International Conference And Exhibition CNC TECHNOLOGIES 2011

NEW CONCEPTS FOR REDUCING MAINTENANCE COSTS

Alexandru VELICU, Lucian MIHAI Drd. students, POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest, ROMANIA Advisor: Prof. Dr. Eng. Ionescu TRAIAN

Abstract:
Due to the economic crisis we are experiencing right now the markets have become uncertain what led to a decrease in production in certain segments. In a low production, maintenance problems have a greater impact. They might generate higher costs than expected. When the production level gets lower so does the maintenance level, but it is important that maintenance is adjusted properly to avoid unexpected expenses or even bankruptcy. This article presents the principles on which maintenance activities and policy can be adjusted to cope with these changes in production. Key words: maintenance, Lean Maintenance, cutting costs

1. INTRODUCTION In this unstable economical environment and facing an imminent globalization cutting expenses is very important and unfortunately maintenance is one of the affected branches. To cut costs, employers apply sometimes drastic solutions that have a long term effect on the companys growth and balance like eliminating predictive maintenance, reduce of all preventive maintenance, eliminate maintenance actions and procedures due to lowering of maintenance staff. The effect of these decisions on short term is lowering cost for a period but on long term it will lead to a rise in maintenance expenses, more corrective maintenance, unpredictable failures and equipment downtime, lose of production, unmade deliveries and others. On long term these actions will lower the level of maintenance to corrective and routine maintenance. There are employers that leave maintenance principles that needed investment to be implemented, they functioned until now, and now, due to the inert system, there effects can last for another year, at most a year and a half. Good maintenance principles are left aside so the company can lower expenses and, because of massive firing, to lack of personnel in the maintenance department. Those employers think that the effects of this crisis will be over in a year or two so they can balance there looses then. This decision is bold at least as forecasts show that this crisis is going to last more than anticipated and it might last longer than those two years scheduled and also it might mean that when things will get

more stable the company wont be able to take orders due to faulty equipment. 2. LEAN MAINTENANCE METHODOLOGY Lean maintenance is a type of preventive and predictive maintenance based on TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) and RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) practices [5]. The key objective of Lean Maintenance is to give your company the near 100% equipment uptime and reliability it demands while cutting your maintenance expense by 50% or more. This objective is obtained by: - Implementing TPM the foundation of Lean Maintenance, TPM is an optimization procedure of reliability and equipment efficiency. TPM involves all the levels and functions of the organization and is addressed to the production system lifecycle [5]. - Implemented RCM as a determination process of the necessities of the equipment in the operating context. RCM is concentrated on optimization of efficiency of the maintenance activities. - Proactive maintenance opposite to reactive maintenance where the team reacts to defects. Reactive maintenance is not seen as a type of maintenance. - Planned maintenance every aspect, activity, steps to be taken, intervention is planned, analyzed and documented [3]. To discover waste, be aware of the state of equipments, forecast, you need to have all the history, to be able to analyze the data and have a grasp on maintenance costs.

International Conference And Exhibition CNC TECHNOLOGIES 2011

Independent maintenance teams teams that have specific task, autonomy and are concentrated on performance [5]. Maintenance teams that have multi-skilled members, auto evaluations and autonomy give people the possibility to share ideas, brainstorm and find new solutions to problems. - CMMS (Computer Maintenance Management System) very efficient system not only for keeping track of maintenance actions and costs but also for collecting data from the equipment and analyzing it [5]. For documenting all maintenance actions, procedures, equipment history a proper tool would be a CMMS. But the biggest advantage of a CMMS is that in the case of a failure or when analyzing the system, all the data is easy and fast accessible so it shortens the time needed for the documentation process. - MRO distributed storerooms. When in the critical situation of equipment failure or preparing for a maintenance action the fastest way to get spare parts is when you have them as close to you as possible. Distributed storerooms assure you that you have the parts accessible and closer than in the case of a single storeroom for spare parts. - JIT (Just in Time) delivering system for spare parts. A JIT delivery service for spare parts is as good as possible because you dont have capital stuck in spare parts. - Elimination waste Lean philosophy defines waste as anything that does not add value to the product, process or service. Analyzing the manufacturing process helps you discover where waste creped in and eliminate it [1]. To achieve these objectives, maintenance technicians imply different tools like: cause and effect analysis FMECA (Failure Mode Effects and Criticality Analysis), HAZOP analysis (HAZard and OPerability), SADT (Structured Analysis and Design Technique), Ishikawa Diagrams or Fishbone Diagram, barrier analysis, change analysis, management oversight and risk tree (MORT) approach, human performance evaluation,
-

the Kepner-Tregoe problem-solving and decisionmaking process.

