Over the past few years, equipment failure rates have been steadily rising, and you've been called in to find out why. The plant manager called you aside and told you:
- All PMs have been done on schedule; no deferments.
- The PM frequency on critical equipment has been doubled, but this didn't change the failure rate.
- The PM procedures were all entered into the CMMS last September.
- Each technician has a bound copy of the PM procedures.
- Everyone in maintenance has been multi-craft trained.
The plant manager, so giddy about PM, said nothing about predictive (PdM) or monitoring. Consequently, you need to ask such questions as:
- Are people trying to fit too much PM into the schedule and thus cutting corners?
- Has anyone reviewed the procedures and schedules for effectiveness? Doubling the frequency doesn't necessarily address a known problem.
- Yes, PMs should be entered into the CMMS so techs can print out the current revision as needed. But this took only a month. Was it a rush job?
- Multi-craft training is standard practice in maintenance, but was that training conducted correctly and validated with proper testing?
- The technicians will probably never read those bound copies.
- Change from the PM focus (do something) to an equipment uptime focus (do the right things), and your downtime numbers will decrease.