Business Management ABCs

Breaking the Vicious Cycle

It has been said that “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. That adage can also be applied to the development of effective maintenance departments. The programs required to keep equipment at optimum performance levels take time and effort to develop and maintain, whether the equipment is brand new or fifty years old. However, just as quality maintenance programs take time to develop, they can gradually disintegrate in similar fashion.

Many experts refer to a “vicious cycle” when referring to this type of decay in the maintenance effort. Although disagreement exists about when the cycle actually starts, let us assume that the chain begins with a need to improve production. A desperate production manager, searching for a quick way to boost numbers, discovers that a line is scheduled down for proactive maintenance. After some pleading with the maintenance staff and (if necessary) the plant management, he is granted the “postponement” of the scheduled maintenance activity and permitted to run the equipment to “catch up”.

If the story ended at this point, then the cycle would not form. But when the “postponement” becomes a more regular event, the equipment will begin to suffer and deterioration will set in as necessary maintenance tasks are not performed. As time progresses, both the frequency and severity of equipment breakdowns increase, causing even more of a strain on production needs. Once the sequence commences, the facility will become increasingly inefficient until little control at all is exhibited over equipment uptime. Crisis management will be the prevailing direction and overall performance will plummet. Morale issues will likely surface and cause even further problems within the facility.

The cycle has three characteristics that make it particularly menacing. The first characteristic is that it is easy to initiate. The events of the cycle are a natural progression of answering the question: How can I fix this problem today? Therefore, the cycle can begin with a long repair job, a temporary lapse in PM effectiveness, a sudden increase in product demand or any other cause to put an immediate strain on production. A temporary diversion from “doing the right thing” soon becomes a standard practice.

The second characteristic is that the cycle is self-perpetuating. As proactive maintenance is slowly abandoned, the equipment condition will eventually deteriorate. Nuisance problems will soon develop and become more and more troublesome. Quick fixes will migrate into multi-shift and multi-day breakdowns. With breakdowns placing even more burden on production resources, all pretenses of planned maintenance will be erased and the sole purpose of the maintenance department will be to make repairs as quickly as possible..”

The final, and most imposing characteristic of the cycle is its resistance to change. Once the reactive methodology is in place and the maintenance department is measured solely on repair time, it is extremely difficult to introduce measures to the contrary. Efforts to perform planned work and establish routine maintenance will be disparaged by those who fail to see the long-term benefits of such actions. Planned outages that don’t produce direct and immediate benefits will be viewed as wasteful. The unfortunate instances of PM overruns or downtime associated with proactive maintenance will likely become “ammunition” against the planned activities by those who are unaware of the rewards that could lie ahead with a more organized approach to equipment maintenance.

Breaking the cycle, although difficult, is not impossible. It does, however, require discipline, teamwork and good communication - all traits that are much less natural than the knee-jerk reactions discussed above that initiated the cycle. In order to disrupt the chain reaction and rise above the reactive mess, the following steps are required:

1. Agree on a vision - All members of the organization must agree that improvement is necessary and commit to change. In some cases, this may require the education of certain individuals who may be unaware that improvement is possible and within reach. When a goal is established and a commitment made to reach it, the hardest part is completed.

2. Develop a plan - Team members need to form a maintenance strategy to return the equipment to an acceptable condition. This will likely include the identification and completion of known problems along with appropriate preventive and predictive tasks. Activities of the plan should be comprehensive, yet flexible enough to address problems discovered during the implementation process.

3. Support each other during plan implementation - Team members must resist the urge to revert to “finger pointing” when problems arise during plan implementation. Problems should be anticipated during this phase and provisions made to accommodate proactive work that is not completed as scheduled. Results will not be immediate and it is even reasonable to expect a brief decline in equipment performance before the improvement trend begins.

4. Constantly strive for improvement - Simply performing the tasks outlined in the plan will not be sufficient to break the cycle. The focus of the team must remain on maintaining equipment through an organized and planned approach. Preventive tasks should be regularly reviewed for completeness and effectiveness. Predictive technologies should be investigated and utilized where appropriate. Even breakdown work should be considered and anticipated to plan resources (such as training, spare parts, outside services, etc.) in advance.

In summary, the natural tendencies of human beings to react and blame others feed the circumstances that initiate the undesirable cycle outlined above. However, through careful planning and teamwork, the cycle can be stopped and prevented from future recurrences.