Thursday 19 September 2013

Lean Maintenance

 I had wanted to write about the development of Lean Maintenance programs to remove all the tasks that give No value to the equipment.

 That's Lean Maintenance means, to provide the right maintenance with minimum wastes, so the equipment does their functions with the minimum cost; summarizing, to remove process that gives no value and simplifies the process that gives value.

 But, Can we save in maintenance and increase the reliability of our equipment together?

 Yes, Lean Maintenance does it, applying the Toyota Production System (TPS) basics as remove wastes, standardized tasks, schedule just-in-time actions and focus on quality.

 Generally, through the TPS application, we will improve maintenance while minimizing inputs as Labor, Management effort, Parts and materials, Contractors and service contracts, Equipment rental, Raw materials, Energy, Capital...

  A good way to start a Lean Maintenance program is with a 7 Wastes analysis, these wastes are:

  • Overproduction, too many maintenance tasks.
  • Excessive Inventory, too many spare parts.
  • Waiting, among maintenance tasks.
  • Material and Information Movement.
  • Motion, movements of people or equipment.
  • Defects reworks from a poorly maintenance process.
  • Unnecessary processing, efforts which add no value and consume resources.

 Once the wastes are identified and removed, we can implant a TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) program based in Autonomous Maintenance, that's maintenance based in operator, with the maintenance department support. This program use tools as 5S, Poka Yoke, JIT (Just-In-Time) or SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Die), and can be completed with RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) or RBM (Risk Based Maintenance) analysis.

 The Lean Maintenance full implantation process is difficult because it requires to involve all the people and process, indefinitely, and provide them training and expertise.

 The best way to obtain these goals is through Lean games and activities, that help to improve motivation by providing both knowledge and experience in an enjoyable and effective way.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you Jorge for pointing out the importance of games (for managers, workers, students) to bring lean to the shopfloor.

    Myself I also found this out years ago while working at BMW. Games loose the deep rooted departmental thinking, and people become authentic (like kids). My most stunning experience was at a conference in Oman, when millionaires and students became players a same hight in the game, with no respect on their reputation, formal education or money.

    Thanks once again, and for sharing on http://xing.com/net/lean

    ReplyDelete