Establishing the Discipline of Executing Maintenance Work

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A GPAllied White Paper

Establishing the Discipline of Executing We can’t keep doing what we have always done and expect different results.

70% of maintenance and reliability projects fail due to poor execution. Learn why and what you can do to improve your odds.

By: Michael J. Aroney, Principal

February 21, 2013

A DIVISION OF ALLIED RELIABILITY GROUP

4200 Faber Place Drive Charleston, SC 29405

888.335.8276 www.gpallied.com

© 2013 GPAllied Page 1

Contents A Reliability Improvement Project Is Like a Piece

of Equipment ............................................................1

What to Execute........................................................3

How to Execute .........................................................3

Summary ...................................................................5

A Reliability Improvement Project Is Like a Piece of Equipment An asset or piece of equipment and its components have failure modes that can be plotted on a P-F curve (Figure 1) based on when a defect first presents itself, progressive loss of functionality, and eventual failure. “P” is the point at which a defect presents itself and failure starts to occur. Without any repair to eliminate the defect, its severity will increase, functionality will decrease, and failure will occur at point “F”. At this point, it typically costs four (4) times the amount and takes ten (10) times the effort to make a repair than if the defect were removed somewhere before point “F”.

How Predictive Maintenance (PdM) Works – Early Identification of Defects

Figure 1: P-F Curve

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The objective then is to use methods that will allow for the early detection of defects to provide ample time for corrective and mitigating actions to eliminate them and restore functionality. This requires an optimized mix of Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) technologies and Preventive Maintenance (PM) inspections focused on failure modes.

This approach allows for an early identification of defects as close to point “P” as possible. It provides time to plan the work needed to eliminate the defect and take mitigating actions to eliminate the likelihood that a particular defect will reoccur or lessen the severity of impact to the asset if it does present itself again. Early identification and elimination of defects and actions to prevent their reoccurrence is a risk mitigation strategy to ensure that the functionality of the asset is maintained. For assets, this is what we would call an optimized Equipment Maintenance Plan (EMP).

Reliability and maintenance process improvement projects are like assets. A project has components and each component has failure modes. When a defect is introduced to a project’s component, it will lose functionality until point “F” is reached. Project failure is defined as exceeding the project scope in terms of cost and time, underachieving target functionality, and not providing the return on investment in the business case for change.

A project’s major components typically fall into the following categories:

• Active leadership engagement and governance;

• Effective communication; • Training that develops understanding,

knowledge, and ability to execute; • An organization aligned to reinforce new

behaviors and results; • Employees that are actively engaged in design

and implementation of the project’s functionality; and

• Buy-in by all members of the organization affected by the project.

Sample Failure Modes

Listed here are some failure modes that are associated with these project components.

Active Leadership Engagement and Governance: • Lack of skill. • Too busy to actively participate. • Not setting priorities on competing initiatives. • Implementation responsibility delegated

completely to supervisors.

Effective Communication: • No formal communication process. • Ineffective communication. • No feedback mechanism established. • Low participation in communication by

managers and supervisors.

Training That Develops Understanding, Knowledge and Ability to Execute:

• Short cuts, especially on understanding (5 days to 1 day).

• Focus on technical training only and neglecting the development of execution skills when 30% of the challenge is technical and 70% is execution.

• Training that does not address the four (4) levels of learning: like it, learn it, use it, improve performance.

An Organization Aligned to Reinforce New Behaviors and Results:

• 30% of an organization’s performance challenges are technical in nature while 70% of the challenges are organizational, yet the norm is to focus 100% of a project’s effort on only the technical issues.

• Every organization is perfectly aligned for the results it gets. Failure to realign its controls and mechanisms to reinforce new behaviors will result in a failed project – often referred to as a “flavor of the month”.

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• Strong silos resulting in process fragmentation characterized by the attitude of “that’s not my job”.

• It is too hard to use the Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), resulting in work-arounds.

Employees That Are Actively Engaged in Design and Implementation of the Project’s Functionality:

• Low trust and empowerment – “us/them” adversarial relationship.

• Culture of “dependency” – there is a lack of initiative and people are waiting to be told what to do.

