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Hats Off |
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An essay
about global operational context by Joel Levitt, Author,
Lean Maintenance in a Nutshell Editors note: You can learn more from Joel Levitt at IMC-2006 - The 21st International Maintenance Conference I just completed 2 very different assignments and I would like to acknowledge some companies in the field. Next time you see a Caterpillar construction vehicle take off your hat. We have a lot of climate variations on our planet. I’ve had the privilege to visit two of them. I saw heavy equipment at work and I was impressed. Imagine driving snow and sub zero temperatures for most of the year, dust and cold rain the rest (and a few glorious days) and you have the conditions in the interior of Alaska. Now imagine a large reserve of a product that sells for around $25 a ton that you have to move a ton or more of dirt to get to and you have the only coal mine in Alaska, Usibelli Coal. Their coal is very low sulfur (which is good) and also low BTU per ton (which is bad). It is mostly above ground and located near some of the most beautiful landscape in the world, the Denali National Park in Healy, Alaska. Here in the heart of Alaska I was tasked to study the operation and make cost saving suggestions and also give them advice on choosing a CMMS. The complication here was that the average age of the master repair people was 54 and at least 20% are looking at retirement within 2 to 3 years. It was fitting because some of the hardest working equipment was bought when the crew were young too. It is so cold that some of the equipment is started in October and not shut down until May. The cold increases the viscosity of both the motor oil and hydraulic oil to the point that starting the unit is dangerous to the health of the equipment! Even with the auxiliary heaters it is better to keep it running. It helps that they mine 24/7 in the winter (of course there is only a few hours of sunlight in the winter anyway so working in the middle of the night is not too much different then day time). They have a Cat heavy fleet and the Cats just keep crawling. They were having an unusually large number of field service calls. I was thinking that perhaps the equipment was not up to the sever service. When we looked at the problems most seemed to be traceable to lack of basic maintenance or accumulated deterioration that had never been addressed. It turns out that a few years ago they had a drop in sales and had a layoff. They never fully rehired the crews even though the sales had recovered. (hiring is particularly tough in that neighborhood). There was too much work for the current crew. It wasn’t the equipment at all. About as far away as you can get is the desert of the Arabian Peninsula. My next assignment (less than a week at home!) was in Dubai, UAE. Dubai is across the Gulf from Iran and a little bump out on Saudi Arabia. Fortunately for me it cooled off while I was here. When I arrived it was about 45 C which after 2 or 3 minutes of heavy math I realized was 113 F. It felt dangerous just to be outside mid day let alone working. The brightness of the sun was painful. I was tasked to give a series of classes in maintenance management to a variety of groups in the maintenance department of Emarat, the largest local gasoline (complete with stations, convenience stores, terminals, buildings, and of course, fleet) and bottled gas distributor in the country. They are trying to perform maintenance at a world class level under the typical Gulf conditions. To complicate their problem the maintenance crew speaks 4 different languages. After the heat the second thing you realize is that the dust and sand is blowing everywhere. My eyes were dry and irritated for the whole time. They struggle with sand contamination everywhere. Some particles are smaller than talc. Filters, and breathers are continually getting fouled. Keeping oil clean is a challenge. The whole maintenance challenge is exacerbated by the high ambient temperatures. Breakdown rates were excessive considering the amount of PM being done. They kept plugging away. I assumed the source was sand and heat. I made some suggestions to look at the root cause of the failures. They did and it wasn’t the sand but rather the tires that caused the road calls. The country seemed to be under complete reconstruction. As a result there was construction debris everywhere. FOD (in airport lingo FOD is Foreign Object Damage to aircraft) was killing the tires. So the heavy original equipment manufacturers had even worked the sand and sun problem. Construction is booming. The skyline was dominated by tower cranes and the ground was covered by crawlers of every description. Here was where I realized that the heavy equipment manufacturers should be acknowledged. I saw the same Caterpillar units I saw in Alaska in this opposite environment. It made me think about the difficulties of designing heavy equipment that will survive in both environments. It is quite an achievement. My hat for one is off to you, the heavy equipment OEMs. |
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