The D word.

Deferred.

The premise that a business, from a financial or process viewpoint, can “defer” maintenance is not entirely unreasonable. We are in business to survive, and sometimes tough calls must be made. But ask yourself, how come the maintenance budget is the go-to for budget cuts or process priorities? Why doesn’t the baking company cut its budget for flour? Because without flour they cannot make their products. Make sense.

Sometimes, as in the case of KiwiRail and their track testing cars, maintenance is deferred because of lack of availability or resources. More often in industry, some process fubar results in maintenance windows slamming shut at the 11th hour. Same result. The plan doesn’t happen.

Don’t blame the accountants or production planners when they start deferring maintenance. They do it with impunity, because to them there is no effect, other than frantic squawking from engineers, running around with their hair on fire. Instead, blame the reckless ability to slash maintenance plans squarely at the feet of you, the engineers. If your maintenance plans are that loose and flowery that the business can continue to run the asset, your plan is poop.

If you don’t want to be treated like an amateur, stop acting like one.

Creating a professional, reasoned and bankable maintenance budget based on optimised PM plans means stepping away from FAT (fear and tradition) driven maintenance. This is entirely possible using your computerised maintenance management system, and in fact you should be able to produce rolling forecasts at push of a button.

If your maintenance plans are constantly derailed (no pun intended) by the D word, put your big boy pants on and look at your PM plans. Are your plans lunar based, (6 monthly, annual, etc) and traditional?

What is the provenance of the plan? Did it originate from a statutory, compliance or reliability origin? Or fear and reaction?

Have you ever reviewed the as-found results of the PM task and dared to optimise the PM task frequency based on these results?

Does your amount of PM tasks expand to fit the available shutdown window?

We have seen so examples of tribal maintenance planning, it is no wonder that the business learns to defer maintenance with impunity. One site was overhauling their major gearbox every annual shutdown out of fear, while identical operations were running the same gearbox for 22 years without ever having the covers off. Who is the fool?

A meat works was replacing their plate heat exchanger gaskets every shutdown. With two shutdowns a year, it was costing them $66k pa. Why? They had a leak once, (after 15 years’ service). Amateurs.

The good news is you can reverse the paradigm. We have worked with maintenance teams who have professionalised their planning and systems, gaining respect for their budgets and plans. PM tasks are optimised to “orange light status”, (like your fuel gauge – fill up now or start walking), and co-owned by Engineering and Production. Rolling forecasts drilled down from live data and actual PM tasks are fed into the budget, moving arguments from the boardroom to the workshop.

So, if your maintenance world is one of constant hurt and disappointment, fill the vacuum. Take what you do and redesign it, so the business sits up and acknowledges what you are doing. Create bankable PM plans that no-one would dare to defer.

It is achievable, it is a journey, but you can do it.

The post Maintenance and the D Word appeared first on Maintenance Transformations.

Industry thrives on buzz words and fashion, and maintenance management is no stranger to this world. RCM, RCA, TPM and other 3 -letter acronyms have all been rolled out as the holy grail, yet to find true industry success in the long term is rare. You can ask check this yourself by going back to the glossy power point presentation from 10 years ago and ask the hard questions of the site in the study. You may be surprised.

The Internet of Things

When the breathless commentary began about how the internet of things (IOT 4.0) was going to change computerised maintenance management systems with machine suppliers touting their web connected assets as the next best thing in reliability I asked the big question, “Show me where it is truly making a difference?” I asked the audience of reliability experts at the 2023 VANZ (Vibration Assoc of NZ) conference this question and the replies centred around the machines connecting through the Cloud to advise of machine state.

So ok, you can now get feedback from your plant without leaving your desk.

Sorry team, that is reactive maintenance, no different to me looking at the odometer or warning light on my VW Amarok.

Industry Reality Check

As the providers of the latest Cloud based cmms in the market, our team was intrigued by the topic. Yes, there are magnificent advantages to Cloud applications, but is anyone ACTUALLY using feedback from their machines to directly modify and IMPROVE their reliability and what is the experience? I posed this to the 2024 VANZ conference and could not get a reply. Believe me, these VANZ guys know their stuff and the answer was a resounding “No-one”. Crickets.

