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.
What the plant manager does not talk about provides good clues. What might those be?
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?
Also note:
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.