Figure 2 Lean maintenance methodology

Lean maintenance also brings a change of attitude empowering the lower level employs. People who perform functions in a process or task are often isolated and only know and understand their activities without regards to how they fit in the process or task, what precedes or is after them. In a Lean Maintenance environment lower level employs are the most important resource and changing the management from controlling to supporting them is the key to solving this problem. 3. SIX SIGMA DMAIC IMPLEMENTING LEAN MAINTENANCE Lean maintenance reliability professionals created a method for helping managers begin pulling away from predictive maintenance and move toward stress elimination and maintenance reliability as goals (Figure 1). With experience, each machine and control system can be analyzed to determine which basic stresses may affect each machine over time, and to prescribe a protective or hardening solution to be implemented to protect each piece of equipment from the stresses to which it is subject.

Figure 1 DMAIC metodology

Six Sigma's "DMAIC" guideline serves as a roadmap for this procedure: - D-Define the problem. To start the implementation of Lean Maintenance you need to

International Conference And Exhibition CNC TECHNOLOGIES 2011

analyze the system first. You need to know what you are working with, to find what is efficiently handled in your system and where there are problems. - M-Measure the problem. After finding a problem you have to measure or calculate the real cost associated with that problem. After that you can estimate potential savings and increased profits [9]. - A-Analyze how the problem can be eliminated. Maintenance engineers or experienced consultants can then analyze what is the most cost-efficient way to eliminate that potential stress. - I-Implement the solution. Based on a report of the best way to eliminate the stresses you can then install the needed protection devices or methods. - C-Control the solution to ensure its continuance and improvement, if practical [9]. Controlling the solution can take little to no effort implying preventive maintenance actions mostly single step protective maintenance that need no future monitoring. 4. REDUCING COSTS WITH LEAN MAINTENANCE To achieve a waste free environment and to reduce the total cost of maintenance there are some practical advices. Predictive maintenance is usually implemented at critical levels of the equipments, of the production line and in key points to determine the state of the equipments and correctly diagnose a failure. Having the highest cost, it will certainly be brought up for discussion to be eliminated. An alternative solution would be the analysis of the data gathered to find the root problems and stresses that are the causes of those failures, taking measures so they can be eliminates and transforming predictive maintenance actions in something less expensive like scheduled maintenance, prioritizing activities, the coordination with production operations, planning the personnel and spare parts resources and scheduling al maintenance activities [5]. Failures are seldom planned for and usually surprise both maintenance and production personnel. Finding the underlying, or root, cause of a failure provides an organization with a solvable problem, removing the mystery of why equipment

failed [5]. Once the root cause is identified, a fix can be developed and implemented. A good approach to identify the root cause and effects of each downtime situation is for the technicians and reliability professionals to use all the tools at their disposal. Lean maintenance offers a wide range of tools like FMECA, HAZOP, Fish Bone Diagram, SADT, but also management oversight and risk tree (MORT) approach. Waste and uncontrollable costs can come also from disorganization. A method to eliminate that is the institution of the 5S, the five activities to improve the working environment (sort, straighten, scrub, standardize and spread). These activities that seem easy at first have the potential to clear the cloud around your working environment that keeps you from seeing where the waste is [1]. Also other TPM principles can be applied to improve working conditions. When not there TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) and RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) principles can be applied with very little to no costs. As the foundation of lean maintenance, TPM is an initiative for optimizing the reliability and effectiveness of manufacturing equipment [4]. TPM is team-based, proactive maintenance and involves every level and function in the organization, from top executives to the shop floor. TPM addresses the entire production system life cycle and builds a solid, shop floor-based system to prevent all losses. RCM on the other hand is a process used to determine the maintenance requirements of physical assets in their present operating context. While TPM objectives focus on maintaining equipment reliability and effectiveness, RCM focuses on optimizing maintenance effectiveness. To achieve performance focus in maintenance department empowering action teams would be a good solution. Action teams are self-directed, taskoriented and are organized to perform whole and integrated tasks, hence requiring multi-department membership or multi-skilled members. The team has control over many of its own administrative functions such as self-evaluation and selfregulation - all with limits defined. Multi-skilled members are appreciated as many manufacturing plants are employing PLCs, PC - based equipment and process control, automated testing, remote

