Stated simply, a cost center is concerned solely with controlling adherence to a budget. In corporate terms a cost center is charged with managing compliance to an operating cost budget that resides below the gross profit line on an income statement. Balancing your checkbook is managing a cost center. A profit center adds requirements for managing income from sales and cost of goods sold (CGS), called gross profit or gross margin. Those who have been privileged to manage both will agree that managing sales, sales income, and cost of goods sold, above the gross profit line, is considerably more difficult than managing expenses.

I maintain that instead of encouraging efficiency and optimization, the very nature of a cost center contains structural disincentives that work against optimization. Everyone recognizes, and many have experienced, the cost center rewards for working hard to control costs and ending the year well under budget. The amount under budget is added to the planned reduction and the result becomes next year’s objective. That’s the reason there is so much last-minute spending, wise or not, in a cost center. The reward works against optimizing, doing exceptionally well, and ending up significantly under budget.

There is another deficiency in a cost center structure. If you are restricted to managing budgets, why spend money on improvements or opportunities that may have a large impact on profitability at an increase in expenses? A cost center is not a charity.

Since profit is the measure of success in a profit center, investment and even adding operating costs can be allocated to improve efficiency and take advantage of unexpected opportunities to sell more and/or higher quality products. In a profit center, managers have the authority to reallocate existing resources as well as expend additional resources with corresponding accountability for results. A profit center not only makes it possible to justify the expenditure of additional resources in maintenance and operating costs to gain a return at the bottom line but encourages that type of activity.

Managers with whom I have spoken, especially those entering the brave new world of combined operations and maintenance responsibility, are, by experience, typically cost-center oriented. Most like the idea of a profit center, especially the flexibility to shift resources and make investments to gain added value. They are closest to the “big picture” and see the opportunities for agility and flexibility to take advantage of opportunities as both exciting and challenging. I’ve not spoken to a single person unwilling to accept accountability for profit-oriented decisions—provided the authority and rewards for added value are present as well.

Cost center management is really micro management. Cost center managers are restricted. A cost center eliminates any initiative to optimize and, as stated earlier, works against optimization. Profit center management moves in the other direction. Improvements, agility to meet unexpected opportunities, and creating maximum value are all encouraged and rewarded. Some companies are going in this direction. Although they might not be calling their evolving style profit-centered management, the concept, scope of authority, and accountability are identical.

To reinforce the importance of the basic equipment cleaning activity in the TPEM process, participants are given a colorful sticker for their hard hats. Around the perimeter of the main TPEM graphic is a chain of functional statements: Clean to Inspect–Inspect to Detect–Detect to Correct–Correct to Perfect–Perfect to Protect.

The chain is similar to the functional analysis processes I learned in value analysis/engineering courses I attended in the 1970s. Value analysis, developed by Larry Miles at General Electric in the late 1940s, is based on functional analysis in which equipment and process functions are described by an active verb and noun-object such as transfer fluid, reduce noise, clean equipment, or correct defects.

The process has evolved to include the functional analysis system technique (FAST) and various charting methods that systematize the relationships among functions to identify the primary function. The FAST diagram format that I prefer organizes functions in a flow-chart that chains secondary functions on the right to the next higher order function to their left.

The question “Why?” is used to pursue higher level functions and the question “How?” is used to collect secondary functions. In the TPEM example, moving from top to bottom in the example list (left to right on the diagram), the question “Why do we clean equipment?” produces the functional answer “To inspect equipment.”

The why question leads up the chain to the highest order function of “protect process.” The how question leads in the opposite direction to succeeding secondary functions. By asking “How do we correct defects?” about the function in the middle of the example TPEM chain, we identify “By detecting defects,” the next secondary function.

Functional analysis is fundamental to most improvement processes. It is unfortunate that so few people learn how to use it. More maintenance and reliability practitioners should use it to pursue the higher order functions that flow from the question: “Why do we maintain equipment?” MT

The paper mill recycles 700,000 tons per year of corrugated material and waste paper to produce the inner and outer layers of containerboard boxes. The plant’s containerboard machine #1 produces a swath 600 mi long and 25 ft wide every day of the fluted inner layer of corrugated boxes. Containerboard machine #2 produces linerboard, the outer layer of corrugated boxes. Both operations recycle a mix of old corrugated containers and waste paper. The plant has the capacity to recycle all of the scrap paper produced in Iowa. It employs 220 people.

Documentation problems
The designers of the mill provided thousands of AutoCAD drawings that frequently needed to be accessed during preventive maintenance or an unscheduled repair. Paper copies of these drawings were maintained in a central document control area. The plant was large so walking to the document control area took a considerable amount of time, then there was a wait while the person on duty located the drawing and copied it. The time required to get the drawings needed to fix a machine and return to the work area could easily be more than a half hour.
In addition, the suppliers of equipment to the plant provided several copies of paper binders containing instructions for maintenance and repair. At least one copy of each binder was supposed to be kept in the document control area while the other copies were usually located convenient to the machine. But manuals frequently disappeared from their assigned areas, which meant that the maintenance person had to go to the document control room in search of another copy.
Another problem with the old approach arose when updates to the manuals were received from machine manufacturers. The document control staff did its best to update the copies floating around the plant but often were unable to find every copy, so in many cases out-of-date manuals were used to order parts or perform repairs.

Evaluating alternatives
Cedar River Paper engineers led by Greg Hilton, senior project engineer, looked for a way to provide the maintenance staff with faster access to drawings and manuals. First, they considered a traditional document management solution based on a high-end database. They discovered that the cost of implementing such a solution could easily run well into seven figures including necessary hardware, software, customization, and training. Despite the magnitude of the savings that they were hoping to achieve, it would have been impossible to justify an expenditure of this magnitude.

Then engineers viewed a software package called Paragon Virtual Library (PVL) from FESTech Software Solutions, Findlay, OH, that uses proprietary dynamic pointer technology to provide a structure and access to existing information without requiring a database and deliver up-to-date information and documentation to any workstation on a local area network or wide area network. PVL also allows users to view and print documentation without the need for native applications such as AutoCAD, Microsoft Word, or Excel.

“Demonstrations convinced us that this approach would make it possible to provide instantaneous access to every type of document in the plant and that implementation and training time would be very short,” Hilton said. “The elimination of the need for a centralized database and its simplicity reduced the cost of the system to only a small fraction of what would have been required to implement a typical document management solution.”

Library architecture
Many machine suppliers provided manuals in electronic format that could be imported into the PVL library, and an outside contractor scanned the rest of the machine manuals into electronic format.

The engineers developed an architecture for the library based on the same terminology and concepts that the maintenance staff already used to identify different areas of the plant. Hilton explained that this architecture uses a plan view of the plant as the basic method for locating drawings and manuals. “System users click on any area or machine to access reference materials,” Hilton said. “Once they enter an area they can select from the different disciplines including electrical, mechanical, structural, process, and instrumentation diagrams, and equipment specifications and drawings. They can also select other related files such as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that are used to store records that document information on each roll such as why it was changed and how long it was.”

The engineers had no difficulty organizing all of the reference materials in the plant in a logical and consistent manner. This eliminated the need for hiring consultants, usually the greatest expense in any document management implementation. It also meant that the people who organized the database had intimate knowledge of how the plant worked.

The pilot showed that the maintenance staff could easily find the documents they needed from personal computers throughout the plant. Many members of the staff who were familiar with computers were able to start using the system on their own without any training. A one-hour class will be put together by the developers of the architecture and this is expected to be all that new users need to become efficient.

Search capabilities
While maintenance staff typically uses the tree structure described previously, the search capabilities of the PVL library provide an alternate approach. Users can enter keywords such as the name of a piece of equipment or its identification number to instantly find documents. For example, if they type in “pulper” they will get a list of all the drawings and manuals that relate to the pulpers in the plant.
Then double-clicking on the line item they are interested in will pull up the drawing or manual through the viewer that is bundled with the product. Once they find the item they need, they can pan around the drawing, move from page to page of the document, zoom into areas of interest, and make a printout to take with them to the work area.

Remote access
The new software will be installed on four personal computers that are already in different areas of the plant. When the maintenance staff member receives a work order, he or she will be able to walk over to one of these computers and locate and print out the drawings needed to do the job in a minute or two. The elimination of the overhead of a high-end database makes it possible for the system to provide virtually instantaneous response throughout the plant even though it runs on inexpensive personal computer hardware and contains about 25 gigabytes of information, nearly all the documentation required to run the plant.

Once the new system is fully implemented, the plant expects to see an improvement in plant operating efficiency, Hilton said. “Machine downtime will be reduced because maintenance staff will be able to get immediate access to the information they need to make repairs. The potential for errors will be reduced by the fact that the system always provides accurate and up-to-date information. Finally, the low cost, ease of implementation, and ability to run efficiently on inexpensive hardware makes it relatively painless to install the system and easy to justify its cost.” MT

Information supplied by FESTech Software Solutions, 807 S. Prospect St., Marion, OH 43302; (740) 375-4497; Internet www.festech.com

Simultaneous with reducing costs, companies were forced to increase quality, productivity, and safety. These efforts focused on the manufacturing unit, looking to reduce variation in product, reduce production bottlenecks, and assure safe work practices. Quality theory told us to define who our customers are and get close to them. Most plants defined operations as the maintenance customer, and in increasing accountability for operating unit managers, gave them more control of the resources.

The initial result was a surge in machine operability as operations managers directed resources toward chronic equipment problems. The craftsmen dedicated to the units felt needed and like they were making a more direct contribution than before as part of a pool. They learned their unit’s equipment intimately, and became more proficient and committed to unit performance.
What could possibly be wrong with that scenario?

Emerging concerns and limitations
In speaking with maintenance and operating leaders in dozens of plants this past year, we have heard a number of repeated concerns:

• There is no consistency to how units are performing maintenance.
• In most cases the dedicated crews are working on schedule breakers because of the ease of deploying them. If there is a plantwide priority system, it has no application to these crews. Rather, work is done to the same urgency as the production schedule.
• Planners dedicated to units do very little routine planning. Instead they are expediters or on-call supervisors, and when they do plan, it is for outages.
• Maintenance craft skills are deteriorating. No one in the organization is assuring the continuing development of craft skills.
• The computerized maintenance management system’s data quality is highly compromised. Some units may use the CMMS, and others don’t.
• The remaining central force feels alienated from the unit-based maintenance crew.
• The reliability engineering team (usually those who perform the predictive maintenance function) are frustrated that their success is limited to those units whose managers understand their value.
• Important measures of planned maintenance, such as percent planned work, schedule conformance, and percent preventive/predictive work, are declining or very stubborn at improving. Operating units have no standard definitions of these measures, and may or may not even measure and record them.

