This session is based on a real case study I completed 25 years ago. I was reminded of this as I attended Drew Troyers recent workshop in August, as his paper described the experience I had when I did the case study all those years ago. It reinforced for me that a back-to-basics approach is sometimes the best solution.

• Describing the process used to identify/develop areas for improvement. Failure data from previous four years was reviewed years with simple failure types created for failures.
• Why Pareto charts was developed identifying the failure types that provided the greatest opportunity for improvement.
• How failures were assessed against current Preventative Maintenance (PM) and Condition Monitoring (CM) tasks for effectiveness.
• Along with changes to PM/CM programmes a focus was placed on improving maintenance and repair quality focussing on precision or back to basics standards which included:
  • Precision alignment
  • Precision balance
  • Lubrication best practices
• The results were significant and demonstrated ongoing avoided costs due to a significant reduction in unplanned failures.

There is often a disconnect between decisions made at senior levels of the organisation and ongoing performance expectations. We have all seen decisions to defer capital and major maintenance spend during times of austerity, yet management expect the same level of asset performance. It all leads to huge disappointment when the asset fails.  How can we work with management to ensure we can effectively play the long game, and good initiatives are not abandoned before full implementation because of the time taken to see results?