left corner "production" - right corner "maintenance" - let's the fight begin !!

The Bean counters , Planning, maintenance and production should work works together as a team.

its nomal things, look at microsoft OS, develope, release, patch and maintain and new version.

every compter uses are getting use to it.

Just to be clear about the questions I asked, I talking about production team in a manufacture and production equipment maintenance team in this enterprise. Both are supporse to work to get the product done at the lower cost for the best quallity... is it really what's happening ?

Yeap yeap! The main problem I guess is the coordination spectrum. Since most of the time as soon as the project is about to get start someone else came up with some better ideas so everything has to be re-do it from scracth once again and again and so on, can't win. So to me coordination is the main culprit in project progressing. Oh Brothersss! You don't want to know how many times we had to re-do the installations because all of the sudden someone else shows up with a different approach and some more changes, unbelievable. Anyhow we complied the best we can. Everybody happy! And couples beers with one or two cigarettes to shut down for the day, and bye bye hasta manana! that was the routine back then. Good times somehow I can't complaint. Allset crank it up now and keep it running!

Where's my sandwich,

MC

The IT development I did for myself and is therefore the developer, maintainer, manager, bean counter and customer.

I don't like to fight with myself and things are calm. sometimes changes are dictated by equipment etc and one has to live with it.

In a team the manager must coordinate properly and have to know the workers.

There is 3 types or workers in an organization.

1) The person that is right most of the time - One has to take note of their ideas.

2) The person that is mostly wrong - you tell them you like their idea but would like to have a time and $ estimate. - Or later in the meeting you say - I think we should keep to the idea of Mr xx - and then you present the opposite of his proposal (it works like a charm).

3) the 50/50 crowd - Get rid of them as soon as you can.

I agree and gave you a GA. I would like to add when there is a fight, the next level up should get to the root of the problem and fix it. This may involve extreme measures. The two departments must work together. Maintenance must provide proper support and production must provide meaningful input.

Evan though I think your last paragraph is over the top (and, I hope, hyperbole!), I voted you a GA for the first two statements. It IS teamwork. Following the suggestions in the other posts here are the remedy. Data - it isn't everything, but it's most of it. Planning - if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Coordination - yes, left hand, there IS a right hand. Communication - and here's what that right hand is doing. Documentation - actions taken without it aren't actions, just hand-waving (left AND right).

I wonder what your intend is ? team? a factory needs many teams to match each othe for a products. why dont you mention them?

Plan team, design team, supply team and sales teams are all very important, anyone cn be shorted.

Are you developping a software for these two teams? its too small to judge.

you can refer to erpii or pret etc. to make maxium profit measure.

In our studio, due to some stupid measure ordered by some leaders, there are often took place such conflict between two departments. in fact, in large enterprise, there is also conflict existing time to time. the best way to solve it is clear duty. and have a produce manage center to judge. I vist some such enerprise, they solved it very good in way of erp or iqc. etc.

Sounds like you had a good budget and lots of support from management. I don't think most places can implement such a program that easily. Accountability, we lack a lot of that.

I can put some of the tension in perspective for you. Your other half's child from a prior marriage has a car that occasionally needs maintenance oil change, flats, tune-ups, brakes and so forth. What if once a month they backed it into the tree at the end of the drive way and you had fix that too. Would put a strain on the relationship don,t you think.

And for those of you that think cutting down the tree a solution. It's your neighbors prize cherry tree and they are not too happy about the damage to the tree ether.

The child only acknowledges you when your fixing that car. Rest the time they are under the impression you just lay on the couch and watch TV.

HeHeHe. That's a funny (although at times not so funny) illustration.

I have been in the manufacturing industry for 12 years now and have been on both sides of the fence. I currently work in the maintenance department for a large packaging company and we are in the middle of implementing a planning and scheduling process with a CMMS tool at its center.

Data is everything. Our biggest challenge is convincing "production" that 8 hours of scheduled downtime will save them 24 hours of unscheduled downtime. To do this we need data and that data is collected in our CMMS. The next biggest challenge is convincing our maintenance technicians to document everything to the point of creating metrics to monitor our documentation % (talk about a revolving door). RCM is a culture and changing a culture takes time.

