Leadership in Maintenance Management
Torbjorn Idhammar President, IDCON INC
Classroom reliability training accompanied by practical experience could be the end of wasting money on maintenance courses and seminars that your team quickly forgets.
Companies spend thousands of dollars on maintenance training, but often, very little of the knowledge gained during maintenance and reliability training courses is ever used in the plant.
In fact, it is common for trainees to forget some of the lessons learnt, just weeks after the event. One way to help resolve this phenomenon could be to give classroom maintenance training in conjunction with practical experience.
It may be a good idea to economically justify all training seminars that are given in a plant. There is not much point in holding a reliability training seminar if it isn’t for eventual economical gain.
The reliability training must have a purpose decided before it starts and should never be performed unless there is a plan to implement the lessons learned. Once the training is finished, mill management should check that the implementation plan is being followed.
Maintenance Matters
Management should also communicate to trainees that...
Training in the maintenance department of a plant often focuses on reliability of equipment and the lowering of maintenance cost.
A good example is alignment training. Alignment is usually carried out by mechanics when installing a new pump, motor, or gearbox, for example. Conventional training on alignment usually focuses on how to use a laser alignment tool. This approach is fair enough, as most mechanics need to know how to use such equipment.
However, a better approach could be to include an implementation and/or an improvement plan. An alignment plant standard could be reinforced, and a few pieces of equipment could be checked in the plant so that the class can see how well-aligned their mill equipment already is (or isn't!). Tip: Realign some of the equipment so that readings can be taken before and after. Draw up an improvement plan with a goal to improve alignment during the training.
Many training seminars teach the theory of what to do and, at best, give some hands-on examples in the classroom. Admittedly, some plants do very well by training a few key people who then are able to transform what they have learned into an implementation process. However, most plants will put a bunch of people through a training class, only for the training never to be heard of again.
If the lessons can be implemented in the trainees’ mill during the training session, practical problems such as safety, finding the right tools, getting time from machine operators, informing supervisors, and finding spare parts become a part of the training.
Jump Start
IDCON has structured a training class called the Reliability Jump Start program, based on the above principles.
The program evolved from a training seminar at a plant in China. The Chinese mill wanted the company to teach the concepts and then go out into the mill and demonstrate them.
Our training course in essential care of equipment used to last for two or three days. After implementing this new training idea, the course now lasts for three weeks.
Despite taking more time, the experience did show that there are many benefits to practicing concepts that have just been taught. The participants are much more likely to remember the concepts and understand why the ideas taught in the classroom are so important. Also, the trainees become more motivated to get involved in the training because the concepts are applied directly in their work environment.
Be Prepared
In order to use this type of training method, a visit to the plant, mill, or mine is usually needed in order to prepare for the training and to develop a good plan for the implementation process.
Management should put together a plan which including the number of working hours required for development of condition monitoring routes, information meetings with supervisors and planners, getting computers for data entry, and research of current procedures, etc.
In IDCON’s program, two to three teams are selected to train in PM/ECCM (Preventive Maintenance/Essential Care and Condition Monitoring). One (or more) piece(s) of equipment is assigned to each team, such as hydraulic units, agitators or pumps, and as much data as possible is collected for each piece of equipment.
Vibration readings, alignments, oil analysis, infrared pictures, reliability data, and equipment history are retrieved from the current systems. But in many cases, a lack of data in the plant database means that readings have to be collected in the field a few weeks before the training starts.
Examples of good and bad reliability issues are normally collected in the mill during the preparation period. Usually, it is easiest to take lots of pictures in the plant. Issues such as lubrication, alignment, corrosion, balancing, and filtration can then be brought up during the course with visual examples displayed.
Reliable
Each team is responsible for improving the reliability of their assigned equipment during the training period. Mill management should begin by clarifying why the plant wants to improve reliability and the expectations of the attendees.
The first part of the training includes explaining the measures that can be taken to prevent failures from happening. It is a fact that some 60-80% of all equipment malfunctions are caused by failure to get the basics of maintenance right, including:
These topics are discussed in the classroom and then performed in the field. The teams usually start with detailed cleaning of the equipment assigned to them, and, because a significant amount of time is spent at this stage, several problems are often found.
