Equipment Reliability

Most companies get less production from the equipment they own than it was designed to produce.  Answering the following questions will give you some idea of how much opportunity your company has to make more first-rate products, with the production equipment you own.

1. When your key asset is running at the ideal rate, how much is produced in one hour? _______

Do you know what the ideal rate is? This is not the “standard” used by accounting or some other department.

2. How many hours per week does your asset run? _______ . Multiply #1 by #2 _______

How many hours per week is your asset scheduled to run?

3. Divide your actual good production per week (that you now achieve) by your answer in #3 _______

4. Subtract the answer from #3 from 100%. This is your opportunity gap _______

With dedicated effort, using the tgg STRANDS model, you may reduce this gap by up to 50% …. in a few months. The tgg consultants have helped other companies achieve similar gains.

tgg consultants can either lead the improvement efforts or coach/support your company’s staff as they gain competency in the use of the Lean tools.

tgg’s Equipment Reliability Consulting provides advice, direction, and coaching, while the company develops their own process improvement internal resources.  This can be done in concert with tgg’s training services or independently on a project by project basis.  tgg’s consulting team is well seasoned in use of, T-minus meetings, Autonomous Maintenance, evaluation and improvement of lubrication and pneumatics practices, in addition to Root Cause Failure Analysis and Leader Standard work which are also covered in other disciplines.  They can lead your plant through the reduction of unplanned downtime by concentrating on cleaning, lubricating, inspection, and adjustment of your equipment.  These factors represent as much as 80% of unplanned downtime in many plants. 

Common Problems:

• New Equipment Design
  • Whoever designed the new equipment obviously never had to service any equipment
  • The repair parts are only identified by manufacturer part numbers
  • Detailed maintenance manuals are:
    • Not available
    • Only in hard copy
    • Only in soft copy
    • Not specific to this particular machine
    • Not written in English (or Spanish, or French, or whatever language is needed)
• Management Metrics
  • OEE is better than world-class but a considerable amount of scrap is generated
  • There are three different versions of unplanned downtime depending upon which report you look at
  • Operators don’t know what OEE means or how they might affect it
  • A lot of money is spent on maintaining old equipment but we aren’t sure if the spend is justified
  • No one knows what an hour of lost production is worth
• Maintenance Basics
  • Only the mechanics can work on the machines
  • No one knows if there is supposed to be fluid in a chamber of the FRL
  • Purchasing got a good deal on lube oil but didn’t ask maintenance for the design specs
  • The maintenance team is scheduled to work six and a half days per week, every week
• Developing Skills
  • A lot of knowledge is going to walk out the door when the old guys retire
  • We are too busy to conduct any evaluations after the equipment after the equipment is up and running again
  • Planned maintenance always takes longer than expected

Please contact us today so we can build your problem statement and objectives you want to achieve.