The first question to ask is, “So what?” If the production schedule is being met, is there any cause for concern?

There is, of course, in any industry where cost is a concern. How do you stay ahead of your competition in most businesses? You produce to a quality standard for less than everyone else. No one we’ve spoken with considers current practices to be efficient, even if they are seen as effective.

Is there a better way?
There are three possible options: (1) require operating unit managers to be better managers of the maintenance function and process; (2) recentralize maintenance; or (3) develop an organization that optimizes efficiency and effectiveness.
We can rule out Option 1. Operating unit managers seldom have strong maintenance backgrounds, and would be required to make balanced decisions.

That is possible, but unlikely. Option 2 would bring back the bureaucracy, and would not benefit the overall organization. It may temporarily improve the control of the work (efficiency), at the expense of production (effectiveness).

The answer we suggest is based on centralizing functions that create efficiency and control of work, and decentralizing functions of work effectiveness. See the accompanying section “A Model for Organizing Maintenance.”

Thus, the centralized functions would include work prioritization, planning, and scheduling; preventive and predictive processes; compliance with standards; central reporting; and skills assurance.

The decentralized functions would include response to immediate needs and prioritizing and scheduling area resources.

This organizational scheme would meet both criteria:
Work identification. Only the area can be expected to identify the totality of the work. Problems not recognized do not get attention.

Work prioritization. Prioritization is a shared function. The unit places a relative prioritization on the work. A global system of prioritization must be maintained that works across all units, however, or there is no assurance that resources will be working on the “right stuff.”

Work planning. The planning function is done primarily to improve efficiency. Planned work is typically measured as requiring one-third of the labor time as unplanned work. The best model we have seen is to have planners centrally located, centrally managed, but dedicated to a unit(s). The planner is less likely to be diverted to other responsibilities, and more likely to have the time for careful analysis. There are other benefits. During times such as vacation, there are backups available to plan.

Planning is a discipline that is difficult to achieve and difficult to maintain. It needs to be nurtured and developed carefully. This is the greatest issue to maintenance improvement in most plants.

Work scheduling. Scheduling is a shared function between the dedicated planner, the pool resource manager (usually the manager of central maintenance), and the unit leader/supervisor. The supervisor is free to schedule his own dedicated resources against the planned work (allowing for unplanned work), and will receive additional resources for work that is identified as global priority.
Work documentation. A key to developing a valuable history is complete documentation of the actual work performed. This is done by the craftsman at the end of each job (to avoid the quit early syndrome) and reviewed by the planner for the area. The planner must be the coach to assure that work is documented according to plant standards.

Work analysis. Planners are the only staff in a position to understand and review the work. Part of work analysis is done by simply reviewing the work documentation. Standard job plans may be updated, chronic problems flagged, materials and parts issues noted, and future RCM, FMEA, or root cause analysis needs identified. In addition, planners become very familiar with the analysis and reporting tools available through the CMMS, and can most readily scan history for recurring equipment problems.

Preventive and predictive work. To assure that this work gets done consistently, we have seen the reliability team most effectively used reporting to a central leader. As in planning, these people must become specialists, and learning and helping each other is a key to success. This function would report centrally.

Information tools, reporting, and compliance/performance audits. Providing information tools, such as maintaining the CMMS, reliability tools, making the reports for reliability and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), performing analysis, and audits are all functions that would have central oversight or be performed centrally.

Area maintenance
One of our clients calls the craftsmen reporting directly to the area “Min. Crews,” short for minimum crews. The concept is that the crew is able to handle the minimum average workload of the unit. One method to identify the appropriate staffing level would be to examine the amount of work done in the units during the 10 weeks of the year in which the least hours are recorded by the unit and staff to that level. The objective is to keep as many staffers available to the central group as possible for outage work, etc., and to staff just enough to keep the units operating at an optimal level.

This group becomes identified with the unit where they work. Their goals have less to do with typical maintenance KPIs which are efficiency and complaince-based, but more directly with the production goals of the unit. As such, they often act as the SWAT team to handle immediate work. They also work on the annoying problems of the unit that would never hit the high priority list of the central priority system.

Their interaction with operators is mutually beneficial. Operators more readily participate in “maintenance” tasks when the crafts performing the work are “their guys.” The craftsmen learn the intimate details and idiosyncrasies of the unit’s equipment, and become expert in restoration of function. In the best cases, they routinely remove the sources of work (chronic problems) from the units.

The downside of this union is twofold. First, the craftsmen are not maintaining their skills because their work is “Jack of all trades.” Second, a schism grows between the area and central groups. We have seen this problem resolved through a periodic rotation of staff through the area.

Scheduling of work is a primary responsibility of the area. This is typically handled in a weekly planning meeting between the unit-dedicated planner, the assigned maintenance coordinator, and the unit production supervisor.

The planner has issued a list of planned work to the parties ahead of time. They come to the meeting with prioritized work lists that they reconcile, creating the work list and schedule for the following week.

Area maintenance has contributed a great deal to the effectiveness of manufacturing among our clients in North America. In many cases, however, these plants have dismantled the central organization. Reestablishing the efficiency and control functions under a central organization can help plants improve the total amount of value-added work contributed by the maintenance staff. MT

Brad Peterson is president of Strategic Asset Management Inc., 28 Hunters Crossing, Burlington, CT 06013; (860) 675-0439; e-mail bp0439@aol.com; Internet www.samicorp.com

He delivers all services associated with ultrasonics and vibration analysis, including bearing and valve analysis, dynamic balancing, laser machinery alignment, field repairs, and performance and mechanical analysis of engines, steam turbines, and compressors.

“Chiefly, I’m hired for my expertise and high-tech equipment,” said Lejeune. “For a majority of clients we are consultants. In addition, we provide routine inspections of machinery, make repairs, do installations, and solve problems that evolve with machinery in the diagnosis, correction, and repair stages. One of our biggest selling points is that we keep thorough and accurate records of the condition of all equipment, tracking them over time.”

In conjunction with headphones, the ultrasonic instrument isolates bearing noise from competing machine noises. A data collector can be interfaced with the instrument and the signal can be viewed as an FFT.

Troubleshooting with ultrasonics and vibration analysis
Lejeune uses ultrasonics in conjunction with vibration analysis to pinpoint the exact source of many problems. However, while ultrasonics is a technology with a variety of applications, according to Lejeune, vibration analysis alone is applied mostly to rotating machinery.

One of the most common uses of both technologies is to determine the degradation of bearings. In most situations, a facility is not even aware it is having a problem with worn bearings. But routine analyses on a quarterly basis reveal the problems.
Lejeune said two of the most frequently asked customer questions are: “Is the bearing damaged and in need of replacement, or is it simply a matter of lubrication?” and “How often and how much grease should we use in an electric motor?”

“My answer always is that it depends on the rpm of the machine and its usage,” he explained. “The average customer goes out every three months and gives his motors four shots of grease whether they need it or not. But overlubricating bearings can be even more harmful than underlubricating them. Ultrasonics is the only way of truly determining if the grease has gotten to the bearing safely and economically.”

Lejeune uses ultrasonics in combination with vibration analysis to check for bearing problems. “Vibration analysis alone is not a reliable test to determine bearing damage,” he explained. “Ultrasonics has capabilities outside the range of a standard vibration transducer.”

Equipped with headphones, Lejeune uses his portable ultrasonic instrument (an Ultraprobe 2000 manufactured by UE Systems, Inc.) fitted with a probe to acclimate himself to sounds. An ultrasonic instrument quickly and accurately pinpoints bearing degradation, leaks, or other irregularities that are inaudible to the human ear. By touching the test area with his instrument, Lejeune hears a bearing problem as a grinding sound and observes the intensity on the instrument’s ballistic meter. The closer his instrument is to the bearing housing, the more accurate the reading. Since ultrasonics is a localized signal, a bearing noise can be isolated from competing machine noises. Frequency tuning enables the user to tune in to the resonant frequency of the test subject while dramatically reducing background noise interference.

For further analysis, Lejeune then interfaces the ultrasonic instrument with his data collector, bringing the signal in and viewing it as an FFT. Next, he takes calculated bearing frequencies and superimposes them across the vibration spectrum to determine whether there is a defective bearing or a simple lubrication problem that he can deal with immediately.

Lejeune also uses ultrasonics to conduct valve analyses on large reciprocating compressors and engines. “The ultrasonic signal is brought into a dedicated analyzer set up with a trigger pulse that synchronizes the top dead center of a selected cylinder, either on an engine or compressor, to fire the ultrasonic trace at that position,” he explained. “This enables us to examine the trace and determine whether we have a valve that’s malfunctioning, leaking, slamming too hard, or staying open too long or not long enough.”

Outsourcing pays off
A plant engineer at a major distillery in Alberta reported measurable improvements since Lejeune started a machine analysis program there five years ago.
Production of vodka quality spirit increased from 63 percent to 94 percent by the end of fiscal year 1996 due to fewer equipment failures. Process downtime dropped 55 percent due to reduced maintenance requirements. Call-ins were down 35 percent, and equipment repaired by outside contractors showed improved reliability due to the company’s quality acceptance program. The company also noted improved communications between the production and maintenance departments, according to Lejeune.

Finally, as a result of the program’s success in Alberta, all five of the distillery’s sister plants in the United States and Canada started their own predictive machine analysis programs.

“Clearly, well-managed predictive/preventive maintenance programs are beneficial to a company’s bottom line,” Lejeune concluded. “But when time and staff are in critically short supply to make these programs work, outsourcing makes good financial sense.” MT

Information supplied by Alan S. Bandes, vice president, UE Systems, Inc., Elmsford, NY 10523; (800) 223-1325.

Much of what has been written to date on the subject of maintenance strategy refers to three—and only three—types of maintenance: predictive, preventive, and corrective.

Predictive tasks entail checking items or components if something is failing.
Preventive maintenance means overhauling items or replacing components at fixed intervals.

Corrective maintenance means fixing things either when they are found to be failing or when they have failed.

However, there is a whole family of maintenance tasks which falls into none of these categories.