Additionally, it is difficult to show a return on maintenance costs. How does a $20.00/hr technician give me a higher return than a $5.00/hr operator? Theoretically, if the company replaced the technician with 2 operators they could save 50% in overhead. This is the battle we fight. Not the production v/s maintenance war, but the cost cutting war. Every company wants to run as lean as possible and a properly designed and implemented CMMS will show what is lean and what is starving. Again, data is everything.

"Data is everything"

Really interesting. I totally agree with you. On top of the fact someone understands he should have data ... he needs to have the right tools to pick up and analyse them; you can do it manually (paper), you can do it on Excel sheet, you can do it with an internal developped database, you can do it with a "cheap" CMMS (because anyway a cmms is a cmms ... no?), with a big huge system (an expensive and big system is good because it's expensive... no?), or you can take time to look at your needs and find the right CMMS solution for you.

Do you know that for half of the SAP implementation cost (just implementation not the licence cost) you can have a best of breed CMMS system - licences, training and implementation costs included ??? This help a lot to decrease maintenance expenses and use a maintenance budget for the right things.

I have found that crystal reports is really effective in extracting and manipulating data.

"Additionally, it is difficult to show a return on maintenance costs. How does a $20.00/hr technician give me a higher return than a $5.00/hr operator?"

The Technician is aiding the operator. With out the piece of equipment how much would be produce with out it. How skilled a craftsman would be needed to produce the few with out the equipment. You could replace every technician with operators money for money. With out the machines that they are operating how many could they produce. Its a team effort production produces with the aid of machinery maintained by technicians.

I totally agree with you, it takes a team.

The problem is there is often no direct correlation between the technician and cost per unit produced. For example; an operator's labor will be charged directly against the units produced, the higher the wages the higher the costs. A technician's labor (and/or parts) are usually charged to a job and that job is usually not associated with a production run. That is why the CMMS and data collection are so vital. It has to be proven that a properly implemented PM (as an example) will increase equipment efficiency by 1% and that 1% will save "x" amount of dollars over the course of a year.

Maintenance people are prima donnas.

Production people are slugs.

Sales people are give away artists.

HR people are litigation avoiders.

Bean counters are in fairyland.

Customer service is on the wrong team.

Management is clueless.

Somehow you get it done..... or you don't.

A couple of weeks ago I got THE NEWS. I have been working at this plastics processing plant for four years. The first two in production, the last two in maintenance.

A couple of weeks ago, they promoted me to Plant Engineer. That means I have the whole enchilada.

The biggest issue I see is the lack of resposibility on both sides: Production says they can´t produce because the machine is not in optimum condition. Maintenance says that production is causing down time, because of malpractice in operation.

I conclude with this:

Maintenance has got to fix things and get it right the first time (fix the machine and try it out). Write down what you did to it and follow up on your repair to see if it was effective. Use a tracking system and ask the operators how things are.

Production has to train its people in the use of the equipment the RIGHT way. Don´t train people by using coaches on the floor without having someone checking up on what this person is being taught.

Production and maintenance in accordance with quality assurance work together or else everyone ends up on the street.

On my earlier post I got a lot of off topic scores. My Bad for being cryptic! What I meant is that there is more to a manufacturer than just prod. and maint. All departments have a role to play and often think the others have no redeeming value. However, in this shrinking manufacturing economy if the players can't make the team function and function well, there will be no second chances.

Yeah! No escape from the 'rat race' scenarios everywhere these days, can't win. Then in top of everything you have the 'BULLYING' factors affecting the harmony conditions of the trade itself. Some issues have to be settle down first I guess before the orchestra may sounds 'perfect'. I don't know! Is hard to tell sometimes but just hang in there for the moment and take a break for the moment to find out what they really wants be done in the last minute. We are not mind readers anyway so better apply some 'Murphy Law' once in a while or like an old folk used to said --make it belly up to get it straigth-- I don't agree many times with him but apparently he does made some sense as well too some how as time pass by. Unbelievable! Anyhow let me grab a little beer now to make up my mind. Definetly! Nice interesting data here again on CR-4 absolutly...

Allset Done,

MC

I thought your post was a hoot! I like it even though when taken too seriously I should have been offended by at least two of the lines in post 11.