to learn that significant maintenance dollars are wasted through the use of ineffective maintenance management methods. The main reason for high maintenance costs is usually a lack of accurate and factual data to indicate when maintenance is required and the nature of the maintenance that is required – whether to maintain, replace or repair.

Too often, organisations fail to monitor the performance of equipment and systems, the maintenance that they receive, the occasions on which equipment has failed and other data that is pivotal for planning and scheduling tasks that prevent premature failures and increase the life and performance of the equipment used.  It is far more common for businesses to decide when and how equipment will be maintained based on opinion rather than factual data.

Maintenance Problems and Opportunities

The impact of random or inappropriate maintenance can certainly be felt in terms of:

• the quality of products and services
• inflated operating costs
• the level of profit achieved

The great news for businesses is that CMMS and sophisticated maintenance software offer a way for a business to enhance the effectiveness of its maintenance procedures and processes. For example, CMMS generate relevant historical data in a usable form and provide the means to increase the overall functioning and longevity of equipment, together with the lifestyle costs of the business’ facility and its assets.

Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance is driven by time; this means that the maintenance tasks that are undertaken are time determined – the number of hours for which equipment has operated – together with statistics and historical data for different types of equipment and their need for maintenance. Mean-time-to-failure (MTTF) statistics can determine a preventive maintenance management schedule to include inspections, repairs and rebuilds.

One of the defining features of preventive maintenance is a scheduling guideline, whereby it is assumed that a machine will degrade within a time period that is common for its type. For example, a particular machine may typically run for 18 months before parts will need to be replaced. Under a preventive management approach, the relevant parts will be removed, replaced or rebuilt after 17 months of use.

The main issue with a preventive maintenance approach is that the way a machine is used, as well as a number of other variables, directly impact on the operating life of the machine. This approach can sometimes result in unnecessary maintenance but, if a part or an entire machine fails before it is due for maintenance, a run-to-failure approach is required, which can be expensive.

Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance is determined by the condition of equipment rather average or expected life statistics. Essentially, direct monitoring and analysis of a machine’s operating condition, efficient working and other indicators reveals the need for maintenance tasks.

When a company uses a predictive maintenance program, it has access to relevant factual information about the operating condition of its assets and their efficiency, together with the impacts a particular machine has on an overall process system. Factual data can be used to plan and schedule maintenance tasks and the result of ongoing monitoring of condition and efficiency.

Predictive maintenance “…is a philosophy or attitude that simply stated uses the actual operating condition of the plant equipment and systems to optimize total plant operation.” Because a range of cost-effective tools can be used within a predictive maintenance program and to produce accurate factual data about pivotal systems, maintenance activities can be undertaken when they are most needed. Improvements in quality, profitability and productivity can result from predictive maintenance and maintenance costs can also be potentially reduced.

Because businesses want to ensure that their equipment runs smoothly and processes will not be hindered by machines or components breaking down, attention to the scheduling of maintenance is important.

OPERATORS and oilfield service companies are being invited to hear from two software experts at a forum which will promote best practice for maintenance management in the upstream oil and gas sector, in Aberdeen.

Hosted by specialist software consultancy Absoft, one of the leading independent SAP providers in the UK, the forum, which is free to attend is aimed at maintenance, asset integrity, and supply chain decision makers and will take place on Thursday, May 17.

Delegates will hear from John Meiklejohn, senior SAP consultant at Absoft, who will discuss and demonstrate practical examples of using the standard reporting which is available within SAP to analyse and improve key areas of the business.

Bjorn Harzer, solution architect at Absoft will then examine the use of handheld devices within SAP software for maintenance and supply chain processes. He will draw on Absoft’s experience of delivering such projects, discussing lessons learnt and suggest best practice going forward.

Tim Galloway, Absoft oil and gas sales manager who is facilitating the forum says: “The event is part of a series of open forums which we have created to bring together key decision makers from companies across the sector to discuss common issues and receive advice from SAP experts.

“During this forum, we will demonstrate how the integration between handheld devices and office-bound maintenance management systems can ensure the provision of accurate and up to date information, helping offshore personnel perform field tasks such as inventorying and repair more efficiently.”

