How to Keep Lean Going: Preventive Maintenance 1
I've never been a plant manager or production superintendent but I've often thought about how I'd start if I ever did acquire such a position (not that I'm trying). What would I do first? Even reasonably well-run plants generally have lots of areas for improvement...where to start?
I've pretty much decided that the first thing I'd tackle would be getting all the machinery and equipment in top shape. When I first enter most of the plants I work with, there machinery and equipment is running...for the most part...but not very well. C-clamps, duct tape, and binding twine abound. Loose electrical connections, exposed wires, and open electric panels are common. Oil, air and water leaks are so prevalent that they aren't attended to any longer; the oil and water on the floor and the constant hiss of air has become part of the "manufacturing scenery".
I worked with a company that owned several plants that extruded PVC conduit and pipe. Several of the plants were having scrap problems. A quick effort at pareto analysis by an employee team that I facilitated showed that there seemed to be no consistently occurring type of scrap. It was if one studied loss of gas mileage and found that, during one week, there were lots of miles driven in the mountains, but the next week, the front end needed alignment, and the week after that, the engine timing was off.
So, I took the team out onto the plant floor and told them that we were going to walk down each extrusion line and make a list of everything that was wrong with each line, no matter how small. (We weren't, in this case, going to look at potential improvements or enhancements to the lines, just corrections of faults.) Every place we saw rust, duct tape, C-clamps, binding twine, missing parts, oil, grease, something broken, or a "make do", we made a note of it. We focused on the lines that had the worst scrap histories.
In the short run, we got resentment and resistance from the maintenance manager. In the longer run, things worked out and scrap finally started trending down.
(A quick note: This was a plant that I had not helped with 5S. For a variety of reasons, none of them very good ones, we had never conducted 5S workshops at that particular plant. If you're thinking that 5S might have addressed this issue before it became a problem...you're right.)
I've pretty much decided that the first thing I'd tackle would be getting all the machinery and equipment in top shape. When I first enter most of the plants I work with, there machinery and equipment is running...for the most part...but not very well. C-clamps, duct tape, and binding twine abound. Loose electrical connections, exposed wires, and open electric panels are common. Oil, air and water leaks are so prevalent that they aren't attended to any longer; the oil and water on the floor and the constant hiss of air has become part of the "manufacturing scenery".
I worked with a company that owned several plants that extruded PVC conduit and pipe. Several of the plants were having scrap problems. A quick effort at pareto analysis by an employee team that I facilitated showed that there seemed to be no consistently occurring type of scrap. It was if one studied loss of gas mileage and found that, during one week, there were lots of miles driven in the mountains, but the next week, the front end needed alignment, and the week after that, the engine timing was off.
So, I took the team out onto the plant floor and told them that we were going to walk down each extrusion line and make a list of everything that was wrong with each line, no matter how small. (We weren't, in this case, going to look at potential improvements or enhancements to the lines, just corrections of faults.) Every place we saw rust, duct tape, C-clamps, binding twine, missing parts, oil, grease, something broken, or a "make do", we made a note of it. We focused on the lines that had the worst scrap histories.
In the short run, we got resentment and resistance from the maintenance manager. In the longer run, things worked out and scrap finally started trending down.
(A quick note: This was a plant that I had not helped with 5S. For a variety of reasons, none of them very good ones, we had never conducted 5S workshops at that particular plant. If you're thinking that 5S might have addressed this issue before it became a problem...you're right.)
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