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OperatiONs - plaNt MaiNteNaNCE

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OperatiONs - plaNt MaiNteNaNCE
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iMprOviNg prODuCtiON
A companys maintenance department troubleshoots, repairs, adjusts, refurbishes, and inspects all of the companys
production equipment. These departments typically carry out two types of maintenance:

Corrective maintenance
Corrective maintenance is performed to repair a piece of equipment. There are three types of corrective maintenance:
Palliative maintenance (a temporary repair that allows the equipment to be used until a permanent solution can
be found)
Curative maintenance (a repair that restores the equipment to its previous condition)
Improvement maintenance (taking advantage of a necessary repair to upgrade the equipment)
Preventive maintenance
Preventive maintenance is performed to head off problems before they occur. Managers may decide to carry out
preventive maintenance for any one of several reasons, including: to make sure a piece of equipment is safe to
operate (i.e., the consequences of a failure would be unacceptable); to save money (maintenance is cheaper than the
alternative); or for practical reasons (the equipment is only available for maintenance at certain times). There are three
types of preventive maintenance:
Scheduled maintenance (either at specifc time intervals or after the equipment has been used a certain number
of hours or has produced a certain number of units)
Conditional maintenance (triggered by process reports, measurements, or automated equipment inspections)
Forecast maintenance (if an operator has noticed a problem with the equipment)
Preventive maintenance is, of course, preferable to corrective maintenance. Because it can be scheduled and is
designed to prevent downtime, preventive maintenance can smooth production runs and limit product quality issues.
Corrective maintenance requires a larger inventory of spare parts (which ties up cash) to repair equipment in the
event of a failure.
iMprOveMeNt MEthODs
TPM (Total Productive Maintenance)
The aim of TPM is to get the highest yield possible out of production equipment throughout the equipments lifetime,
while reducing costs. In TPM, all of a companys employees are involved in improving performance:
artiClE frOM aNNual rEpOrt
testiMONial frOM a plaNt DirECtOr
testiMONial frOM a quality MaNager
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OperatiONs - plaNt MaiNteNaNCE
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All employees participate and receive training
Operators are given responsibility for production tasks and taking care of the equipment
Managers implement effective methods to minimise equipment downtime
OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)
OEE is used to measure the performance of production equipment. It is calculated by multiplying the following three
indicators:
Uptime (which is affected whenever equipment is out of service or replaced)
Performance (which is affected by temporary shutdowns and slowdowns)
Quality (which is affected by defects and losses during start-ups)
The closer the OEE rate is to 100%, the more effcient the production line is.
Note that, from an operational standpoint, OEE is often calculated as the ratio of the number of items produced
during a given interval that meet quality specifcations to the number of items that can theoretically be produced
during the same interval.
SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Die)
SMED is an organisational method that aims to systematically reduce tool changeover times between products.
Tool changeover time creates waste in the production process since nothing is produced during this time.
SMED can help:
Save time
Increase productivity by making workstations more fexible
Save money by reducing batch sizes; a perfect SMED model would mean virtually zero tool changeover time
and tool changeovers with no increase in production costs
SMED is a three-step process:
1. Identify and separate internal and external setup operations for a given piece of equipment
2. Convert as many internal operations as possible into external operations; external operations can be carried
out while the equipment is running
3. Eliminate equipment adjustments