An informal buffet lunch will be served at 1pm. The forum runs from 1.30pm to 3.30pm at Absoft’s headquarters at Davidson House, Campus 1, Aberdeen Science & Technology Park, Balgownie Road. For further information or to register, contact Tim Galloway on 01224 707088 or tgalloway@absoft.co.uk.

A CMMS can affect many aspects of your organization’s output. Your ROI is multi-faceted, so here are some basic tips the impact you CMMS can and should have on the bottom line.

Your ROI can specifically be determined through your organization’s use of documentation, maintenance procedures, and energy use. All are addressed below.

Reduce the Cost of Handling Documentation

Whenever you manage a document, costs can be incurred. Documents like vendor communications or blueprints are costs that could be easily overlooked without the right organization. Over four weeks of time annually could be spent on locating lost documents, as well as costs up to two hundred and twenty dollars. This is time and money that could be better spent.

Studies have shown that a good balance of document costs is as follows: 70%  for work costs, 19% for the space and assets used, and 11% for other supplies and services.

A good CMMS can help streamline the many processes of handling documents. Anything that needs to be sent, saved, or copied can be scanned into the software and associated with its asset. This efficiency can keep management from being too much of a hassle.

Improving Maintenance

A CMMS can help your organization focus on scheduling maintenance operations before problems occur. Many industries rely on constant upkeep of their assets, making this preparation vital.

Establishing a flexible maintenance plan can improve cost effectiveness. If a company who has previously relied on fixing errors instead of prevention switches their focus, they could save anywhere between twelve and eighteen percent. The ROI can be determined by multiplying the annual cost of maintenance with your new percentage you have saved.

Your staff can also increase your potential if they are equipped with mobile devices. If tasks can be completed from anywhere, less time can be spent on maintenance tasks. In fact, up to forty-four percent of your time can be made up through mobility.

Using Energy

Depending on your industry, a significant portion of your money will go to energy use. Most business complexes have around 25% of their costs spent on utilities.

Maintaining an HVAC is a good place to start when considering energy efficiency. Changing filters often and scheduling routine inspections can lower costs dramatically. A well maintained HVAC can save you between 15-20%.

The ROI can be determined by first multiplying the number of rooms in your building with the cost of energy for each of these rooms. Then multiply this number with your percentage saved.

In a realistic scenario, these simple math problems will not address all the financial concerns that an organization may face. Costs can come from anywhere and will require preparation beyond that of these guidelines. That said, if you keep these tips in mind when dealing with documentation, maintenance, and energy costs, you could save a lot of money.

It’s important to remember that there are a number of CMMS benefits that don’t directly contribute to ROI, and are difficult or impractical to measure.  Such as: product quality, improved safety, meeting regulatory compliance and increased customer satisfaction.

Preventive maintenance is a schedule of planned maintenance actions aimed at the prevention of breakdowns and failures and should be at the heart of any maintenance program. It has been proven again and again that sporadic ongoing repair leads to asset deterioration, a shorter asset lifetime and increased long-term capital cost. The primary goal of preventive maintenance is to prevent equipment failure before it actually occurs. Standard preventive maintenance checks increase the lifetime of your assets; reduce the need for repair or replacement, and thus a healthier bottom line. Simply put, they keep your assets in control.

In many organizations, PM’s become lower priority over time. One of the excuses for skipping PM’s or not performing PM’s on time is the unavailability of labor due to emergency repairs. As the time required attending emergency repairs increases, the time available for PM’s decreases and more and more are postponed or skipped. Compare the labor hours spent on unscheduled repairs versus the labor hours spent on PM’s. If your unscheduled repair labor hours are high and your PM labor hours are low, then either you are not performing your PM’s on time or not preforming them at all. It is difficult to get out of this downward spiral unless you step back and develop a plan to get emergency repairs back under control. Your maintenance guys are fighting fires when they shouldn’t have let the fires start in the first place.

You simply cannot afford to ignore PM’s on your assets. You will never reduce unscheduled maintenance until you get your preventive maintenance under control. Follow these three steps to quickly getting your preventive maintenance back under control:

1. Track your preventive maintenance in a CMMS. A good CMMS enables the facility manager, subordinates and customers to track the status of preventive maintenance work on their assets and the associated costs of that work in one comprehensive system. The CMMS also helps track checklists in your preventive maintenance procedures. Checklists ensure the work is completed in a defined order and nothing is missed.