International Conference And Exhibition CNC TECHNOLOGIES 2011

process monitoring and control and other modern methods. Also multi-skilled members help generating ideas and solutions to the problems. One way to cope with lowering costs is autonomous maintenance. This refers to routine maintenance performed by the production line operators [4]. Working with the production manager, the maintenance manager has to establish a policy for where, how ant what level and what types of maintenance the operators can perform. Giving protective maintenance tasks to the equipment operators gives them the opportunity to consider the equipment as theres. Taking care of that particular equipment will help them have knowledge of the needs and stresses that appear. Having knowledge of the equipment history they can provide sometimes the best solution when a problem occurs or when eliminating equipment stresses. The spare parts storerooms will be also brought in the discussion of lowering costs as here are resources unused, blocked capitals there. A good alternative for a change would be combining JIT just in time spare parts delivery, where ever that is possible, with MRO distributed storerooms so the parts are going to be closer to the equipment where they are going to used thus eliminating transport [5]. These storerooms (lean stores) imply scheduling and forecast techniques for the optimization of parts and materials delivery. This requires an analysis and negotiations whit parts manufacturers of dealers but the capital savings can be huge. To gain profit you have to eliminate wastes in maintenance operations. Wasted material, wasted motion and wasted time drastically affect bottom line profitability. In Lean Maintenance there are seven types of waste: - Overproduction performing predictive and preventive maintenance tasks at intervals more often than needed is wasteful [1]. Overproduction in maintenance translates to performing preventive and predictive maintenance tasks at intervals more often than needed. Usually parts and fluids get changed on the equipment more often than needed in a systematic approach. Analyzing the state of the parts or of the fluid that is being changed can give you an idea if that is

too soon or too late and can help you establish the perfect frequency they have to be replaced. Waiting maintenance related waiting like waiting for tools, waiting for parts, waiting for documents, transportation is wasteful [2]. In the case of a critical event like equipment failure it is very important that all the actions are done as quickly as possible to get the line back in working condition as one machine can generate the cost of the whole line standing still. In this case waiting for documents to do an analysis and to look over history, waiting for the proper tools that are store far away in a storeroom, waiting for parts that come also from an centralized storeroom increases the cost of equipment failure and add no value to the process. Transportation tools, documents, parts that are stored a long way from the job translate in wasting time to get them [1]. Documentation, tools, parts have to be hunted down generating excess transport costing time and money and adding no value to the process. Process waste in reactive maintenance repairs are conducted to achieve operation as soon as possible eliminating the opportunity to perform a longer term of higher quality repair. Planning and scheduling maintenance has to include opportunistic maintenance actions [3]. A good forecast system and a good preventive maintenance system can help you chose the best window to change or repair equipment at once so to lower the cost of doing multiple operations. Inventory a maintenance inventory storeroom must contain 65 percent needed materials that cannot be obtained JIT and 35 percent rarely used important materials [1]. Anything more is a waste. Motion wasted motion in maintenance operation usually revolves around PM tasks that do not add value to the output. In PM tasks usually the frequency of inspections is the same [2]. Lets say pump had to be changed. The frequency of inspections is

International Conference And Exhibition CNC TECHNOLOGIES 2011

kept the same although the pomp is new and might no inspections for a while. Adjusting the frequency of the inspections and PM actions in general eliminates this waste of time and work. - Defects job recurrence because of improperly preformed repair is a huge source of waste. When repairing equipment and not eliminating the source of stress equipment failure can happen again. Repeating the same operation over and over again is wasteful. An analysis of the root problems and stresses can help document protective measures, proper actions to be taken so the repair wont need rework. Also proper training and detailed procedures can help maintenance personnel have a good idea of how to fix the problems. Procedure effectiveness analysis will help eliminate these wastes. Along the responsibility of maintenance supervisors is the optimization of maintenance procedures. Using CMMS generated report, emergency reports, planned / preventive maintenance reports supervisors can look for areas where these wastes are and using the six sigma DMAIC approach they can eliminate them. The cost of equipment downtime can be from 5 to 30 times higher depending to the criticism of the equipment, the spare parts storeroom and it can result in loss of opportunity, not respecting delivery schedules and lost sales [5]. Only after eliminating the root problems and stresses and storeroom problems you have a firm grasp on the cost of downtime [1]. But that doesnt mean throwing a lot of money in maintenance analysis all at once. Using the Kanban philosophy and focusing on one machine at a time and Kaisen philosophy of continuous improvement in little steps will help the maintenance technicians to understand and eliminate the root problems. Implementing Lean Maintenance also means changing the architecture of the company or hierarchy to something more flexible. Usually in companies you see a pyramid hierarchy where you have a president, a top floor or stakeholders, then the directors, multiple floors of managers and management related personnel and lower level employs. This type of hierarchy is rigid not allowing new ideas, creative solutions and strict