For example, when we periodically activate an alarm, we are not checking if it is failing. We are not overhauling or replacing it, nor are we repairing it. We are simply checking if it still works.

Tasks designed to check whether something still works are known as failure-finding tasks or functional checks. (In order to rhyme with the other three families of tasks, the author and his colleagues also call them detective tasks because they are used to detect whether something has failed.)

Failure finding applies only to hidden or unrevealed failures. This is because, by definition, the failure of an evident function inevitably becomes apparent to the operators, so there is no need to carry out regular checks to find out whether such a failure has occurred. So failure-finding tasks should be considered only if a functional failure will not become evident to the operating crew under normal circumstances or the failure is one that cannot be addressed by a suitable proactive maintenance task.

Hidden failures in turn only affect protective devices. The objective of failure finding is to satisfy us that a protective device will provide the required protection if it is called upon to do so. In other words, we are not checking whether the device looks OK—we are checking whether it still works as it should. (This is why failure-finding tasks are also known as functional checks.)

A failure-finding task must be sure of detecting all the failure modes which are reasonably likely to cause the protective device to fail. This is especially true of complex devices such as electrical circuits. In these cases, the function of the entire system should be checked from sensor to actuator. Ideally, this should be done by simulating the conditions the circuit should respond to, and checking if the actuator gives the right response.

For example, a pressure switch may be designed to shut down a machine if the lubricating oil pressure drops below a certain level. Whenever possible, switches of this type should be checked by dropping the oil pressure to the required level and checking whether the machine shuts down.

Similarly, a fire detection circuit should be checked from smoke detector to fire alarm by blowing smoke at the detector and checking if the alarm sounds.

If reliability centered maintenance is correctly applied to almost any modern, complex industrial system, it is not unusual to find that up to 40 percent of failure modes fall into the hidden category.

Furthermore, up to 80 percent of these hidden failure modes require failure finding, so up to one-third of tasks generated by comprehensive correctly applied maintenance strategy development programs are failure-finding tasks. (Note that these tasks must be done at frequencies that reduce the risk of a multiple failure to a tolerable level.)

A more troubling finding is that at the time they were written, many existing maintenance programs provide for fewer than one-third of protective devices to receive any attention at all (and then usually at inappropriate intervals).

The people who operate and maintain the plant covered by these programs are aware that another third of these devices exist but pay them no attention, while it is not unusual to find that no one even knows that the final third exist.

This lack of awareness and attention means that most of the protective devices in industry—our last line of protection when things go wrong—are maintained poorly or not at all.

This situation is completely untenable.

If industry is serious about safety and environmental integrity, then the whole question of failure finding needs to be given top priority as a matter of urgency. As more and more maintenance professionals become aware of the importance of this neglected area of maintenance, it is likely to become a bigger maintenance strategy issue in the next decade than predictive maintenance has been in the past 10 years. MT

Computer users and programmers working with IBM’s OS/2 Warp operating system for personal computers produced the event. It was a grass roots affair without corporate support. I went there to see a demonstration of a voice-activated and speech-driven computerized maintenance management system from Aviar, Inc. of Pittsburgh, PA. In addition to taking over many of the actions typically executed by the mouse, the voice approach allows the operator to envoke an ad hoc reporting function by simply speaking instructions such as “Look up active work orders” to get the desired screen report or print-out. It worked for my voice without training the system.

The next day I stopped by a computer fair at the local community college and found a bustling bazaar in the gymnasium where one could buy new and used computers, circuit boards, hard drives, peripherals, and software. The prices were good, and there was a steady stream of people lugging boxes out to the parking lot. They knew what they were looking for and could recognize a bargain when they saw it.

The atmosphere at these events triggered some nostalgia. I couldn’t help but remember the first time I tried to land the lunar module by typing in values on a Commodore personal computer and seeing the ASCII character representation of my vehicle crash again and again until I got it right.

However, the image from these two events that stands out the most in my mind is the intensity of the people—both in the booths and in the aisles. The people in the booths were serious about what they were offering and how it could help the attendees. Although the people in the aisles were having a good time, they were equally serious in their search for information, products, and services that would help them get where they wanted to go.

It is time to turn up the intensity on best reliability and maintenance practices. That’s what we plan to do at our event, MAINTECH South ’98. Please join us in Houston on December 1-3 to see how much fun it can be when you get knowledgeable practitioners, experts, and vendors together to share information on successful maintenance practices. MT

Although no single portable computer is best for every application, chances are there is or soon will be a lightweight handheld unit that can fully serve any set of maintenance needs better, faster, and at less cost.

Pen tablet computers allow the technician to collect vibration data and perform trend analysis based on FFTs to find impending problems, evaluate their urgency, uncover root causes, and perform balancing. Photograph courtesy Vibration Specialty Corp., Philadelphia, PA.

In the past, data collectors and service instruments had to be designed for a specific task in order to achieve small size and high performance at a reasonable price. With a low cost but powerful personal computer (PC), a variety of tests could be performed as well or better, with the computer’s function easily altered through software. One PC could replace an entire laboratory of equipment. However, because PCs were heavy and fragile, special portable devices were still needed in the field to make tests or collect data.

Although comparatively light weight, the laptop computer with its mouse, keyboard, and flip-up screen was not ideal for operation by plant personnel. It often quit in harsh environments—it was never intended to operate in a refinery in Texas under the summer sun, at an Arctic pipeline in the winter, in a paper mill’s humidity, in a rolling mill’s dirt and dust, or to survive an accidental drop on a concrete floor.

Handheld pen computers
For industry and the military, the problems with using laptops in the plant or the field are being solved by handheld pen-based computers—a pen tablet or a personal digital assistant (PDA). To date, the pen tablet—almost as powerful as a laptop but smaller and lighter—has been widely deployed with a barcode reader to check inventories, confirm truck deliveries, track rental car returns, or link with utility field-service teams.

While the pen tablet is a full Windows 95-based computer, the PDA runs on the simpler Windows CE or a proprietary operating system, providing limited power. Both are designed for field use, but only pen tablets are available in industrial-strength ruggedized versions. Although widely different in display, storage, and computing power, both use point-and-click “pens” to select menu items for easy operation. Some also include handwriting recognition software although with limited success. For a more detailed comparison of laptops, pen tablets, and PDAs, see the accompanying section “Alternatives to Pen Tablets.”

Two versions of the pen tablet are available—one intended for standalone operation, the other as a remote client for a home-based server. The standalone is a full computer incorporating hard disk storage and fast Pentium processing. The remote client type depends on a remote host server, continuously linked by wireless technology or modem, to provide all storage and processing power. In effect, the client is a stripped-down pen tablet, acting as a remote terminal for display and data entry only. PDAs fitted with wireless communications also can serve as remote clients, although their cramped displays are less than ideal.

In the field
There are three areas of application for portable computers in industrial maintenance:

• As a data collector and/or analyzer for on-site maintenance decisions
• As a field service tool to aid in performing maintenance
• As a management tool for control of maintenance operations

Although the use and type of computer differs for each application, there are a number of advantages for computer-based maintenance.

More reliable data is obtained. Error-prone, hand-written records are replaced by reliable data, automatically gathered, stored, and consistently available throughout the enterprise. Bar codes identify inspection locations reliably, ensuring verifiable route compliance that satisfies even regulatory agencies.
Record keeping costs are reduced. Less paperwork lowers administrative overhead because data is processed more efficiently and disseminated widely without producing redundant copies—or even any printed record at all.

Use of resources is more efficient. One simple device can be programmed to serve multiple purposes. Mobile workers perform better and faster without having to learn multiple devices. Material and equipment can be allocated more effectively. With all necessary information—schematics, design and safety specifications, installation drawings, operating parameters, replacement parts lists, etc.—available on demand on site, downtime is reduced and less time is wasted on repeat visits by the technician.

Decision making is faster and more cost-effective. By integrating real-time field reports with the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), managers at all levels share complete, up-to-the-minute information, and can react quickly to changing field conditions or emergencies. Condition monitoring tests involving a number of parameters—vibration, heat, oil quality, pressure—can be compared quickly to confirm impending problems before they become catastrophic.

Data collection
Maintenance starts with knowing what is going on—how equipment is operating, what increased stresses are being applied, how conditions have changed. Data must be collected, either by a remote monitoring system or by workers on-site. In the latter case, the handheld computer makes data collection faster, more accurate, and more flexible.

In its simplest mode, local instrument readings are entered manually in a pen tablet or PDA then downloaded to a central server. Downloading usually occurs at the end of the day either directly via hardwire or infrared interface, or remotely via modem or wireless link. Point-of-access data recording has the advantage of allowing the field technician to append pertinent information.

Most pen tablets and some PDAs allow the addition of bar code readers through their serial ports. Bar codes, commonly used to identify parts in inventory, also provide identification of inspection sites where readings are taken. Appended to the actual data, bar codes can be used to verify inspection route compliance in critical facilities such as nuclear power plants.

The U.S. Navy plans to expand the use of their pen tablets, currently under trial for collecting machine vibration data for predictive maintenance, by adding manually entered dial readings of temperature, pressure, etc. Eventually they plan to use the pen tablet for acoustic analysis and to access networks and generate repair orders, increasing technician efficiency and reducing the number of instruments with which he must be supplied.

A commercial system is currently available that uses the power and flexibility of the pen tablet for multi-channel vibration data collection and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) analysis. Because of the pen tablet’s mass storage, a complete archive of previous data and sophisticated programs is available on-site for trend analysis, alarm, and failure diagnostics.

Handhelds as a service tool
A portable computer also can aid in actual servicing. Its internal storage can provide information on design and operation of the device being worked on, as well as safety codes, standards, installation drawings, and equivalent replacement parts. The small screen and memory of a PDA limits the information that can be displayed. A pen tablet, on the other hand, is ideally suited to store and display complex graphics. Where a machine’s operating or maintenance history is pertinent, it may be downloaded to the pen tablet’s hard drive or solid-state drive either directly from the server before going on location or later on-site via a communications link.

Typical of operations requiring rapid-response maintenance at remote locations are refineries, pipelines, power generating stations, rolling mills, paper plants, auto assembly plants, large machine shops, and utilities. For example, field technicians at Nynex use a pen tablet during servicing for remote control of loop assignment switching as well as to collect and view line data.

