Overcoming Maintenance Stagnation<br/>

A Continuous Improvement Dilemma…

In this article we visit a fictitious customer to discuss their current maintenance issues. Although fictitious, the story we heard is actually very common, in fact, you may well recognise some of the issues with your own maintenance.

Read on to find out how we helped this well-known brand in the food and drink sector, with their maintenance issues.

The Customer:

We are a traditional manufacturing business in the food and drink sector with a history that dates back more than 200 years. Over these two centuries, we have built a reputation for high quality products and on-time delivery.

Unfortunately, although our long history is an advantage in the segment in which we operate, it has also rather weighed us down. This has manifested itself in an aversion to change among our workforce. We have many long-serving employees and the attitude that insists ‘we have always done it this way and it hasn’t done us any harm’ is common among them. This has led to a level of stagnation and a lack of enthusiasm for new ideas.

This has not done us any serious harm in the past, but, as competition increases in our market, the situation is changing. Our costs have risen significantly over the past five years and revenue growth simply has not kept pace. On top of this, our reputation for excellent delivery performance is being affected badly by a long-term lack of investment in new equipment.

We, quite literally, have to make do and mend. The trouble is we are not mending very well and production machinery breakdowns have become almost epidemic in proportion. I have identified our maintenance operation as the main trouble spot. I am well aware that, to achieve operational excellence, we also need maintenance excellence so we can guarantee the availability of our production equipment. However, we are struggling with this. There is clearly something wrong, but I’m not sure whether it is related to our management systems and methodologies, organisational structure, or purely our clapped out machinery. I recognise that our maintenance performance is poor, but I’m at a loss to know what to do about it. I don’t even know where to begin to solve the problem. I am keen to find out what maintenance options exist, and whether and how to implement them. Can you help?

The MCP Solution:

It seems to us that your current regime conforms to the traditional thinking that can act as a block to change. The absence of an all embracing, holistic strategy from site leaders will tend to re-enforce this status quo mindset. We would say your apparent lack of a formal operator asset care programme, supported by standard operating procedures and competences verified with defined operator checks, has led to a reactive mentality which is clearly holding you back.

This state of affairs is usually driven by the absence of a clear asset care excellence programme owned by the manufacturing team.

Reliability-driven maintenance requires a sound technical strategy employing an appropriate technique for the technology used and taking safety requirements into account.

It seems the effectiveness of your skills planning for the craft team is low, resulting in management reinforcing the reactive regime. You should also be thinking about how to perform the safety aspects associated with your preventative maintenance routines properly.

The age of your plant is also a concern, with the poor maintenance exacerbating its deterioration. You don’t appear to have a technical strategy to retain the plant to ‘as good as new’ standards. The expected life of assets is not used with a clear refurbishment or replacement policy supported by appropriate budgets. This could become a noose around your company’s neck.

So, what to do?

It seems to me that most of the foundation blocks are missing from your maintenance regime and your continuous improvement (CI) activities are limited. On a well-performing site, we would expect reactive work to be replaced by planned CI.

But the traditional thinking evident on your site is the biggest concern as it will be difficult to deliver sustainable change without a robust programme supported by the site leader.

Management needs to be aware of the opportunities as well as best practice, and to develop a clearer vision where they wish to drive plant performance in the medium term. We would say your site would benefit from a holistic approach focusing on organisational development. You also need to tighten up technical aspects such as reliability techniques, planning and spares policy.

So, rather than attempting to try various techniques or initiatives and failing, a more robust approach is required which is about culture change and training. Your site leadership needs to create the right environment for local teams to become engaged and own their processes. This will free them to deliver exceptional performance.

We recommend you start with a maintenance benchmarking assessment in order fully to understand your gaps in good practice. Where is your site’s performance against world-class in your sector? You can then create and communicate a vision for plant performance.

The outputs from such an assessment will provide a gap analysis and an opportunity for management as well as local teams to understand the opportunities.

The next step is a detailed strategy with a three to four year action plan. The final strategy formulation step is a loss analysis to establish a clear picture of the return on investment you require.