The problem is there is more to all this automation than direct or fuzzy logic. This is why we demand that the pilot lands the Airbus. Why the turbine feedback cannot automatically shut down power generation in in the middle of a winter brown out. Why AI can analyse potential melanoma but only advise on diagnosis. IOT 4.0 and AI require a humanising step.

AI

The AI conversation is growing rapidly, and the followers of fashion are thronging to join the rush. Again, don’t trip over your boots in the rush to climb in board. Apply some critical thought about what and how the benefits can improve your outcomes. Our team have embedded AI functionality into sections of the maintenance planners world in our systems, but again, the outputs steer well away from allowing any robotic hands on the steering wheel.

Where to From Here?

There are green shoots of high-level technologies on the fringes and I am sure in due course great advancements will be made. What we must remember, using the smart phone analogy, is that we are at the age of the original 1990’s “brick” cell phone. Everyone wanted one, everyone had excuses why they needed one, but no-one truly understood the true potential that is now everyday life in 2025.

The biggest advancements will be in understanding how to humanise the AI inputs. What is (if any) the human intervention point? How do we keep our hands on the steering wheel? Good luck out there.

The post IOT 4.0 and AI in the Maintenance World appeared first on Maintenance Transformations.

The YWAM Koha was built in 1968 as a buoy tender for the German Government, responsible for the maintenance of marine navigation buoys on the River Elbe before seeing service for the South African Maritime Safety Authority. From 2009 to 2018, she plied the Pacific Islands as the Claymore, providing the essential transport links to Pitcairn Island from New Zealand and French Polynesia.

Youth With A Mission

Donated to the Youth With a Mission (YWAM) program by Stoney Creek Shipping company’s Nigel Jolly, the YWAM Koha now distributes medical care to those in need across the Pacific. The ship has the capacity to carry containers, supplies, crew and volunteers to assist with everything from education to medical and developmental projects. Shipping containers converted into medical and dental clinics are stowed on the Koha’s deck, providing operating theatres and X-ray units, among other functions. However, most of the work the organisation does is in the villages themselves. The ship anchors close to shore, providing primary health care, preventative medicine such as vaccinations, oral health checks and eye examinations to remote communities.

The Pacific Islands are one of the most geographically challenging islands on planet Earth with many villages located on the more isolated outer islands and desperately in need of New Zealand’s help. The vast majority have no airstrips and no bridges connecting them, so the only way to reach them is via ship.

Solving a Problem

Staffed entirely by volunteers, a major operational issue for the ship is retaining the detailed institutionalised knowledge required to keep her in good trim and compliant with marine requirements. Historical information was either paper based or stored in people’s heads. Now, the information is digitised into an upwardly driven management information system and available onboard or ashore for future crews thanks to Maintenance Transformation’s Craig Carlyle and the MainTrak maintenance management system.

Answering a call from ABD Groups’ John Clynes, Carlyle not only provided the MainTrak system free of charge, but even mapped the ships assets while she was docked in Tauranga, while Clynes conducted a stocktake of the spares inventory. The ship now has a complete maintenance management system, able to manage its maintenance schedule, technical documentation and spares as well as storing its intellectual knowledge, ready for any future engineers to tap into.

The system is Cloud based, with full Starlink coverage across the Pacific meaning that YWAM Technical director Tony Fish can stay in touch from around the Globe and ensure any replacement parts are ready and waiting anywhere the ship docks.

For Carlyle, mapping the assets was a labour of love, relishing the opportunity to roll up his sleeves and crawl all over the ship. He found the ship well cared for and pleasingly clean. In his words. “This ship reverberates history and engineering experience. Sadly, most of that learning has walked off the gangplank since 1968, but now we have a method to retain it in the Engine Room for future generations.”