Operations which require computer control and read out, such as balancing or alignment, can be programmed into a handheld computer, although they usually require the advanced processing and graphic capabilities found only in a pen tablet.

A pen tablet also can be expanded for use as a number of different test instruments. With the addition of input analog-to-digital conversion, a pen tablet-based system can be programmed to serve not only for balancing and alignment, but also as a digital chart recorder, digital oscilloscope, digital voltmeter, or dual-channel FFT structural analyzer.

Recognizing this potential, the U.S. Navy is developing a multi-channel analog-to-digital (A/D) and signal conditioning card, specifically designed for the pickup of vibration or other dynamic signals, and packaged to plug directly into the PCMCIA card slots available in pen tablet computer. Various PCMCIA A/D cards are also available commercially from a number of manufacturers specializing in plug-in cards.

The computer as a management tool
A pen tablet or PDA with communications capabilities can serve as a link between a CMMS and the field. Timely information from the repair site is available to managers for rapid decision-making to optimize plant utilization. Field personnel are quickly redirected to where they are most needed, while providing all the information they require to maximize their effectiveness such as work orders, availability of resources, spares inventory, and safety standards. A number of CMMS suppliers favor a PDA because of its small size and because its reasonable cost can make it practical in some cases to discard a damaged PDA and replace it with a new one.

Communicating to and from the field
Where sufficient data and programs can be retained at any one time in the PDA, intermittent communication (at the start or end of the work day) via wire modem or local connection to the server is practical. In many cases, however, the PDA does not provide enough storage or processing power. Either a more powerful handheld computer such as a pen tablet must be used, or the PDA must be employed solely as a remote terminal or client in communication with a more powerful server.

Putting all computer power in the server allows the client to be lighter, less expensive and, without the need for a hard disk, more reliable. Only the server needs to be provided with state-of-the-art processing, making periodic upgrades easier. Because data resides on the server, there is less chance of losing data if a client fails in the field. A multi-unit system is more economical with many lower-cost clients and only one expensive server. Disadvantages include limitations in current modem and wireless data transfer rates and, most important, the need to maintain continuous clean links in remote locations where wireless communication is problematical.

Some units can send information back to the server using Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD). CDPD transmits digital packets within the unused bandwidth of analog cellular telephone, but works only where a special CDPD network is locally available (at a monthly access charge). Its speed of 19.2 K-bps is sufficient for text, but downloading any but the simplest graphics is prohibitively slow. Also, the addition of CDPD and its dedicated modem seriously tax a PDA’s battery.

In many applications, a PDA is not powerful enough to serve even as a client. Its processing capabilities, screen, and battery are all too weak. Wherever photographs, detailed schematics, layout diagrams, or other graphic-intensive information is needed in the field, a more robust computer is called for. Some manufacturers build their clients around pen tablet-type handhelds with a Windows 95 operating system and a large screen.

Handheld pen-based pen tablets are sufficiently powerful and rugged to perform virtually any computer-based industrial maintenance function in the harshest of environments. Many of these units, complete with typically delicate hard drives, are designed to withstand the shock of dropping 3 feet onto a concrete floor. They also operate at the temperature extremes where humans have difficulty working—from below zero to more than 120 F—and withstand almost 100 percent humidity or driving rain.

As batteries improve and circuitry becomes smaller and less power hungry, the future may see the introduction of such powerful maintenance tools as a high-speed, digital cellular modem (with universal coverage) integrated into a large screen pen tablet, putting the field technician in real-time contact worldwide with his home base and all its data. MT

Richard S. Rothschild has 18 years experience with a major manufacturer of real-time FFT spectrum analyzers and machine vibration predictive maintenance systems. He currently is a consultant in electronic product planning and marketing and may be reached at 175 Knibloe Rd., Sharon CT 06069; (860) 364-1915; email richroth@li.com

The usual goal of benchmarking with other companies is to compare processes and the costs associated with them and to discover new concepts. When you are competing in a national or global economy, competition to reduce costs, improve quality, and increase product output is intense. There are a multitude of competitive benchmarking drivers to deal with: team empowerment, material flow, inventory control, production operation, product design, industrial engineering, utility management, maintenance practices, training, technology, computer support, etc.

But it is difficult to share manufacturing benchmarking data and information without a good analysis of internal activity. The problem is that most companies do not know what they already have internally, good or bad. Nor do they have a process in place to improve common cross-functional weaknesses.

To add to this, it is extremely difficult to find a benchmarking partner whose performance measures and costs can be compared. Even those who have the same equipment and the same process flow will still have different cultural attributes that impact overall performance at all levels of the organization.

Background
About 1992, the Saturn Maintenance Core Council (MCC) sanctioned an effort to develop a process for internal benchmarking relative to world class practices for all of the Saturn maintenance organization. The goal was to compare nine key elements of the Saturn maintenance strategy against perceived world class best maintenance practices. See the accompanying section “Saturn’s World Class Maintenance Strategy.”

The Saturn MCC membership is made up from all the partnered (UAW-represented and nonrepresented) maintenance leadership area module advisors and the three elected UAW skilled trades advisors. The council developed the mission statement and the key support elements for its maintenance strategy. It meets several times each month to review and discuss sitewide maintenance issues.

Assessment process
Several Saturn leaders (UAW-represented and nonrepresented) gathered information from or visited such sources as the Marshall Institute, North American Maintenance Excellence Award, AT Kearney’s Best of Seven, General Motors Corp. facilities, and non-GM manufacturers. As a result, an assessment questionnaire was developed and point values were assigned to each element and question. The assessment totals 1000 points divided across the nine key areas, with Planned Maintenance and Continuous Improvement elements weighted to indicate their higher importance to the company’s growth and development.

The Saturn UAW manufacturing advisor and the vice president of manufacturing sanctioned the maintenance assessment process in 1995.

The 37 Saturn maintenance teams, each consisting of six to 15 skilled trades members, are spread across a wide variety of production processes. These teams cover support for robotics, assembly, paint processing, metal stamping, polymer injection, gear machines, foundry and heat treatment, etc. Each is responsible for running its operations support activities as a business, including planning, absenteeism, continuous improvement, controlling part and tool inventory, performing to budget, etc. Because Saturn has a unique union agreement that allows for partnership at all leadership levels, it was decided that all 37 teams would be assessed, instead of assessment at some higher level in the business structure.

The purpose of the assessment process is to train the maintenance team members as to what world class practices are and help them develop continuous improvement plans as may be appropriate to correct any shortfall the team decides is important. See the accompanying section “Assessment Process—Guidelines.” The process requires that the maintenance team members being assessed develop a team manual with supporting evidence for each of the 67 assessment questions. A group of maintenance peers from other Saturn business units then meets with the team members to review and discuss each of the questions. Originally this took a full day to complete, but today it takes about four hours.

The assessors’ results are averaged and comments combined onto one questionnaire form. Within three to four weeks the maintenance team members are invited to meet again, with the same assessors, to review the results together. Scores are discussed for clarification and future reference, but will not be changed until the next assessment. The questions on the assessment form are subdivided to reduce subjective scoring. In the future Saturn plans to subdivide the questions to a one point (Yes/No) level. This will allow the teams to assess themselves fairly accurately.

It is important to note that the assessors do not share maintenance team scores with other teams within or outside their module or business unit; only with the assessed team’s leadership. The team is asked to put together a continuous improvement plan, due in six weeks, for those items it wants to improve.

It is urged to select items for improvement that the team has the time and resource help to complete. The Saturn maintenance leaders are responsible for their teams’ completion of the process. Team members are asked to help as future assessors for other site teams.

Assessment results
A spider graph is provided to the teams at the feedback session to give them a visual representation of how their assessment score compares to world class for each key element. The MCC has determined that out of the 1000 points only 810 are directly within the teams’ control. The other 190 points deal with the interaction of maintenance support functions like training, indirect materials, operations, maintenance leadership, etc.

As of this writing all of the Saturn maintenance teams have completed the first round of the assessment process and Saturn is about halfway through the second round. Thus far, over 60 assessments have been completed in the past three years.

The MCC has determined that awards will be given to the maintenance teams that score points during the second round assessment in the following ranges:

• Above 700 (Level I): Demonstrated a working knowledge of world class practices
• Above 800 (Level II): Demonstrated and documented progress toward world class
• Above 900 (Level III): Developed, documented, and utilizes world class practices

Benefits
As a result of the first round assessment, various teams have undertaken improvements within their respective areas. From a site perspective several changes have been recommended and started.
For example, team and module preventive and predictive maintenance programs have been reviewed and modified. Saturn indirect materials and Saturn technical resource support functions are currently implementing continuous improvement plans specifically for maintenance. More attention has been given to team norms and point role activities. Several maintenance modules have revised maintenance planner activities. Team manuals prepared for the assessment have become a good foundation for QS-9000 process documentation, and maintenance libraries across the site have been updated. MT

Richard Elliott, P.E., has 36 years experience with General Motors Corp., 14 of them with Saturn Corp., 100 Saturn Pkwy., Spring Hill, TN 37174-1500. He is now Saturn’s sitewide maintenance coordinator responsible for reporting assessment results to the MCC. He can be reached at (931) 486-5796.

Why another conference and trade show? To provide an additional opportunity for you to get the information you need. . .network with the people you need to know. . .and check out current technologies and services. . .to help you be more effective and your company more profitable.

I’m very excited because conferences and trade shows are among my favorite activities. I’ve been to all kinds of events. I’ve been a committeeman, speaker, exhibitor, and attendee. I have been crushed by the crowd, cooked by body heat in small meeting rooms, frozen by air conditioning in auditoriums, and awed and embarrassed by speakers. I have had an opportunity to question the famous and not so famous in press conferences and question and answer sessions. And I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Perhaps that is why I became a reporter and editor—to have an opportunity to participate in technical conferences and trade shows every month of the year.

Not everyone is as fortunate as I am when it comes to attending conferences. You probably have tighter time constraints and a more restricted travel budget than I do. So you have to choose. mainTech South ’98 will provide another choice (we think the best choice), perhaps a better mix of topics and exhibits for your needs, and possibly be held closer to home.

The program is designed to cover the business and technology of maintenance management. You will be able to choose from 30 sessions presented in five simultaneous tracks: corporate strategy, maintenance and reliability operations, condition assessment technologies, information management technologies, and the human side of managing change. Check out the article on page 32 for more information.

