How To Decrease Downtime and Increase Productivity

All maintenance activities of the workforce must be documented, this includes breakdown repairs, callouts, preventive maintenance, replacement maintenance, overhauls, and Testing & Inspection work. Maintenance work by production line employees must be included, whether or not the employee is listed as in maintenance. These activities can then be mined for maintenance information "gold".

List all repetitive work

One of the first things that a maintenance supervisor should be concerned with is repetitive work. Any and all repetitive work should be identified and isolated. This list can then be prioritized as to criticality to production lines and plant effectiveness.

After the list has been rearranged, each task item must be analyzed to determine if the repetitive work is actually aimed at fixing a problem or fixing a symptom of a deeper problem. Fixing symptoms has the immediate effect of allowing production to rapidly resume, but does nothing for the underlying problem. In fact, the underlying problem may get worse.

Development of a solution

As soon as a high priority problem has been identified and analyzed, work should begin on development of a solution to the problem. Once the solution to the problem has been developed, plans can be made for purchasing required parts and material and then scheduling the manpower and production time to implement the solution.

Maintenance planning of machine repairs

Complete documentation is absolutely essential for control of the maintenance process. How can the process of maintenance be under control if the person in charge has no complete idea of what the total maintenance activities and costs are? If needed repairs are not documented and planned for, a considerable portion of these needed repairs and modifications will be forgotten or ignored until production tries to run again.

Justify machine repair cost

Planning essential repairs and modifications requires documentation. It is easy to say that we need a modification to this particular machine and output of this line can be increased 25%. However, with no planning, six months later no work has been done on the idea. Even if the idea were actually to be somehow implemented, the output increase may not come to fruition.

If no research was carried out on the rest of the line equipment, there is no certain way of determining line and equipment capacity. How would the machine be able to increase output 25% if its current output was already 100% of the lines actual output capacity? All the costs associated with increasing the one machine's capacity would have been wasted, unless additional work was undertaken to bring the rest of the production line up to the output of the one machine.

A production line's output capacity is only as great as it's least piece of equipment. That bears repeating. A production line is only as fast as it's slowest piece of equipment. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Prioritize your maintenance planning list

With documentation, the list of priority work problems to solve can be reduced fairly rapidly, at first. The list of easily solved problem areas will gradually be replaced by higher cost work items. Research and planning may reveal that the costs involved with eliminating some repetitive repairs are more than living with the repetitive repairs.

Compare production downtime after solution

After implementation of the solution, production downtime for that particular item can be documented and compared to pre-implementation production output. Maintenance time not spent on working on that solved problem can also be documented for the same time period. These savings can then be extrapolated for an entire year and presented to management to justify the cost of repairs.

Without documentation, research, and planning, the person in charge of making the decisions is working in the dark. With documentation, research, and planning, the great wall of China can be built, or the Panama Canal, or the Aswan Dam, or a world-class maintenance organization.

Maintenance Policy and Procedures is a plan to organize your maintenance department. Following the plan will cause you to document your department's activities. Other department's maintenance activities and interactions with the Maintenance Department will also be documented. With the documentation, planning can begin. For information on this article and Maintenance Policy and Procedures Manual, contact the author.

Larry Bush

About the Author: Larry Bush has been an electrician for 47 years, and in maintenance management for 22 years. Download his new e-Book "Maintenance Policy and Procedures Manual" !! http://www.reliability-consultant.com

---

Print Buying Consultant

Ten Money Saving Tips for Print ManagersDespite their stated desire to realize savings from streamlining the various components associated with the print buying process, it's been my experience over the years, that many... Read More

Procrastination and JDI!

In a management role procrastination can seriously hold back progress and demotivate individuals and teams who, full of innovation and drive to move forward, get frustrated and confused when action is held up.... Read More

Preventative Maintenance of Company Delivery Vehicles

If you have company delivery vehicles at your small or medium sized business you should have a preventative maintenance schedule and procedures for employees who are drivers of these vehicles. When discussing preventative... Read More

The Seven Cs: Partnership Danger Signs - Communication Breakdown

An ongoing series of articles exploring the seven critical areas that can indicate a partnership is in trouble.COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWNThe "Seven Cs" are the danger signs that indicate your business partnership, or any partnership... Read More

Spinning Gold from Straw: Low-Cost Employee Retention and Motivation Tools in a Changing Economy

New York, NY, February 25, 2005 ? Employee retention and motivation?why should employers care? A storm is brewing. National productivity was up 3.9% in the second quarter and 1.9% in the third quarter... Read More

