reveal By lOr al 2 OperatiONs - plaNt MaiNteNaNCE reveal By lOr al iMprOviNg prODuCtiON A companys maintenance department troubleshoots, repairs, adjusts, refurbishes, and inspects all of the companys production equipment. These departments typically carry out two types of maintenance:
Corrective maintenance Corrective maintenance is performed to repair a piece of equipment. There are three types of corrective maintenance: Palliative maintenance (a temporary repair that allows the equipment to be used until a permanent solution can be found) Curative maintenance (a repair that restores the equipment to its previous condition) Improvement maintenance (taking advantage of a necessary repair to upgrade the equipment) Preventive maintenance Preventive maintenance is performed to head off problems before they occur. Managers may decide to carry out preventive maintenance for any one of several reasons, including: to make sure a piece of equipment is safe to operate (i.e., the consequences of a failure would be unacceptable); to save money (maintenance is cheaper than the alternative); or for practical reasons (the equipment is only available for maintenance at certain times). There are three types of preventive maintenance: Scheduled maintenance (either at specifc time intervals or after the equipment has been used a certain number of hours or has produced a certain number of units) Conditional maintenance (triggered by process reports, measurements, or automated equipment inspections) Forecast maintenance (if an operator has noticed a problem with the equipment) Preventive maintenance is, of course, preferable to corrective maintenance. Because it can be scheduled and is designed to prevent downtime, preventive maintenance can smooth production runs and limit product quality issues. Corrective maintenance requires a larger inventory of spare parts (which ties up cash) to repair equipment in the event of a failure. iMprOveMeNt MEthODs TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) The aim of TPM is to get the highest yield possible out of production equipment throughout the equipments lifetime, while reducing costs. In TPM, all of a companys employees are involved in improving performance: artiClE frOM aNNual rEpOrt testiMONial frOM a plaNt DirECtOr testiMONial frOM a quality MaNager testiMONial frOM aN eNvirONMeNt DirECtOr testiMONial frOM a safEty & health DirECtOr http://bit.ly/oY5XqE http://bit.ly/nEvxgL http://bit.ly/nmlxrc http://bit.ly/nN41GF http://bit.ly/pyZhT3 at lOral testiMONial frOM a prODuCtiON uNit MaNager http://bit.ly/otGWEj at lOral 3 OperatiONs - plaNt MaiNteNaNCE reveal By lOr al All employees participate and receive training Operators are given responsibility for production tasks and taking care of the equipment Managers implement effective methods to minimise equipment downtime OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) OEE is used to measure the performance of production equipment. It is calculated by multiplying the following three indicators: Uptime (which is affected whenever equipment is out of service or replaced) Performance (which is affected by temporary shutdowns and slowdowns) Quality (which is affected by defects and losses during start-ups) The closer the OEE rate is to 100%, the more effcient the production line is. Note that, from an operational standpoint, OEE is often calculated as the ratio of the number of items produced during a given interval that meet quality specifcations to the number of items that can theoretically be produced during the same interval. SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Die) SMED is an organisational method that aims to systematically reduce tool changeover times between products. Tool changeover time creates waste in the production process since nothing is produced during this time. SMED can help: Save time Increase productivity by making workstations more fexible Save money by reducing batch sizes; a perfect SMED model would mean virtually zero tool changeover time and tool changeovers with no increase in production costs SMED is a three-step process: 1. Identify and separate internal and external setup operations for a given piece of equipment 2. Convert as many internal operations as possible into external operations; external operations can be carried out while the equipment is running 3. Eliminate equipment adjustments