This year’s event is set up to provide a conference with enabling content delivered in seminar, panel, and case study formats by over 100 practitioners and experts. A series of educational workshops has been planned for the day preceding the conference. It has all been designed to support the action-oriented manager.

If you need to work more effectively with financials, technology, information, or people, there is a seat for you in Houston on December 1–3. I hope to see you there. MT

For several years now e-mail has grown rapidly as a communications tool in XYZ Company. At one plant location they are well into e-mail and a two-year planned, preventive, and total productive maintenance implementation process. We were asked to look at the question of “how to improve communications that will result in improved plant reliability and performance.”

Communications methods at this plant typically included large and small meetings, one-on-one discussions, signs, posters, a plant newsletter, and e-mail. The most often cited and used communications method was e-mail, hands down. Everyone we met with spoke of the virtues and the effectiveness of e-mail. The advantages they cited included speed, mass distribution if needed, ease of getting a reply, and the ability to save time by not having to arrange meetings to communicate about specific topics.
Here is the downside of e-mail in this plant location. At first there was little awareness of any limitation. But the closer we got to the people on the plant floor—maintenance, operations, supervision—the more we saw a completely different side on the effectiveness of e-mail. What were the real world findings in this plant? Clearly 70 percent of the employees did not have access to e-mail. This was the plant floor group. Next, even if they did have access to e-mail, approximately 30 percent of the workforce could not read or write above the seventh grade level (the level of basic adult literacy). Of the 70 percent, only a small number of them had computer skills (typically related to games on a home computer).

The answer to this e-mail communications gap? The first-line supervisors were made accountable for reading, and printing out, e-mails that were relevant to their work group and seeing that the messages are communicated to everyone who needs to know. Well, you can imagine how many e-mails are distributed daily at this plant. And, you can imagine how little time the supervisors had to spend reading all those e-mails looking for items that should be communicated to their work groups. Supervisors told us “there has to be a better way!”

To address the supervisors’ concerns, we looked at a number of critical communications that went out via e-mail. We found a number of dysfunctional features. First, beyond the junk e-mail we found that the “subject” line told little of the message’s importance. Second, the opening paragraph did not summarize what the message was but rather began building the reader up to learn more as he or she read on. The text of the message was typically written at the twelfth grade level and higher in very long lines of text and paragraphs. And, the very last line tended to be “Make sure this subject gets communicated to those employees in your area who do not have e-mail access.”

So, what is the bottom line for improving communications in ways that lead to improved plant reliability and performance? First, do not assume that just because you sent an e-mail that you have communicated. The chances are you have not communicated at all to the very people who need to understand the message and take action. Make sure there is a formal communications structure in place to bridge the gap between those who have e-mail access and those who do not. Write e-mails that speak to the readers’ reading and writing levels. Make the subject a specific action statement. Specify who needs to hear this message in the opening paragraph. The lead paragraph should be a very brief summary of the entire e-mail message. Lastly, use short sentences, bullet lists, and specific action statements whenever possible. Do not ramble on.

Oddly enough, we have noticed some of the same barriers to effective PM programs as we noted for e-mail. Many PMs are not understood, and not used as intended, because they do not communicate to the end user as effectively as they should. Our suggestion: Many of the same guidelines for e-mail effectiveness will likely result in more effective PMs in your plant. In the information age, communications will be a fundamental, underlying, key to plant and equipment reliability. MT

I must admit it is a bit frustrating to believe very strongly in a concept that others may not consider especially important. After numerous discussions and presentations over the past couple years, I've decided to try a sports metaphor to better explain the opportunity, challenge, and threat.

Ever consider how sports might change and how differently they would be played if no one cared about the score? Think about football. Fourth and goal with 40 seconds to play. There will be major differences in the play call if the team with the ball is behind by 2, behind by 3, behind by 4, or ahead by 20. Consider set and match points in tennis The point is played very differently if the score is 40-love or love-40. Almost any sport you can think of is the same. Watch the last minutes of a close professional basketball game and try to convince anyone that score doesn't matter.

You may be thinking all this is very interesting but how does it apply to maintenance? I believe the answer is simple. Maintenance is scored in financial terms by those who count--the people who sign your checks. Maintenance costs as a percentage of replacement asset value is one widely used measure--there are others. Whether you agree or not, are comfortable or not, the fact is that we and our effectiveness are scored by money--how much was spent last year, how much will be spent this year, and if B is greater than A, your job may be in jeopardy.

Most equipment practitioners aren't allowed to spend money without a guaranteed return of at least 30 to 40 percent. And this is why the so-called streamlined reliability centered maintenance (RCM) has become popular. RCM without initial prioritization can be hugely expensive. There are many stories of an expensive RCM that resulted in added maintenance to avoid unlikely failures on nonvital equipment with a long history of reliability operation and low cost of failure. Keith Mobley recently wrote of a survey where nearly 51 percent of respondents reported their predictive maintenance programs did not return costs.

What's wrong in these pictures? The answer is that many people measure success in technical terms such as preventive maintenance completed, regardless of whether value is added and flawed bearings are identified and replaced. When dollars are the only score with any importance to executives, measures like these are like having the best passing statistics on a winning football team.

Most people are well aware of the characteristics and pitfalls of a cost center. In a cost center, everyone knows the reward for ending the year under budget. Foolish action taken late in the year to avoid finishing below budget was recently illustrated in the comic strip rendition of management incompetence--Dilbert. If our game is being scored in dollars, let's figure out a way to use the scoring system to demonstrate conclusively that we can make more money for our companies by using better methods.

As mentioned, cost per replacement asset value is a frequently used scoring measure for maintenance effectiveness. This measure says we must reduce costs to some arbitrary value. What would be the reaction if we could begin from this measure to demonstrate conclusively that we could make more money for our company by playing the game from a profit perspective? The game would be scored on effectiveness measured in opportunities gained, increased output, quality, and profit rather that cost. Some are doing just that with spectacular results.

In a prior editorial I mentioned economic value added (EVA) as a more comprehensive measure of value and equipment effectiveness. The complete paper is posted on the MIMOSA web site: www.mimosa.org. If you think we ought to be playing a profit center game and scoring results in terms of effectiveness, please take a look and let me know what you think about EVA and producer value as a beginning. It certainly isn't the complete answer but it's probably part of the answer.

I'm convinced that if we want to be recognized for our contribution to enterprise profitability, we need to change mentality from cost to profit, and demand a scoring system that conclusively demonstrates real contribution in financial terms. MT

A particularly important problem that faces many industries is measurement of remaining wall thickness in pipes, tubes, tanks, and structural members subject to corrosion. Such corrosion is often not detectable by visual inspection, even when the area is accessible. If undetected over a period of time, corrosion will weaken walls and possibly lead to failures, some with dire safety, economic, or environmental consequences. Ultrasonic testing is a widely accepted nondestructive method for performing this inspection, permitting quick and reliable measurement of thickness without requiring access to both sides of a part.

This article focuses on a class of ultrasonic instruments often referred to as corrosion thickness gauges. These commonly handheld gauges digitally display the thickness of the remaining wall thickness of the part. They usually employ a dual element transducer (or dual probe), which is normally used for corrosion survey work rather than precision gaging work. Dual element transducers are typically rugged and able to withstand high temperatures, and are highly sensitive to detection of pitting or other localized thinning conditions. As their name implies, dual element transducers use a pair of separate piezoelectric elements, one for transmitting and one for receiving, bonded to separate delay lines cut at an angle.

A pulse-echo ultrasonic thickness gauge determines the thickness of a part or structure by accurately measuring the time required for a short ultrasonic pulse generated by a transducer to travel through the thickness of the material, reflect from the back or inside surface, and be returned to the transducer. In most applications this time interval is a few microseconds or less. The measured two-way transit time is divided by two to account for the down-and-back travel path, and then multiplied by the velocity of sound in the test material.

Standard industry practice has been to use dual element transducers for corrosion survey work, particularly when the inside surface of the test piece is pitted or rough. It is the irregular surfaces that are frequently encountered in corrosion situations that give dual element transducers an advantage over single element transducers. All ultrasonic gaging involves timing the round trip of a sound pulse in a test material. Because solid metal has an acoustic impedance that differs from that of gasses, liquids, or corrosion products such as scale or rust, the sound pulse will reflect from the far surface of the remaining metal. The test instrument is programmed with the velocity of sound in the test material, and computes the wall thickness.

Dual element transducers incorporate separate transmitting and receiving elements, set at an angle, so that the transmitting and receiving beam paths cross beneath the surface of the test piece. This crossed-beam design of dual element transducers provides a pseudo focusing effect that optimizes measurement of minimum wall thickness in corrosion applications. The dual element units are more sensitive than single element transducers to echoes from the base of pits that represent minimum remaining wall thickness. Also, they often may be used more effectively on rough outside surfaces. Couplant trapped in pockets on rough sound entry surfaces can produce long, ringing interface echoes that interfere with the near surface resolution of single element transducers. With a dual element unit, the receiver element is unlikely to pick up this false echo. Finally, dual element transducers may be designed for high temperature measurements that would damage single element contact transducers.

Modern corrosion thickness gauges incorporate internal data logging functions that can be used for statistical analysis of stored thickness data. Documentation capabilities may range from simple printouts of thickness readings to the transfer of data to a computer to generate powerful three-dimensional, color-coded grid files. Some instruments feature on-screen comparison of current thickness readings vs. previous readings, which is ideal for monitoring the degree of wall thinning.
The following general principles apply to all corrosion measurements with dual element transducers, whether used with a thickness gauge or a flaw detector. In all cases, the instrument must be properly calibrated for sound velocity and zero offset in accordance with the procedure found in the instrument’s operating manual.

Transducer selection
For any ultrasonic measurement system (transducer plus thickness gauge or flaw detector), there will be a minimum material thickness below which valid measurements will not be possible. Transducers at higher frequencies are capable of measuring thinner parts. In corrosion applications, where minimum remaining wall thickness is normally the parameter to be measured, it is particularly important to be aware of the specified range of the transducer being used. If a dual element transducer is used to measure a test piece that is below its designed minimum range, the gauge may detect invalid echoes and display an incorrectly high thickness reading.

In selecting a transducer for a corrosion application it is also necessary to consider the temperature of the material to be measured. Not all dual element transducers are designed for high-temperature measurements. Using a transducer on a material whose temperature is beyond the unit’s specified range can damage or destroy the transducer.

