Page 30 - Machinery Component Maintenance

Maintenance Organization and Control for Multi-Plant Corporations 15

This is an important consideration in minimizing peaks and valleys
in major maintenance work and allowing a smaller specialist group
to handle a broader scope of activities.
5. More consistent organizational policies, procedures, and better
methods of making comparisons on general performance, cost, pro-
duction, prompt action, and managerial talent.

To keep the centralized organization current on the facts of life at plant
facilities, a program of specialist and management visits to each facility
must be established. These visits, coupled with careful production moni-
toring, normal maintenance, and general cost performance are necessary
prerequisites for the system discussed herein. The extra travel and com-
munication costs are far outweighed by better personnel utilization.

Malntenance
Total plant profitability is obviously affected both by onstream factors
and maintenance costs. One cannot be separated from the other. Any sys-
tem, therefore, must account for how cheaply maintenance can be per-
formed from an organizational setup, and also what must be done and
how often. The ability to update maintenance requirements and improved
planning based on experience at a group of plants has a large bearing on
overall maintenance costs.
Other than breakdown maintenance, all maintenance work is planned.
Some can be done while the plant is operating and the rest during shut-
down. The effectiveness of this planned or preventive maintenance (PM)
program to reduce breakdowns and the organizational methods used to
accomplish the planned major maintenance work will determine mainte-
nance costs. Preventive maintenance as discussed here covers all planned
maintenance work, whether major or minor, regardless of whether the
plant is running or shut down. The selection of what shall be done as part
of the PM program and how often it shall be done is one of the most
important factors affecting corporate maintenance costs and the realiza-
tion of an optimum onstream factor.
It is a generally accepted practice to let each plant manager handle the
PM program for his facility. In some plants, this is being done with indi-
vidual check sheets or production boards using equipment manufactur-
ers’ recommendations and the limited experience of plant personnel.
However, the demand for plant operation attention often prevents timely
maintenance performance. Another defect is that it lacks uniformity and
does not provide compliance reports to home office management. And,
there is often no effective way to compare the PM performance at similar