2. Work to the 10% rule – A simple way to improve your asset availability and reduce unscheduled repair is to work to the 10% scheduled maintenance rule for time based PM’s. Basically, the 10% rule states that a preventive maintenance action should be completed within 10% of the scheduled maintenance interval. For example, a quarterly PM every 90 days, should be completed within 9 days of the due date or it is out of compliance. The 10% rule helps keep your PM intervals constant, reducing the time variable variation, thus improving reliability.

3. Ensure Metrics are in place to monitor – Feeding all maintenance information directly into a CMMS solution facilitates the automatic manipulation of data to enable operational, technical, and economical analysis such as repair V replace. It also generates graphical reporting to provide evidence of effective maintenance. Key metrics like Meantime Between Failure, PM compliance, Critical % should be captured, recorded and trended. What metrics tell me how effective my preventive maintenance program is? MBTF can help you identify your worst performing asset so you can get a handle on it and get it back under control. Simple analysis like this, in turn, provides knowledge of equipment failure behavior patterns with respect to other external and internal factors such as “working” age, PM frequency, EHM parameters and decision models, operational tradeoffs etc. We can then use this knowledge to improve system availability and ultimately, the company’s bottom line.

1) Asset hierarchy

Assets in MA CMMS are arranged in a hierarchal structure, kind of like folders and files are laid out on your computer.  This gives an intuitive, visual layout to the assets in the CMMS, which also corresponds to the way they are laid out in your facility.  This way, even people who aren’t trained on how to use the software are able to find the asset they’re looking for, just by drilling down into the asset hierarchy.

2) Asset categories

When equipment (or other assets) are entered into the system, users can identify an Asset Category for that piece of equipment in addition to a physical location.  This allows the user two ways of filtering assets: 1) by location 2) by the Asset category, or what “type” of asset it is.

For instance, if you’re trying to locate a piece of HVAC machinery, say “Twin Fan Set”,  you can drill down via Main Facility > Roof > Twin Fan Set.  About 3 clicks, and simple to do.

Or, you can select “HVAC” from the list of Asset categories, and choose/search the asset this way.

3) Program your own asset tag/code

The importance of having a good asset labelling convention is discussed here. If you have several assets with the same name, you need a quick way to distinguish them from each other that is a) easy to implement and b) easy for your maintenance staff to interpret.  Maintenance Assistant allows you to add an asset labelling convention that is separate from the Name of the Asset, (you get both: an Asset Name, and an Asset Code).  Asset codes are added either manually or you can program a convention for all assets you enter into the system.

4) All fields are searchable

Obviously you would expect some kind of search for a database program.  What makes MA’s recently search function so helpful, is that it lets you query a number of fields at the same time.  For instance, say I’m trying to find a particular CNC machine out of the 40 or so I have scattered around my Asset Hierarchy.  I can start the search by typing “cnc”, but then narrow it down further by adding more info I know about the machine.  I’ll add a bit from the description, the make, even part of the serial number.

What this design does is all for a very flexible process for identifying the asset you’re looking for.  You can drill down into the place it is located, filter by the asset category, distinguish it from similarly named assets with the Asset tag/code, and search all these things simultaneously using the live search.

]]> http://www.maintenanceassistant.com/blog/maintenance-assistant-facilitates-practical-asset-catelog/feed/ 0 http://www.maintenanceassistant.com/industry/maintenance-crisis-innovations-changing/ http://www.maintenanceassistant.com/industry/maintenance-crisis-innovations-changing/#comments Tue, 17 Apr 2012 18:00:50 +0000 Nathanael Montgomery http://www.maintenanceassistant.com/?p=4655 Continue Reading]]>

A couple months ago, I wrote an article about the top five careers in facility management. I interviewed a broad range of professionals for that story. But it was during an interview with Joel Leonard, President of SkillTV, that I started to ponder what he referred to as “the maintenance crisis”–a depletion of skilled workers in the maintenance management workforce caused by baby boomers retiring and too few young professionals entering the field.

Written by Ashley Halligan, a CMMS software analyst. Read the original story here.