Surface condition
Loose or flaking scale, rust, corrosion, or dirt on the outside surface of a test piece will interfere with the coupling of sound energy from the transducer into the test material. Thus, any loose debris of this sort should be cleaned from the specimen with a wire brush or file before measurements are attempted. Generally it is possible to make corrosion measurements through thin layers of rust, as long as the rust is smooth and well bonded to the metal below. Some very rough cast or corroded surfaces may have to be filed or sanded smooth in order to insure proper sound coupling.

Severe pitting on the outside surface of a pipe or tank can be a problem. On some rough surfaces, the use of a gel or grease rather than a liquid couplant will help transmit sound energy into the test piece. In extreme cases it will be necessary to file or grind the surface sufficiently flat to permit contact with the face of the transducer. In applications where deep pitting occurs on the outside of a pipe or tank it is usually necessary to measure remaining metal thickness from the base of the pits to the inside wall. There are sophisticated ultrasonic techniques utilizing focused immersion transducers that can measure directly from the base of the pit to the inside wall, but this is generally not practical for field work. The conventional technique is to measure externally unpitted metal thickness ultrasonically, measure pit depth mechanically, and subtract the pit depth from the measured wall thickness. Alternately, one can file or grind the surface down to the base of the pits and measure normally.

Transducer positioning, alignment
For proper sound coupling the transducer must be pressed firmly against the test surface. On small diameter cylindrical surfaces such as pipes, the transducer should be held so the sound barrier material, visible on the probe face, is aligned perpendicular to the center axis of the pipe.

An ultrasonic test measures thickness at only one point within the beam of the transducer, yet wall thickness often varies considerably in corrosion situations. Test procedures usually call for making a number of measurements within a defined area and establishing a minimum and/or average thickness. Ideally, data should be taken at increments no greater than half the diameter of the transducer to insure that no pits or other local variations in wall thickness are missed. It is up to the user to define a pattern of data collection appropriate to the needs of a given application. This is normally not possible; instead a significant statistical sampling of data points is often taken.

High temperature measurements
Corrosion measurements at elevated temperatures require special consideration. The following points should be considered:

• Check that the surface temperature of the test piece is less than the maximum specified temperature for the transducer and couplant to be used. Some dual element transducers are designed for room temperature measurements only.
• Use a couplant rated for the temperature of the test surface. All high temperature couplants will boil off at some temperature, leaving a hard residue that will not transmit sound energy.
• Make measurements quickly and allow the transducer body to cool between readings. High temperature dual element transducers have delay lines made of thermally tolerant material, but with continuous exposure to very high temperatures the inside of the probe will heat to a point where it eventually will destroy the transducer.
• Both material sound velocity and transducer zero offsets will change with temperature. For maximum accuracy at high temperatures, velocity calibration should be performed using a section of the test bar of known thickness heated to the temperature where measurements are to be performed. Quality thickness gauges have a semi-automatic zero function that can be employed to adjust zero setting at high temperatures.

Gauges and flaw detectors
An ultrasonic corrosion gauge is designed to detect and measure echoes reflected from the inside wall of a test piece. It is possible that material discontinuities such as flaws, cracks, voids, or laminations may produce echoes of sufficient amplitude to trigger the gauge, showing up as unusually thin measurements at particular spots on a test piece.

Corrosion gauges that incorporate waveform displays can be very useful in detecting these conditions. However, a corrosion gauge is not designed for flaw or crack detection, and cannot be relied upon to detect material discontinuities. A proper evaluation of material discontinuities requires an ultrasonic flaw detector used by a properly trained operator. In general, any unexplained readings by a corrosion thickness gauge merit further testing with a flaw detector. MT

Information supplied by Meindert Anderson, Nondestructive Testing Division of Panametrics, 211 Crescent St., Waltham, MA 02453; (800) 225-8330

An optical scanner reads a bar code that provides data about the equipment. Bar codes can also support work orders, parts inventory, asset tracking, and labor reporting. (Photograph courtesy Tiscor.)

Automatic data collection (ADC) is the process of automating the entry and dissemination of computer-based information. It is an assortment of technologies that provide a machine-based alternative to keyboard entry. It includes bar codes, touch memory, magnetic stripe cards, radio frequency communication, and voice recognition.

Hardware and software vendors have just started to recognize the potential of ADC in maintenance management. At the beginning of the decade only a few computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) vendors provided bar coding modules. Today, most major CMMS vendors support bar coding. Some have introduced products using touch memory and pen-based computers. The number of ADC maintenance management solutions will continue to grow with advancing technology and the need to increase productivity.

Common elements in ADC
ADC maintenance management applications generally have four common elements regardless of the technology used. They are collection medium, reading and writing devices, terminals and data communication, and application software.
The collection medium is the physical vehicle for storing or transmitting information. Bar codes, touch memory buttons, radio frequency identification (RF/ID) tags, and speech are collection mediums.

Technician uses touch memory technology to collect and log data. (Photograph courtesy Diversified Systems Group.)

Terminals provide a mechanism for users to interact with the collection process and application software. Fixed terminals communicate with a computer system through cabling and wires. Batch terminals are portable and require users to physically place the terminal in a cradle or docking station in order to upload and download data from the target computer system. Radio frequency (RF) terminals also provide portability, but allow users to send and receive on a real-time basis. Terminals vary in processing power from simple storage devices to portable computers complete with keyboard and display.

The application software is generally a CMMS. However, other software such as predictive maintenance analysis and stand-alone inventory control packages can support ADC. Commercially available software packages do not inherently support ADC; vendors must design and develop a special program code in their products in order to support it. Information technology departments and system integrators can custom build stand-alone ADC solutions or, in certain instances, integrate ADC technology into an existing application package.

ADC technologies
Bar codes remain the most popular ADC technology used in maintenance management. There are bar coding solutions for just about every maintenance system application that requires the entry of a predetermined set of values such as work order numbers or failure codes. However, other technologies are starting to make an appearance. They include two-dimensional bar codes, touch memory, magnetic stripe and smart cards, radio frequency and wireless communications, portable pen-based computers and personal digital assistants, and voice recognition.

Each technology has its own set of unique capabilities and a cost threshold that can make it appropriate for some applications and not others. Many applications use a combination of the technologies, while others can be addressed by only one particular technology.

ADC maintenance management applications are not restricted to the technologies listed previously. Touch screen computers and optical character recognition are integral components of many electronic document management systems. Biometrics provides the ability to secure access to facilities and financial transactions based on fingerprint or retinal scans. Infrared remains a popular wireless communication mechanism.

Bar codes. Bar coding is an accepted, if not common, practice in maintenance management. Bar codes can support work order processing, inventory control, tool tracking, asset management, and labor reporting. A bar code’s pattern of alternating dark stripes and light spaces allows key data elements such as work order numbers, part numbers, and failure codes to be encoded on a piece of paper or label. An optical scanning device reads the bar code by illuminating the pattern and translating the resulting reflection into a data stream. Traditional bar codes store a relatively small amount of information in linear patterns of bars and spaces.
There are several two-dimensional bar code symbologies available, with PDF 417 generally recognized as the standard for maintenance applications. It allows up to 1800 characters to be encoded into a single bar code symbol.

Touch memory. Touch memory devices store detailed information in a format that can be directly attached to an equipment item. As the name implies, a probe must physically touch the storage device in order to transfer information to or from a data collection terminal. Touch memory buttons come in a variety of models rated according to their storage capacity, ranging from 1000 to 64,000 characters of data. There are two types of touch memory: read-only and read-write. In read-write format, a touch memory device is especially suited for logging predictive maintenance and repair activities. Its electronically accessible serial number makes it an ideal vehicle for confirming that a craftsman was actually at the job site. Its relatively low cost, ruggedness, and ease of use make it attractive for many applications.

Magnetic stripe. Magnetic stripe technology employs magnetic material typically applied to a credit-card-size piece of plastic as the data collection medium. Information is encoded by alternating the polarity of small sections of the stripe. Magnetic stripe technology is often used in maintenance for time and attendance, procurement, and security access applications. When an employee identifier is encoded on a magnetic stripe card, it can be used to control and track access to unmanned storerooms and tool dispensing machines.

Smart cards. Smart cards employ the same technologies utilized by touch memory and RF/ID to store large amounts of data. Some smart cards require physical contact for read-write operations. Others transmit or receive data in the same manner as RF/ID tags. Their potential uses in maintenance include purchasing control, security, and tool management. Their ability to retain data makes the cards attractive for procurement activities by allowing work order or accounting data to be captured as each purchase is made.

Radio frequency. Radio frequency data communication (RF/DC) is a term used by ADC vendors to describe a wireless local area network where radio-enabled, hand-held, or vehicle-mounted terminals communicate with a base station connected to a host computer system or network. RF/DC provides maintenance applications with interactive verification and control. Users can be directed to perform an action on an as-needed basis and data can be verified against a host-system database as soon as it is scanned. These capabilities make it popular for warehouse management systems and for situations where maintenance personnel at job sites require instant access to a centralized database but physical cabling is impractical.

Wireless technology. Wireless wide area network (WAN) systems employ radio and cellular packet data communications services to connect mobile users to a central system. CMMS vendors have just begun to introduce WAN-based solutions that support users at remote job sites. These solutions typically feature notebook computers and personal digital assistants equipped with wireless modems that communicate with the CMMS through the WAN service. They allow the remote user to interactively access work order requests, update work orders, view PM procedures, and check part availability in the CMMS.

Using the technology
ADC maintenance applications will continue to grow in popularity as technology advances and the benefits become more widely known. However, maintenance organizations should carefully consider what their needs are now and for the future.
ADC technology is not a substitute for good management, competent craftspeople, proper techniques, or appropriate information systems. In order to be successful, ADC or any other information technology cannot be evaluated or implemented in a vacuum. It must be part of an organization-wide effort to achieve maintenance excellence. Before any ADC project can be considered, two key components must be in place—the strategic maintenance master plan and the CMMS needs assessment.

The strategic maintenance master plan establishes the overall maintenance goals and objectives within the organization based on a thorough assessment of current operations and practices. It defines the core elements by functional areas needed to achieve the goals and objectives and it identifies the necessary resources required for implementation. It also establishes the performance measures needed to justify the plan and manage its successful implementation.