Nigel and Brenda Jolly said their decision to donate the vessel to YWAM was out of a desire to see the boat looked after and do something they can be proud of. The MainTrak maintenance management system has provided the crew with the tool to do just that.

The post Medical Aid Ship Aided by Management System Gift appeared first on Maintenance Transformations.

Maintenance Manuals

For the rest of us, a valuable starting point for creating or managing a maintenance plan is the manufacturers operating manual, (a point referenced in regulations). However, while a great starting point, the maintenance instructions must be taken with a grain of salt. Whilst the manufacturer is perhaps providing the benefit of their global experience, some are ensuring the machine does not break before the cheque clears or have a strategy of selling you 2-3 times the capital value in spares over the asset life.

Planners Diligence

Whatever the source of PM routines, even highly technical industries suffer at the coalface from a plethora of additional PM Tasks that deserve some form of challenge from the Maintenance Planner. These tasks are generally easy to spot; the emphasis on check, check, check, and a lunar (monthly, 6 monthly, yearly) frequency. These are FAT routines, (fear and tradition). Scratch the surface and you will generally find that FAT routines are created as a knee-jerk reaction to an asset failure or similar process embarrassment, opinion, or someone else’s good idea.

While they offer a peace offering at the time of shame and atonement, they leave a legacy of unchallenged work that often chokes the maintenance schedule. There is however a solution available, based on due diligence, operational science and optimisation.

The first step is to study the provenance of the task. Who created the routine, when, and why? What results have been recorded? Has anyone ever found anything to justify the check? Unless the check has traceable roots to a statutory or compliance requirement, the planner should challenge the routine, including making frequency changes (see later). Be prepared to not win 100% of these battles, but you will be surprised how much the decks are cleared when you push back with facts.

Operational Science

Operational science is the art of listening to your plant, using measurements and recorded data to provide a foundation for decision making. As an example, your maintenance plan calls for you to change your gearbox oil every 12 month. However, if due to the realities of the process, environment, and service conditions, the drained oil condition, (through tribology or other) is judged to be near perfect condition. This is operational science. Common sense says you should extend your oil change plan to something more than 12 months.

Optimisation

Optimisation is the lean maintenance science of refining the frequency of the PM task to align with the actual plant conditions, rather than arbitrary lunar statements, (monthly, 3 monthly, 6 monthly, etc). Such stagnant frequency declarations indicate opinion rather than facts. Using optimisation theory, the Planner exercises his mandate to expand or contract the PM task frequency to suit the as found history.

On one site, we checked the safety guards every month for 23 years, only finding 10 faults in that time. An argument could be formed to expand the PM task frequency from 1 month to 4 months, based on this as-found history for the plant. This is a 75% reduction in workload, entirely justifiable by the as-found results. The Planner may declare 4 months as the outer limit of confidence, which is a sensible application of the planning role. As planners, we have the mandate to manage. As long as the reasons for a frequency change are recorded, we are leaving a defendable history of the management decisions.

A more scientific optimisation approach is available, developed by Craig Carlyle and available as an automated toggle option in the MainTrak maintenance management system. The algorithm is based on control loop derivatives and uses simple feedback from the tradesman to nudge the task frequency either sooner or later. The steps are

+ 12%, +10%, 0, -10%, -12% depending on whether the as found condition was:

• A – As new, no sign of wear
• B – Good condition, minor wear (could have lasted longer)
• C – Average condition, expected wear (i.e., bang on target!)
• D – Poor condition, significant wear (maintained too late)
• E – Missing or destroyed

Practical experience shows that the as-found results will arrive at “C” within a maximum of 6 PM task cycles. The value is added at the workface, where the tradesman is the best eyes and ears you could ask for, and the relationship is strengthened by your investment in his/her feedback.

Returning to our example of the gearbox oil, if we had used the optimisation algorithm, the first oil change would have given us feedback of “B” – Good Condition, or a 10% increase in the task frequency (13.2 months). Subsequent task feedback would further increment the task frequency until we are changing the oil at just the right time, (condition C), reducing maintenance cost and resource allocation.