The photos show a detailed cleaning effort at one North American mill. The main hydraulic unit for one of its paper machines was cleaned and many problems were found. As a consequence, work orders for leaks, buzzing solenoid valves, and damaged bases were written.
Other examples of reliability improvements using this type of program could include:
Inspection
The second part of the training course is dedicated to inspection techniques. A number of techniques are taught in the classroom and tried in the field. Methods such as oil and vibration analysis, the use of stroboscopes and infrared guns and simply looking, listening, feeling and smelling are used to investigate the condition of the team’s equipment.
A typical example of an improvement that could come up during training is guard modification. Teams often discover that guards need to be modified to inspect belts, couplings, or chains that are running. A new guard allows a visual inspection with a stroboscope or flashlight while equipment is operational.
Shiny groove bottoms or signs of a worn belt can easily be seen after the modification. Without guard modification, the only possible early warning signal before breakdown is a smoking belt or other obvious signs of serious failure.
The last part of the training program focuses on documenting the preventive maintenance process, taught earlier in the training. The teams set up the documentation for their equipment. Both shutdown PM inspections and on-the-run inspections are evaluated.
The idea is to move as many of the inspections as possible to running inspections rather than shutdown inspections, and then to document the new procedures systematically. Figure 3 shows a visual condition monitoring sheet that a team in a manufacturing plant designed during training.
By combining training and implementation during training seminars, it is more likely that results are achieved in a mill. The methods must then be implemented on all equipment in the plant using the concepts taught in the training. This is a major task, of course, but the teams have done it before and will have an excellent example to refer to in their plant.
Training seminars in general should focus more on implementation than classroom training, as it is during implementation that problems are more often discovered. Mills seeking to put on a training seminar should try to make an implementation plan and ask for implementation training in the real plant environment rather than just hands-on examples in the classroom.
Check out IDCON’s Preventive Maintenance Manual and/or our Condition Monitoring Standards
UPCOMING TRAINING
Work Management - Maintenance Planning and Scheduling
Join online or in person
January 21-22, 2025 UT-Knoxville TN
May 19-20, 2025 Raleigh, NC
Effective maintenance planning and scheduling are keys to improving maintenance and reliability.
This course delivers the fundamentals and tools that any planner or scheduler needs to do their best work. Managers will benefit by understanding the roles and responsibility of these positions.
You’ll receive IDCON’s Maintenance Planning and Scheduling book with your registration, a $99 value. Course price $1,045/person.
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Is poor maintenance planning and scheduling creating chaos, stress, and dysfunction? You want your plant running at peak performance but reactive maintenance is hampering your production.
Effective maintenance planning and scheduling has these results:
Learn:
You’ll receive IDCON’s “Maintenance Planning and Scheduling” book with your course registration, a $99 value.
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Consultant Spotlight
Torbjörn (Tor) Idhammar is President of IDCON INC and a Certified Asset Management Assessor. He has worked in over 60 plants in fourteen countries in several industries.
Tor's main responsibilities include management and training of all consultants, standardizing IDCON’s consulting approach, development of IDCON’s international business units in Australia, Russia, Scandinavia, Finland, and Southern Europe.
Beginning his career as a consultant with IDCON in 1997, Tor was embedded at client sites in the roles of Reliability Engineer, Trainer, and Project Manager. In 2000, he was promoted to Vice President to broaden IDCON’s traditional client base and expand our presence on the internet. Tor became IDCON’s President in 2009 and has expanded our strategic alliances with Reliability and Maintenance experts around the globe.
Before becoming the president, Tor worked in around 60-70 plants in 15 different countries consulting, performing reliability and maintenance assessments, conducting seminars, preventive maintenance implementations, planning and scheduling implementations, spare parts management, and root cause improvement. He has worked with industries such as steel, refining, chemical, food, mining, oil and gas, assembly, parts manufacturing, large part and machine suppliers, and other primary metals refining.
Along with consultant training, he oversees product development, sales, and marketing. Tor still does some reliability and maintenance management projects, but mostly works with quality checks on larger multi-site projects, some corporate project management, a few assessments. He enjoys doing an occasional Root cause problem elimination training as well.
Tor has authored hundreds of reliability and maintenance articles for professional publications. His latest endeavor is developing content for IDCON’s Reliability and Maintenance YouTube Channel.
Principal at FOG Group
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