The CMMS needs assessment identifies the information systems and resources required to support the strategic maintenance master plan and achieve maintenance excellence. It delineates the informational requirements of each functional area from work order management to cost reporting. It documents the informational flows within the maintenance department and between the maintenance department and other organizational entities. The needs assessment establishes the selection criteria used in evaluating any prospective solution and identifies the resources required for successful implementation.

The strategic maintenance master plan and CMMS needs assessment are part of an on-going process. Given today’s competitive environment and changing technology, no maintenance organization can afford to rest. The performance of the organization must constantly be measured against the benchmarks established by the master plan. The master plan must be periodically reviewed and revised.
Potential application of ADC technology should be part of the CMMS needs assessment process. Once the informational requirements and flows of the organization have been established, the suitability of ADC technology can be evaluated. Functional areas that are prime candidates for ADC technology, based on its potential benefits, can be identified and incorporated into the CMMS selection criteria.

However, the evaluation of ADC technology should not stop with the implementation of a CMMS package. Vendors constantly introduce new modules and enhancements. An ADC module that was not deemed necessary when a package was selected can become a viable solution a few years later. The need for ADC technology is not universal across all maintenance organizations. However, most organizations do need to evaluate its suitability to their operations when developing their CMMS needs assessment. Organizations that are truly interested in pursuing maintenance excellence should constantly look for the right opportunities to apply ADC technology. MT

Tom Singer is a project manager at Tompkins Associates, Inc., an engineering-based consulting firm, 2809 Millbrook Rd., Raleigh, NC 27616; telephone (919) 876-3667 Internet www.tompkinsinc.com

Not long ago, reliability was considered engineering alchemy, an “Alice in Wonderland” science. Today, reliability is being treated as a true engineering discipline. It is such a popular term that it has given birth to an entire industry that has produced countless titles on the subject. Several professional societies have been founded and the lecture circuit is full of reliability engineers promising to decode the science of reliability.

Reliability and its design methodology have had a long and fruitful existence. They were employed in the 1940s and 1950s to design complex systems and measure risk in exotic military projects. In the 1960s, reliability tools were refined and became a base alloy in the program that saw Neil Armstrong place the first of what was to be many footprints on the moon. The 1970s brought with it the golden age of commercial nuclear power production. During this period, reliability stood as a silent sentinel to reactor design and associated safety systems design. Over the past two decades, reliability has made and continues to make its mark as a successful design characteristic in any process, system, or component.

Somewhere during the past 20 years, perhaps when words like Chernobyl, Bhopal, and Challenger filled the headlines, the expectations of industrial and manufacturing process plants were reordered and owners began to view their investments with a highly demanding economical eye. This is not to say that economics was never the top order of the day, but the emphasis and the associated costs placed on environmental protection, process safety management, worker health, and plant availability sounded the wake-up call. This forced owners and managers to look at new ways to keep their plants profitable. It was then that the forgotten stepchild known as maintenance was given the recognition it deserved. If keeping the plant running and profitable were the kingdom, maintenance would need to be the keys to that kingdom.

Over a 30-year period, reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) would develop a strategic framework for addressing process failures using the civil airline industry as its teacher. John Moubray and his book Reliability-centered Maintenance (Industrial Press, New York, 1992) broke new ground by developing a systematic approach to understanding and preventing failure.

This book introduced the most revered of the maintenance acronyms—RCM—into the lexicon of maintenance and, almost single-handedly, produced some of the most sweeping changes in how equipment reliability was viewed within the maintenance function. RCM was shown to be a series of well researched and executed processes that promised a greater understanding of why things fail and, more importantly, how to take measures to prevent the consequences of failures.

A major problem with implementation of the RCM process is that it is often applied far too broadly to yield practical results, and the price for such a protracted endeavor is typically far more than an organization with serious equipment reliability issues can bear. (Moubray notes that “the quickest and biggest short-term returns are usually achieved when RCM is applied to assets or processes suffering from intractable problems which have serious consequences.”)

What is needed is a practical tool to allow managers to quickly understand the value of reliability and how reliability impacts profit. In 1993, H. Paul Barringer, a Houston-based reliability consultant, realized the difficulty of making the RCM process work and posed the question: “Can your plant afford a reliability improvement program?”

Barringer observed that few, if any, organizations could afford to employ the entire RCM process without first understanding how unreliability affects the bottom line.
Fortunately a practical reliability tool can be extracted from Moubray, Barringer, and the past 30 years of experience and research, and we will not need rocket scientists to use it in a cost-effective manner.

Defining reliability
Reliability is most commonly defined as the probability of equipment or a process to function without failure, when operated correctly, for a given period of time, under stated conditions. Simply put, the fewer equipment or process failures a plant sustains, the more reliable the plant.

In searching for a single-word definition, reliability is dependability. Many industries have the additional burden of ensuring that plant reliability is kept in the forefront of day-to-day operations. Employee safety, public approval, and demonstrated environmental safeguards lie at the very core of an industry’s existence.
The accident at Three Mile Island power plant is stark testimony that reliability, when used as a design characteristic, works. If Reactor-2 was designed without inherent stability and reliability, chances are you would be using a candle to read this article.

Thinking of reliability as an engineering problem, one can imagine a team of engineers searching for better equipment designs and working out solutions to eliminate weak points within system processes. When considering reliability from a business aspect, the focus shifts away from reliability and toward the financial issue of controlling the cost of unreliability. Quantifying reliability in this way sets the stage for the examination of operating risks when monetary values are included. Measuring the reliability of industrial processes and equipment by quantifying the cost of unreliability places reliability under the more-recognizable banner of business impact.

It is not a difficult thought process that leads us to the conclusion that higher plant reliability lies in the ability to reduce equipment failure costs. The motivation for a plant to improve reliability by addressing unreliability is clear: Reduce equipment failures, reduce costs due to unreliability, and generate more profit. It is under this preamble that a sound business commitment to plant reliability begins to step out of the shadows and take shape.

Measuring reliability
We have now defined reliability as a plant engineering characteristic, and, more importantly, defined it in terms of business impact. In order to improve reliability, we first must understand the very nature of its measurement—failure.
Moubray defines failure as “the inability of any asset to fulfil a function to a standard of performance which is acceptable to the user.” This is the definition that we will use, but we will move the definition vertically.

We shall define failure as the loss or reduction in performance of a system, process, or piece of equipment that causes a loss or reduction in the ability of the plant to meet a consumer demand. This definition focuses attention on the systems vital to making the plant profitable, while the standard definition could lead some people to believe that all equipment is equal. The loss of a pawn in a game of chess does not represent the loss of the game. It is a calculated risk taken in a strategic effort to win the game and it is, after all, a pawn. In other words, the probability of meeting consumer demand has been increased as equipment within a process is evaluated based on its impact to the financial health of the company.

Mathematically, reliability is the probability of any production-interrupting failure occurring over a given future time interval and is stated as:

R = e -lt
where:
R = Reliability
e = 2.71828 ···, the base of natural logarithms
l = Failure rate, the reciprocal of mean time between failure or 1/MTBF
t = Given time interval for which prediction is sought
For the purpose of calculating the cost of unreliability of industrial equipment, mean time between failure (MTBF) can be defined as the time interval of the study divided by the number of production-interrupting failure events recorded during the study.

The good, the bad, and the ugly
We have defined reliability (the good) as requiring the measurement of failure (the bad). There remains only one obstacle to putting the above equation to work. We must glean failure data from industries that do not understand how to accumulate coherent equipment failure data for the purpose of relating it to cost (the ugly).
Plant engineers and maintenance practitioners typically maintain that good failure data does not exist, or would require extraordinary effort to secure. This is simply not true. Failure data exists all around them in varying degrees of usefulness. Many plants have been accruing failure data under the guise of operating logs, work orders, environmental reports, etc. The force that drives the paradigm is that plant management does not see the data as a tool to solve problems and as a result rarely treats or analyzes the data in an economical manner. This is punctuated by the fact that operators, maintenance personnel, supervisors, and managers fail to acquire data in a manner conducive to analysis.

The net result is a vast bank of quite useful information, haphazardly recorded and poorly structured. When equipment or process failures cause enough of a financial concern to warrant study, engineers can look forward to hours of sifting piles of incoherent data in search of an answer.

Substantial amounts of failure data exist in various places awaiting use for improving the reliability of processes and equipment. Start with common sense data now, then couple it with a progressive data recovery program. With these elements in place, the road to an integrated and structured maintenance management program that recognizes plant reliability as its mission will no longer be elusive.
Acquiring failure data

Robert Abernethy in his book, The New Weinbull Handbook (self-published, North Palm Beach, FL, 1996), maintains that acquiring equipment failure data has three basic requirements:

1. A clear definition of failure.
2. The definition of an unambiguous time origin.
3. The definition of a scale to measure the passage of time.

He goes on to explain that commercial businesses require the addition of two elements:

1. A measurement defining the cost of the failure.
2. A method by which data can be analyzed.

In order to illustrate this concept, we need to get back to basics. It is a common philosophy (especially among investors) that the mission of the maintenance component of any facility is to keep the plant producing. In other words, protect the investment.

This translates well into the mission of reliability and gives us our newest characteristic: protect the integrity of the process. It can only follow that plant processes are maintained by protecting system function and system functions are protected by maintaining equipment.

In order to establish a beachhead for reliability improvement, we need to define failure in terms of the overall mission. For ease of illustration, we shall consider the primary loop, the secondary loop, and the power transmission stages of power generation in a nuclear power plant as the three high-level processes under which failure has the greatest financial impact.

In order to hold the study to an unambiguous time interval, we shall fix the time for each process with consideration to quality of failure data available for that time interval, then normalize the failure rate.

The time interval calculation assumes that the plant runs 24 hours per day, 365 days per year or 8760 hours per year. The number of failures was counted for the time interval to calculate the MTBF. Failure rate is calculated by taking the reciprocal of MTBF.

With the failure rates known, we can determine the production time lost from the failures and begin to determine the cost of unreliability.

In our example, we have established the three critical processes in making a power plant financially feasible. The criticality of the systems and equipment that make up these processes carries its own weight with regard to personnel and environmental safety. In understanding the financial ramifications of unreliability, it is important that the average corrective time for failures be determined for the purpose of estimating process downtime. This total average downtime equates to lost production time and, consequently, lost revenue.

