Page 406 - Intro Predictive Maintenance
P. 406
World-Class Maintenance 397
• Can employee involvement programs work for long if management ignores
the pleas to fix the equipment or get better equipment so a world-class
product can be delivered to the customer on a timely basis, thus satisfying
the employee concerns and suggestions?
Proactive maintenance management can help improve reliability, maintainability,
operability, and profitability, but achieving these goals requires the talents and involve-
ment of every employee. Through autonomous activities, in which the operator is
involved in the daily inspection and cleaning of his or her equipment, companies will
discover that the most important asset in achieving continuous improvement is people.
Companies are beginning to realize that the management techniques and methods
previously used to maintain equipment are no longer sufficient to compete in world
markets. Attention is beginning to focus on the benefits of proactive maintenance,
yet the number of companies that have successfully implemented new maintenance
management methods is relatively small. The reason is that many companies try to
use tools, such as predictive maintenance, to compensate for an immature or dys-
functional maintenance operation. They fail to realize that achieving world-class
performance is an evolutionary step, not a revolutionary one. To fully understand the
character of world-class maintenance, it is necessary to consider the evolution of a
typical quality program.
18.4 FOCUS ON QUALITY
In Figure 18–2, the various stages of a quality improvement program are highlighted
along the bottom of the arrow. In the early days, a company would ship almost any-
thing to the customer. If the product did not meet customer standards, nothing was
done about it until the customer complained and shipped it back; however, this
approach eventually became costly when competitors would ship products that
the customer would accept because there was no quality problem. Complacency
Evolution of Quality Improvement
Customer Inspect Quality Operators
inspects at before department use SPC TQC
receiving shipping uses SPC
Figure 18–2 The various stages of the quality maturity continuum.