Are Your Maintenance Procedures on Paper?

NO as in NO. Some personalities will do well in test, some others in real life. You cannot test in the classroom for real life. You have to risk real life situation for real life testing. That is the best I Know of. Sorry..

I think that on-the-job training is the way to go, this of course is assuming that the maintenance professional is doing his job correctly with the technicians............also providing that all and sundry are up to date in their knowledge of all machinery under their care, particularly any new machinery. All machinery should have maintenance cards, or e book schedules that are signed off by the person doing the procedure.........both are probably the way to to go, and all hard copies filed correctly and stored in a safe place.

Many years ago preventive maintenance was a bit of "hit and miss," but with the knowledge gained over the years and through experience PM is quite good now and manufacturers instructions should be adhered to.

If techs wish to further their career, they will of course require the extra theoretical knowledge along with practical assessments at their place of learning.

On the job training limits the person to the practices and procedures already in place in that company. Outside educational sources allows a person to bring in new perspectives. Things that can better influence improvements.

Everyone at your plant is doing their jobs the best they know how. If you yell at them because mistakes are made or because you want to see improvement in efficiency, whatever. You have to bring in some outside resources to stimulate their professional growth. Otherwise, they're going to just keep doing what they've always been doing and nothing will change.

Agreed. Never 10 yrs experience, but 1 yr experience, ten times over !

SOP's [standard operating procedures] in & of themselves are of limited value

a way to capture the everexpanding knowledge base is valuable

ways to document & access this knowledgebase will save time & money in the future

most of the learning for a new piece of equipment, happens at 2 times:

1) installation & the 1st few months of ownership, the most knowledgeable in house experts are generally involved during this time

2) A few years in [depending on the equipment] when things wear out for the 1st time

there is a balance to be struck between a system that is useful & one that just generates reams [or harddrives/cd's] of forms full of useless drivel

systems like SAP [what an apt name] can become monsters that consume an organization

documentation should be a means to an end

SOP's control the variables. As long as there is a set standard operating procedure that the employees can reference and adhere too they can't go wrong and mistakes are minimized and they help to narrow down where mistakes were made. A supervisor really can't stay on top of a crew where each is doing their own thing to get the job done. When things go wrong it's too easy to blame something else and nothing gets resolved and the wrong person takes the heat.

If the employees are empowered with the responsibility of making changes to the SOP's they take ownership of them and start looking for things to improve. Then they hold a meeting and discuss any proposed changes that might make things go quicker or less costly or time saving. They will stay on top of the SOP's and follow them more closely because now those procedures are theirs and they can more easily back each other up and minimize rework or recognize where training is needed.

The limitations come from shoving SOP's down people's throats and they have no say in the matter.

specific SOP's are easier to formulate for production, than for maintenance

Troubleshooting is an exercise in critical thinking & failure analysis, as you pointed out in your reply to Mobi, outside sources of education can be very helpful

mentoring by greybeards [experience] can also help

teams work better than individuals hoarding information in an effort to make themselves indispensible

I disagree with your first sentence.

The US Navy has a maintenence requirement card for every piece of equipment used on board ship. If there is a step in the card that is missing then the maintenance person submits a change request. If there is a step that is obsolete then a change request is submitted to have it removed. The maintenance person is required to follow that card and they are spot checked to ensure that the maintenance was done according to that card. They've been doing that for years and has been quite successful with it and their program is benchmarked for maintenance by other industries.

that's PMs more than trouble shooting

most companies can't/won't afford that kind of database

the navy [military in general] does it out of necessity, since the entire staff is in effect temps.

many of the procedures are developed by contractors that design/build the systems & add the cost into the purchase price

Let's not confuse 'maintenance' and 'operating practices'. Much depends on the nature of the industry, and what equipment is used.

Example:

In a 24-hr manufacturing environment where downtime due to equipment failure may result in big losses, you need the maintenance done right, first time, every time. More importantly, you'd like to be able to predict the downtime, and plan for it, so that the job can be done at a time of your own choosing, not while your pants are around your ankles.

Then you'd like all of your maintenance people to be able to handle the repair equally well, so the item is returned to service as-new, so that you once more have a predictable repair cycle. This entails performing the work to a uniform standard, every time, and that requires a detailed procedure. Not only that but the failure/ repair history needs to be recorded, in order to trend root causes, and predict life-cycle.

Now you can predict cash flows for equipment and repair, anticipate purchases of long lead-time spares etc..

Further, some manufacturing environments are hazardous eg oil refining, where poor maintenance practices can lead to catastrophic results including loss-of-life. Such case is obviously also true for military applications (navy already mentioned).

How does the ensuing enquiry determine fault or blame without set procedures having been followed, and history kept ? I fully understand 'competent and reliable person' , but times have changed..

you are describing the end game, a fully matured system in [most likely] a large operation

going back to the original question, you will find operations at various places in their evolution

here are a few of the bench marks

moving from oral to written, many small operations will linger in a state where a manager, tells people what to do. the whole thing is very seat of the pants

the next step is from writing down the work that needs to be done to. a more formal system of work orders & preventative maintenance. this is the most painful step in most cases, it's hard to keep everyone following a procedure.

many people from all the different levels will try to fall back to the oral tradition. how a system deals with exceptions to the standard procedure, will determine the success [buy in] of the system

another common failure is having a system, but not doing anything with the information.

this can happen when an outside entity requires compliance for their quality system, the information generated appears to be relevant, but is really just personnel filing out a check list as a job requirement. the larger the number of lists someone fills out, the less likely they are going to do so in a serious manner. the completion of the paperwork becomes more important than the information. management must lead by example, people are very sensitive & will figure out if a boss has truly bought in

the overall system needs to be well designed to eliminate redundancy, the information gathered should be shared by various systems within an organization

inspections done by production personnel can be more valuable than the ones done by maintenance, they spend much more time day to day with the equipment. Production are the operational experts... many operations have production handling minor adjustments, lubrication & cleaning

while it is a nice goal to have all the maintenance personnel fully trained in all areas, but few organizations can afford to have very many highly skilled employees. this can also cause other problems, you can't have too many smart people in too small a place, they don't always play well with others.

the traits that make someone good at advanced troubleshooting, don't always lend themselves to being a R & R guy. conversely a tech with the attention to detail to be able to rebuild "as new" may not be a leader of men

I understand your points perfectly, especially you can't have too many smart people in too small a place.....been there, done that, got the T-shirt, and tend to agree.

Perhaps we read the question differently ?

But, would your plant benefit from developing a standard procedure book?

I could have just answered 'YES', but the question was almost naive, so I elaborated a little.

I could have just answered 'YES', but the question was almost naive, so I elaborated a little.
Welcome to CR4 home of the bad blog question this will end up as a link at the bottom right of one of the Global Spec newsletters
I wasn't contradicting what you had written, more trying to supplement...
much of this stuff is very contextual
figured to give anyone following the link something to read
after all we are the show[content]

I'm not sure about tests - but written procedures are absolutely essential. While it may not be possible to cover hundreds of potential scenarios just documenting the top 10 most common cases, for example, would be helpful.

On-the-job training by an experienced manager or co-worker is great. But what if there's suddenly some turnover in the organization and everybody who does job X leaves? The new employee doesn't know the procedures - let alone everything that should be done.