by Mark Brunner, Reliability and Systems Superintendant-Wire, OneSteel Rod Bar and Wire, Newcastle, NSW, Australia
OneSteel is a fully integrated, global manufacturer and distributor of steel and finished steel products, self-sufficient in both iron ore and scrap metal, with revenues in excess of $6 billion Australian dollars. They have major manufacturing facilities across Australia as well facilities in New Zealand, Asia and the Pacific and the USA.
OneSteel employees approximately 11500 employees and manufactures and distributes products that are used in the construction, manufacturing, housing, rail, mining and agricultural industries.
With a significantly diversified range of assets in many locations, improvements in Asset Management have been based on the knowledge and drive of the local plant employees, hence all plants are at different points in their reliability journey. In 2006 this was acknowledged as a significant issue for the business so the Operational Excellence group was formed to assist business units with setting up common systems and practices to improve asset reliability and hence output. One of the initiatives was developing the “Eight Critical Elements” model. So what are they?
1. Lubrication. For those of you with rotating equipment; if there was one thing in the eight critical elements that you need to get right, this is it. It is obvious to state that machines break when they are not lubricated correctly, but how often is poor lubrication the cause of unplanned downtime in your business? A well-managed lubrication strategy is the place to start.
2. Condition management (PdM). The most efficient and effective maintenance organisations will maximise their condition-based maintenance. After all, why overhaul equipment when it is not showing any signs of wear? Often a condition-based strategy will reduce the amount of overhaul work saving material and labor costs as well as reducing the instances of early life failure.
3. Maintenance standards and practices. Maintenance tasks must be completed to a standard to ensure the long-term reliability of the equipment. Do you have the right quality oil, the correct bearings and other materials? Has the equipment been put back together with the correct clearances? Has your DC motor brushes been bedded in correctly? Does your equipment start on time after work is done, and keeps running? These standards are closely linked with how the job is done. Are the right tools used for the task? Are your tradesmen qualified for the tasks they complete? Eliminate rework - Do it Once, do it right.
4. Work Management. The best organisations spend 80% of their time on planned and scheduled work. Planning and scheduling can only be improved if a well-defined work management process with measurable KPI’s has been developed and is followed.
5. Reliability, process and practices audits. There is a very common saying in reliability circles these days being, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure”. If you don’t know the reliability level of your equipment how can you possibly improve it? How do you know that the practices you have in place are being followed and are they correct to begin with? Auditing your processes and practices is a must so you can acknowledge your reality. This becomes the starting point for improvement.
6. CMMS. (Computerised Maintenance Management System). Your CMMS is your maintenance management database, and like any database, if the input is bad the output will also be bad. A well utilised and managed CMMS is an invaluable tool that should be in close alignment with Work Management system.
7. Shutdowns. Shutdowns are undesirable events as they are often costly and reduce plant availability. To minimise the effect on output, organisations need to manage shutdowns so all work is completed safely, to a defined standard, and within the shortest possible time frame. This requires detailed planning and scheduling utilising many task lists and procedures.
8. Maintenance strategies. A strategy is the who, what, when where and how of maintaining your assets. Strategies are not “set and forget”, they are living documents that should be reviewed and improved continuously. What methods do you use to review strategies? Do the strategies address the failure modes of your assets? Who is involved in the review process? The review and development of strategies is a critical component of Asset Management.
The idea of generating a survey on Onesteel’s eight critical elements came after attending IMC-2008. Part of the communication at the conference was related to participating in an on-line survey, which provided instant feedback on accumulated results. I found this quite interesting, but the data avaliable was limited to overall results from all respondents.
The format of this survey will allow endless variations of reports generated from the data entered. For example all questions will be able to be reported by business type, business size, country and position of people who answered the survey. Some examples of very specific possible reports are:
Comparison of Manufacturing-Metal companies against Aerospace.
Comparison of responses from tradesmen/craftsmen against responses from VP’s
Comparison of small companies with larger ones in like industries.
Comparison of results between Countries
Many more….....
The final report will only be limited by the imagination of the respondents. Please spend the half an hour or so responding to this survey. If you want direct feedback from the report please provide your email details at the end of the survey.
Comments (7)
1) Posted 6:31 am, 06 May 2009 by Gobin Sookram
2) Posted 7:19 am, 07 May 2009 by Gary Tyne
3) Posted 4:35 pm, 12 May 2009 by Euclides Prieto-Navarro
4) Posted 2:05 am, 13 May 2009 by Mark Wolbers
At Onesteel these elements are embedded into the eight elements, for example failure analysis is part of the work management and strategy elements, while contractor management fits within most of the elements.
The key to improvement is applying continuous improvement processes to all of the elements that are important to your business. If you found the survey worthwhile, please pass the link onto others within your businesses.
5) Posted 6:34 am, 14 May 2009 by Mark Brunner
With that said the single biggest issue engineers have is a methodology to ensure these elements are implemented and maintained.
Engineer have a deep interest in the detail and sometimes this detail at element level can cloud thier ability to make it all work.
To do this they need tools to document the business processes that make these elements work.The tool we are using is basic Swimlaning of roles clearly identifying responsibilities and skills .
These business process should be measured to ensure our systems are working and continuously improved.
Engineering traditionally go for the big bang theory instead of the steady evolutional approach.
Engineers need to transfer their thought/stratagies into corparate memory to ensure the process continue after they leave for another exciting project.
Just a thought.
6) Posted 7:20 am, 11 November 2009 by Gary E Smith
you have defined 8 strategies well, which I agree a vital in set any maintenance department sucess.
Some thoughts:
1.Shutdowns are not as expense a rountine maintenance and is an effective strategy for equipment management and operations availability.
2. Work Management is not only planning and scheduling, it a business approach to removing variation out of human intervention, operational needs are ten time more effective that maintenance. Maintenance Planning and scheduling are improtent as long as operational planning and scheduling are part of the process.
3. Reliability is NOT a maintenance function, it delivery is across the business, biggest effectiveness is in design, then in processes, and finally in maintenance.
4. the are three way equipment can fail, typicslly 50% is random driven by poor design, construction, operations, or business decision to over produce beyond capability. 20% due to integrity, material failure, 30% due to wear out, typically rotating failures, the are a lot of influnence to maintenace and 8 stategies must dominate across all business functions.
7) Posted 12:34 am, 17 January 2010 by Craig Collard