10 Resolutions For The New Year!!

Each year many people create a list of resolutions designed to help them improve their lives. As Business Leaders, we also need to take a look at our business lives and find ways... Read More

A Facilitators Guide to Running a Stakeholder Analysis Workshop

This facilitator's guide to running a stakeholder analysis workshop is for people whose success depends on getting other people involved with their objectives.It contains two exercises, one to work with stakeholder groups, and... Read More

Leadership Skills Means Turnover is Not a Problem

"Ha!" you say. "For someone to make a statement like that, they obviously haven't worked in the real world and certainly have never had to run a company." Well, let me assure you.... Read More

Business Relationship Germs

In management seminars I often compare debt to an infection. A reasonable amount of debt will not kill a business, but too much debt will. While most businesses carry a substantial amount of... Read More

10 Fool Proof Ways To Intensify Your Profits

1. Create benefit intensifiers for your list of ad copy benefits. Example, The Benefit: "Save More Time", The Benefit's Intensifier: "Never Seen Before".2. Use a little humor in your ad copy. It could... Read More

Leadership Skill: How to Handle Difficult Conversations

A good leader has the ability to empower others. It is important that a leader develop people who want to share and help in carrying out the goals of the organization. If it... Read More

Giving a Good Appraisal Interview

Although this performance discussion is an opportunity for you to discuss your employee's work during a given period of time, it is also, and importantly, a time for you and your employee to... Read More

Entitlement Programs Kill Productivity

In articles I've written over the years, I have used "laissez-faire," a term more frequently used to characterize governments than businesses, to describe a rather laid-back management style. When I use this term,... Read More

6 Steps To Effective Management During Change

Take the pain out of gain and decrease the upheaval surrounding change by following six commonsense steps to effective management.Step 1: Establish ObjectivesThe process must begin with a clear and detailed statement of... Read More

Innovation Management ? Eliciting Dominant Ideas

Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be... Read More

What Makes a Good Appraisal Interview?

WHAT MAKES A GOOD APPRAISAL INTERVIEW?Here is a tip for supervisors that will contribute to a successful appraisal interview. Give advance notice. Employees like to have advance notice of the appraisal session so... Read More

How To Own A Business... Instead Of A Job

Every business is run by someone who took on a risk with their time and money. So I believe that person should be rewarded. Too often as business owners we forget to enjoy... Read More

Shrinkage Control

What has been your store's shrinkage experience for the last two years? What will it be this year? If it has not been as good as it should have been, now is the... Read More

Building Bridges of Communication

Building a 'bridge of understanding' between parties is fundamental if your business communication is to succeed. If you are a consultant to a client, or a salesperson attempting a closer... Read More

Delegating Responsibility

Too many managers waste both time and energy performing tasks an employee could perform just as well, thereby lowering productivity while raising operating costs. The answer to the problem is easy-delegation. However, many... Read More

Saying One Thing, Doing Another...

This week I was asked to speak at an internal conference for a bank. The subject was how to build a great customer experience. However, the reality was somewhat different to the title.... Read More

Provisioning/User Management System Upgrades: Part II ? Building Awareness And Building Approval

Somewhere in the world is a person who wants to see their provisioning/user management systems get a sorely needed upgrade. But they seem to be getting nowhere.The technical requirements are unarticulated. Key decisionmakers... Read More

Five Essential Hiring Practices

Recruiting and hiring are often done in haste, leaving the company to repent in the long run. Today, there's a reason to be concerned about negligent hiring. Negligent hiring means you and your... Read More

Outsourced Learning: Are You Ready for Learning BPO?

As the business world enters a period of hyper-competitiveness, every business process will be subjected to examination and possible restructuring. We have already seen outsourcing and offshoring used to an extent what nobody... Read More

Comparing Ancient Programs from the East to Modern Programs like Stephen Covey.

Comparing Corporate and Personal goal attainment programs that have developed over thousands of years with those of modern day legends such as Covey - "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People"In the 1990s... Read More

Power of Pinpointing Accountability

I have always said that if I were to write a book on effective management principles, the first chapter in that book would be about the importance of pinpointing responsibility among an owner's... Read More

How Managers Can Turn Failures Into Successes

Although there are real, external reasons for managerial difficulty ? including massive reorganization after takeovers and the realities of discrimination due to age, sex, and race ? managers fail most often for reasons... Read More

Creativity and Innovation Management ? Idea Progression

Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be... Read More

ISO 9001 2000, Getting Started on The Route To Registration

ISO 9001 2000, Getting startedBefore starting the ISO 9001 2000 route to registration you will need to have the top management on board. This can be achieved by highlighting to top management the... Read More