not allowing flexible change. Finding creative solutions and ways to improve working conditions comes harder from the people that dont actually deal with those problems every day. Changes in this structure are hard to do as firing, hiring and moving employs on different jobs adds tension and stress. A team based structure on the other hand is more flexible. Employs can change teams especially when they are multi-skilled until the teams are balances and have all the necessary members [4]. Also working in teams gives the members the opportunity to express their ideas, brainstorm and help find a creative way to solve problems. With more confidence and creativity employs are more efficient and perform better. Directly overseeing the team might cause tension so giving them autonomy and self-evaluation (in certain limits) boosts their confidence, performance and helps eliminate tension. The implementation of Lean Maintenance doesnt cut costs on short term but on long term the effect is reducing costs with around 100% uptime. Lean Maintenance can help you cut costs in the most efficient way and eliminate the stresses and tensions of the equipment and employs. Only synchronizing production and maintenance operations, optimizing maintenance actions, storeroom parts and fluids acquisition, optimizing the structure of production and maintenance departments, using CMMS to store and find faster data and employing forecast techniques to have a view of what is to come you can achieve the desired 100% in uptime. 5. CONCLUSIONS During these taught times and in this competitive economic environment some little decisions might push a company on the slope of bankruptcy. Some find that the method to adapt is just to cut costs with the pretext of not making months pay. And that decision affects the maintenance department as well. This article provides an alternative to cutting costs the old fashion way firing people and cutting on the maintenance actions as embracing the Lean Maintenance way cutting costs smart, eliminating stresses and tensions and taking protective measures so they dont appear again.

International Conference And Exhibition CNC TECHNOLOGIES 2011

Lean maintenance has the major advantages that: - is has been tested so there is a lot of feedback on ways of implementation and results from the pioneers of Lean Maintenance the Toyota Production System in the early 80 to todays companies; - the implementation doesnt cost much as most of the changes imply a change of perspective not the acquisition of new tools, hiring experts in maintenance or buying high cost equipment that is supposed to run for a long time with no problems; - it can be tailor made for any industry as Lean Maintenance gives solutions to different type of problems and you can implement the principals that apply to you. It is never enough just to try to survive when you can do so much better. Why waste so much time, transport and money when you can cut them and eliminate the stress that they bring. This crisis doesnt have to be seen as something bad but as an opportunity to change. Where others fail some change, adapt and overcome these obstacles becoming even stronger.

REFERENCES
[1] Reliability Center Inc. Reliability goes nonfat with Lean Maintenance. Publisher Terrance OHanlon, Reliabilityweb.com [2] Reliability Center Inc. Lean Maintenance Lubrication Focused. Publisher Terrance OHanlon, Reliabilityweb.com [3] Randy Heiseler, Life Cycle Engineering - Planning and Scheduling In a Lean Maintenance Environment. Publisher Terrance OHanlon, Reliabilityweb.com. [4] Ricky Smith, Bruce Hawkins, Lean Maintenance : Reduce Costs, Improve Quality and Increase Market Share. Publisher Plant Engineering, , ISBN 0-7506-7779-1, 2004. [5] Internet Sources: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3618/is_200412/ai_n9473002 /?tag=content;col1 Posted on 24.December.2004 http://www.mt-online.com/component/content/article/116october2004/912-what-is-lean-maintenance.html?directory=90 Posted on 1.October.2004

http://www.maintenanceworld.com/Articles/pem-mag/AvoidWaste-Lean-maintenance-reduce-costs.html
Posted on 27.Jully 2009