In an added value diary processing plant, this concept was used to reduce the cost for weekend process valve maintenance from $40k to just $1,200. With increased reliability!

The post PM Task Optimisation- Use Operational Science to Move From FAT to Lean appeared first on Maintenance Transformations.

Sadly, NO, and re-inventing the wheel when you want to move from reactive maintenance is a recipe for non-achievement. A maintenance management system requires process skills, and these skills are different to the engineer’s technical skills. Being a good engineer does not mean you can implement a good maintenance management system.

The world of maintenance engineering spans from the outputs of reliability engineering through to the practical realities of maintenance, compliance, and customer requests. Couched in medical terms, maintenance managers must be like GPs juggling multiple demands. Unlike GPs though, the maintenance engineer must also man-manage staff comfortable with FAT (fear and tradition) based maintenance. While the engineer needs the computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) to do the work for him, the process of implementing such systems is full of traps and pitfalls that require experience to navigate. Companies often look to a CMMS as the solution to their problem, only to discover that it is not in itself the solution. The CMMS is simply a tool, not the craft.

Yes, you need one, but you must understand how to implement and use one.

CMMS themselves are a specialist topic best designed by engineers who understand engineers.

Systems built by IT or Accounting departments or offshoots of financial systems are invariably doomed to crash and burn as they miss the nuances and flexibility of dealing with trades staff and practical realities. Understanding where the value is added in the system is fundamental to building leveraged intelligence unencumbered by garbage in-garbage out. Power plays between people, departments and even corporate layers invite skews and mandates that all too often leave the site maintenance staff dazed and frustrated.

At Maintenance Transformations, we have observed some spectacular and expensive failures in our 40-year experience implementing maintenance management systems. We can quote many examples where large corporates have invested significant funds and resources to improve on being “reactive” and after 10 years of effort, have not improved their results at all.

Conversely, we have also participated in implementations that have provided benefits to the business in the tens of millions of dollars.

Our sage words of advice for any industry are, “Once you have worked out that your maintenance is reactive, stop there. Call the experts and stick to what you are good at doing.”

Let’s relate the topic to buying a company car. Once you have worked out that you need a company vehicle, what do you do? You go to Toyota (for instance), pay your money, and drive your new company car back to site. If we applied the maintenance management experience to company cars, you would buy the Toyota in crates, try to assemble it yourself, build it with the engine in the boot because you know better, and still be trying to get it to run 10 years later.

Meanwhile, your reliability is through the floor, your costs are through the roof and the maintenance department is viewed as the millstone around the company neck.

Nuts eh?
Sadly, this is our experience in industry, prompting a rethink about implementation when releasing the new cloud-based MainTrak maintenance management software.

As an engineering company, not a bot-driven software sales company, Maintenance Transformations principal and MESNZ life member Craig Carlyle is well recognised for his drive in helping engineers lift their game. He took a hard look at the total implementation process as part of the 3-year development of the MainTrak CMMS and realised that a rethink was required in the market. The result is a completely new concept offering the same turn-key service as Toyota. Come on board and let us hand you the keys to a fully functioning system. As the only CMMS backed up by engineering-boots-on-the-ground in New Zealand, the specialists will do everything from data discovery, data integration, system onboarding, training, coaching and mentoring. Clients can select the assistance they desire, like a menu, with the aim of getting up and running NOW. For those wishing to achieve maintenance excellence, the concept extends beyond the CMMS implementation to a full 2-year mentored maintenance excellence partnership, from reactive to proactive.

In Carlyle’s words, “If you are an ice cream factory, stick to making ice cream. Let the specialists sort out your maintenance issues and deliver a measurable and transparent process. We will cover everything from inspiration to implementation. We will deliver you a system tuned to your goals, owned by you, and run by your engineers as a professional component of your overall operation.”

You would be nuts not to.

The post The Journey from Inspiration To Implementation in the Maintenance Department appeared first on Maintenance Transformations.