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A
natural way to develop our implementation plan will be establishing a series of
interviews with each department manager and with each supervisor. In these
interviews we will know what their biggest concerns are regarding the machines
they have in their area. Also our objective will be defining in what order we
should organize the schedule for that equipment according to their importance.
We
will follow with an assessment of the use that is being given to the equipment.
Let us remember that our purpose is to bring the equipment to its original
condition. In order to accomplish this, it is important to know what it is used
for and the service it is expected to provide. We will also determine if the
expectations are in accordance with the design and specifications of each
machine. In many cases, we will find machines that are not being worked
according to the full extent of their design capacity.
This
Generally is caused by some simple factors:
-
The true capacity is not known. In certain cases users lack the
appropriate information.
-
Although some people know the capacity, the machine has problems due to
wear and tear, maladjustments and loss of specifications that have been
tolerated and considered acceptable.
-
The personnel have not been trained to appropriately use the machine to
the maximum of its capacities.
After
the interviews with people in all the departments that will be included in the
program, we should prepare a tentative calendar, trying to cover the most
critical machines first. We will try to follow a sequence that allows that, in
the shortest possible time, we will have done at least one project at each one
of the departments.
It
will be convenient to publish the calendar. You can use the Intranet of the
company so that all the managers or supervisors can consult with the up-to-date
version and to schedule their operations and production in consequence.
Certainly this calendar will be flexible to accommodate the departments users of
the equipment, since they are our total priority.
In the
same place where we are publishing that calendar, we will have the reports of
the finished projects. These reports should be very concrete including
information like:
-
The machine that was implemented
-
The dates of beginning and completing.
-
Number of people involved in the project and their names in alphabetical
order, never hierarchical.
-
The most outstanding discoveries such as: broken pieces, worn-out pieces,
leaks, maladjustments, etc. Explain the main details, how they were corrected
and how its recurrence will be avoided.
-
Achievements in terms of improvement of the capacity, ease of operation,
and savings expected, etc.
Every
time that we finish a project, we should present (preferably in their own hand),
a copy of the report to the manager and/or the supervisor(s) of the department
involved as well as to the maintenance manager. It is not only enough to give
them the report; we should look for the opportunity to have an informal chat to
allow us giving full information about what was achieved. A copy of the same
report will also be placed in accessible place for the operators and to all
persons in the area.
More about this in chapter 14: Visual
systems.
The
Role Of The TPM Coordinator
The
plan should be very dynamic, and the coordinator should be planning,
implementing, promoting, preparing information or giving follow-up to his/her
projects. This is a full time job, and in some cases this position will report
to the maintenance management, although the ideal would be to have him/her
report to a Continuous Improvement Manager if such exists in the company.
Another alternative option is that this coordinator is integrated in the
department of Training and Development. This gives him a better position before
maintenance as he should be their customer (of training and development) and
supplier (of services) in the diverse projects.
The
communication with departmental managers should be continuous and very cordial
to maintain the calendar in constant development and adjustment according to the
needs of the organization. The duration is variable depending if it is operated
by a single coordinator or by more than one, which allows deploying a much
quicker implementation. However this could have a bigger initial cost; of
course, the benefits are also reflected at shorter term.
Just
to give you an idea of a real case: in a plant with 68 bigger pieces of
equipment and about 60 minor ones, we can expect a total implementation with a
single coordinator in terms of three and half to five years. This is referred to
as the phase of the autonomous maintenance implementation. Starting from there,
you should begin to evolve the plan of Predictive Maintenance and other more
ambitious projects to optimize the use of the maintenance resources. These
include: General improvement of facilities, re-localization or equipment
re-distribution for activating flow of processes, some re-engineering of
equipment, etc.
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