• Not understanding “how will it affect me”. • No business case for change and burning

platform.

Buy-in by All Members of the Organization Affected by the Project:

• Poor past successes with project implementations – “here we go again” mentality resulting in a “hunker down” response.

• Not identifying “what’s in it for me”.

• Functional affiliation – agreeing that change must occur, but it is “them” who need to change.

What to Execute 70% of project failures are due to poor execution. There are four (4) key disciplines to execution and by addressing the six (6) critical project components of a project that are listed above, the organization will achieve the discipline to execute effectively by: 1) engaging people and keeping them focused on goals, 2) establishing what must be done to achieve these goals, 3) keeping the organization focused on what matters, and 4) keeping the organization accountable for results.

How to Execute The methods used to establish a discipline of execution enable the organization’s leadership to filter through all of the competing priorities that detract from a project’s successful implementation. To accomplish this, a charter is established defining the business case for change, the current state, the target state, and a strategy for closing the gaps. Then a governance structure is established (Figure 2) with clearly defined goals, roles, and expectations for execution and a method for tracking progress.

Figure 2: Governance Structure Example

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The governance structure in the asset/project defect analogy executes the EMP, and in the case of the asset reliability improvement project, a Project Maintenance Plan. In this regard, the Corporate Executive Steering Group and Site Leadership Team play the role of reliability engineers. The Process Champions are the maintenance engineers. The Project Teams are the craftsmen. The Change Management Team is the PdM/PM technicians, the Site Facilitator is the asset reliability project manager, and the Corporate Facilitator is the asset reliability program manager.

The Project Teams, the craftsmen, are commissioned and trained to reengineer the maintenance and reliability processes and establish standards and methods that will ensure effective asset health management. The net results are improved reliability, increased capacity, and lower operating cost. The Project Team Champions are responsible for ensuring that the gaps between current state and target state are “fixed” and the project functionality is achieved.

The Change Management Team, the PdM/PM technicians, monitors and inspects the project execution to identify “defects” such as the ones that were previously identified. These defects, if not removed, will prevent the project’s full functionality from being achieved and contribute to its eventual failure by becoming another poorly executed “flavor of the month”. Defects identified by this project CBM process are identified as technical or organizational by the Change Management Team analysts. Technical defects are handed over to the Champions for “fixing”. Organizational defects require that the Leadership Team, and in some cases the Executive Steering Group, are engaged to eliminate the defect through an organization change or through their active participation to mitigate its reoccurrence. The governance structure has a supporting process and tools that facilitate execution of the project and greatly increase the likelihood of success. An example governance process and the associated tools are shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Governance Process and Tools for Execution

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Summary The difference between doing the same old things and expecting different results and actually getting different results is seeing and doing things differently. As previously stated, 70% of project failures are due to poor execution. Achieving success requires a discipline of execution. The organization must be aligned to engage people and keep them focused on goals. If people do not know the goals, let alone what to do to achieve them on a day-to-day basis, then failure is predictable. Additionally, the organization must keep score and be held accountable for results.

The governance structure and process outlined here provides the mechanisms for how to execute. They allow leadership to filter through all of the competing priorities and ensure successful execution of performance changes. It all starts with aligning the leadership on a common goal and establishing the business case for change, a vision of the target state’s goals, and how progress and accountability will be achieved. Put the pieces in place to drive the discipline to engage, execute, and sustain.

© 2013 GPAllied Establishing the Discipline of Executing

About GPAllied GPAllied is the most diverse manufacturing and industrial reliability and operations consulting, training, and services company in the world. This diversity enables us to develop significant value propositions for our clients by delivering solutions across different industries, geographies, and—most importantly—across different aspects of an operation.

As a result of our commitment to delivering greater value to our manufacturing and industrial clients, we have brought together premiere industry leading experts to form the GPAllied team. Our specialists demonstrate expertise across all industry sectors and specialty fields including: Lean, Reliability Engineering, Six Sigma, Condition Monitoring, Change Management, Maintenance Planning and Scheduling, Workforce Development, and Craft Skills Training.

For more information about GPAllied, please contact:

World Headquarters 888.335.8276 [email protected] www.gpallied.com