In order to prove the value of this tool, the worth of its assumptions must be addressed. The most salient assumption must be that there is some net worth in examining the power generation process from the highest level. The purpose of a commercial power plant is not to answer the question: Are we smart enough to tame a nuclear fusion reaction in populated areas while not managing to render a 700-square-mile area inhabitable for 1.6 million years? The purpose is to supply electricity to the local grid for economic profit without rendering a 700-square-mile area inhabitable for 1.6 million years, even when individual equipment fails. Again, back to our chess game. We play, even though we know that individual pieces will be lost in pursuit of winning the game. Costs due to reliability quantify the losses expected from playing the game.

It also must be assumed that the number of failures in any given time interval will generally follow true to history. Unless some extraordinary effort is taken, the number of failures will not change. Corrective repair times will remain relatively constant for the same reason.

To make the translations to the cost of unreliability there is a question that needs to be answered. Should the costs of scheduled outages be included in the cost of unreliability?

Absolutely, for two reasons: For an investor, the plant is in failure mode, and the plant has been skewered with a double-edged sword, buried to the hilt. It is not on the local power grid making money and it is spending money rapidly to renew its assets. These facts must be accepted when placing a dollar value on a plant.
Assuming that 10 megawatts of electrical capacity translates into $5 million of potential gross profit, a nuclear power plant rated at 1200 electrical megawatts of output will yield a gross margin of $600 million per year or $68,493.15 per hour. When this loss is multiplied by the lost time due to failure, the hammer of unreliability is felt hard upon the anvil of business impact. The blacksmith takes another stroke when the cost of maintenance is added to gross margin loss.

Here we have represented the primary loop as a $25,000 per hour maintenance cost burden, the secondary loop as a $15,000 per hour cost burden, and the power transmission loop as an $8,500 per hour cost burden. These maintenance costs take into account the price of working with radioactive materials, additional personnel training and equipment, and the cost of returning the plant to full power operations. When the lost time due to the failure of the process is put into financial terms, it becomes apparent the cost of unreliability represents a substantial burden on the economic feasibility of the plant.

From this data model, two highly revealing values can be calculated—annual plant availability (the time that the plant has the opportunity to make money) and plant reliability (the probability that the plant will cost money).

Availability = Uptime
Total Time = 8760 - 78 = 99.1 percent
8760

R = e -lt
R = e -(399.55 x 10-6 x 8760) = 0.031
= 3.01 percent

These numbers speak volumes. These calculations show that while the plant is generally available to produce electricity, it has only a 3 percent probability of meeting a year-long operational commitment without incurring a forced outage or reduction in power generation. The price for this plant reliability comes to $6.8 million. This is the cost of unreliability.

It is easy to see why many power organizations publish quarterly plant availability reports to their boards of directors showing availability to be high while complaining that the price of maintenance continues to be excessive. The real truth of the matter is that owners are spending inordinate amounts of money to pay for a number that, when taken alone, means little to the bottom line.

We have presented a practical and simple tool for understanding why reliability is a vital ingredient of plant operations and maintenance. What started as an esoteric term for design engineers has become a signpost pointing the way to the high country. Knowing the cost of unreliability and where, within the context of process criticality, these costs are incurred will allow plant management to address and prioritize process failure issues, knowing the financial impact to their plant. MT

Ray Dunn is vice president of physical asset management at InfoMC, Inc., 2009 Renaissance Blvd., Suite 100, King of Prussia, PA 19406; (610) 292-8002 ext. 102; e-mail rayd@infomc.com

In any event, reliability is a much more common word in the titles of conference papers and magazine articles this year. And a number of maintenance managers are trading in their business card for new ones that read Reliability Managers. (Does that mean they are doing their jobs differently now?) The speed at which people are becoming reliability managers reminds me of the old cartoon of the nerd at graduation with the caption: "Four years ago I couldn't even spell engineer, now I are one."

Just what is a maintenance and reliability manager? What knowledge and skills must that person possess? What attitudes and philosophies make that person a professional? That is exactly what SMRP's Professional Certification Committee (PCC) is trying to find out. The committee's objective: To create an industry-recognized competency and knowledge standard for maintenance and reliability professionals, by developing an educational system to teach the stands and a certifying mechanism to recognize their applications.

The PCC has initially organized the core competencies worth measuring into three categories:
• Work process reliability, covering business processes such as financial and resource management and work processes such as management of work, materials, and contracts.
• Manufacturing reliability, covering equipment reliability and process reliability.
• People reliability, covering leadership, development, communications, and performance management. We applaud this activity. In fact, we are participating on the committee. And we invite your participation.

If you have developed job descriptions or performance requirements that may help the committee define the core competencies of maintenance and reliability professionals, we invite you to send them to us at MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY so we can share them with the committee.

Regular reflection on who you are and hwat you do is a valuable exercise whether or not you share your reflections with the committee. MT

In fact, it is not uncommon to come back years after implementation to find that the planned-for payback never materialized. Further, often only a fraction of the capabilities that the software vendor built into the system are being effectively utilized. Why?

The reasons for CMMS failures are as different as the companies implementing them. Often the blame is put on the software package selected or vendor support provided. But that is usually an excuse and not the real reason these failures occur. Failures can usually be traced to one or more of these five primary causes:

1. Using a CMMS to solve the wrong problem. Sometimes companies choose to implement a CMMS to solve a problem that is not system related at all. They may, for example, adhere to maintenance practices that are inappropriate or obsolete; or they may have neglected training in the past; or the organizational structure is wrong for doing business in today’s environment. Until these problems are addressed, no system will help and, in fact, may exacerbate the problem. Before embarking on any CMMS project, make sure the problem has been defined correctly.

2. Treating the project as a technology project. In more cases than most of us like to admit, CMMS projects are treated as technology projects. That is, great care is taken to insure that system technology meets certain criteria, such as effective use of object oriented technology, NT (or Windows 95, etc.) compliance, or designed using industry standards. Specialists evaluate packages on their technology, on the various features and functions that one system offers over another. It is not unusual for organizations to spend as much as a year—and sometimes longer—looking at and evaluating various CMMS packages. The technology is important and clearly should not be overlooked, but it is often not the most critical aspect of the project. Usually it is the easy part. Change is the hard part. CMMS projects are more about change management than about technology.

3. Selecting the wrong software package for the job. Too often, CMMS packages are selected that are not appropriate for the solution that is needed. For example, features and functions of one software package may be appropriate for maintaining rolling stock but may be inappropriate for a process plant with a large amount of fixed equipment. A mismatch between system capabilities and solution requirements usually occurs because a rigorous process for evaluating and selecting a package to meet the solution requirements was not followed.

The evaluation process must start with a good definition of requirements: business functions and capabilities that must be supported, technical considerations (computer platform, network, Internet enabled, etc.), integration with other systems, financial health of the software vendor. The process must insure that the software packages can be evaluated objectively and consistently.

4. Poor project management during implementation. Having a written project plan is certainly a start to good project management, but by itself is not sufficient. Project plans must be comprehensive and realistic. They must be followed and used as a gauge to track progress. It is necessary for people to take responsibility for tasks delegated to them and then to be held accountable for the results. It also means communicating and setting realistic expectations.

5. Inadequate change management. Of the five primary causes of project failure, change management is the one that is most often overlooked. Yet, effectively managing change in the organization is critical to long-term CMMS project success. Change cannot be left to chance. It must be planned and carefully executed.

Develop a vision for maintenance
Change management starts with the development of a vision of how maintenance is to function once the software has been installed and is in its steady state. A properly constructed and communicated vision sets the stage for all that follows. It describes, in terms that can be easily understood by every worker in the plant, at least the following:

Role of maintenance in the plant’s success and its expected contribution. It is important for people affected by the CMMS project to understand just how maintenance contributes to plant and equipment performance. This understanding creates the environment for maintenance performance metrics that are meaningful in an overall business sense to the operation.

Approach to maintenance taken by the plant. For example, if the plant has adopted reliability centered maintenance (RCM) as its approach to plant maintenance, then RCM should be incorporated into the maintenance vision.

How computerized tools, such as a CMMS, will support the business processes. The vision statement should include at least a high-level description of the way people and equipment will interact with the system. It also should show how the CMMS will support the maintenance organization and the various functions performed by it.

Interactions that maintenance will have with other functions and other systems. Understanding the level of interaction that maintenance has with other functions of the organization and with outside entities is key to defining the CMMS requirements, identifying system integration requirements, and developing comprehensive operating policies and procedures. If there are other systems that tie closely to the CMMS system, the nature of that tie must be clearly understood and incorporated into requirements.

Manage change for positive results
Communication is another change management component that is often treated as an afterthought. An effective, successful communication plan requires careful thought and planning. It is through communication that expectations are set and project status is shared. It is a way to get the big picture, i.e., the vision, across to the rank and file in the organization so they understand what is happening, why it is happening, and how it will affect them personally as well as the organization. Communication will not solve every project problem, but it certainly will keep a lot of unnecessary ones from cropping up.

It has been said, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Change management requires education for people on the basic concepts of maintenance management. Education’s goal is to elevate to another level the affected plant population’s knowledge and awareness of maintenance. Education begins early in the project and continues until the system is fully implemented. It is an important aspect of communication and does much to explain the vision. It is essential to the training that will follow because it provides context to what is being asked of those interacting with the system.

Training, another key change management component, teaches people “how to” do the job. It must be comprehensive enough to allow the individual to do the job that is required and should be specific to the job at hand. It should be timed so that material is still fresh in the mind of the system user when the system is made available for use. In other words, if a person is a planner/scheduler, it is necessary to train that individual only on the specifics of planning and scheduling. If an effective education program has been put in place, then the context of planning and scheduling has already been covered. Often, training requires training beyond the specific CMMS software, such as when an organization is migrating from a manual environment to a computerized one. It may be necessary in that case to conduct computer fundamentals training before specific CMMS training can begin.

I once had a colleague who went across the country telling our plant people that the system that was to be installed was so good it would “walk, talk, sit up, and beg.” The clear implication was that the system would do everything they had ever wanted. Of course, the system could not live up to its billing. It failed. A critical element of any CMMS project’s success is the proper setting of expectations. Left to chance, people will set their own expectations based on their vested interests, concerns, or fears. Key areas where expectations must be properly set include system impact on their jobs, when certain system features and functions will be available, system response, cost of the project, performance to schedule. The key words here are: No Surprises.

Many times in a project, for political or other reasons, people say “Yes” and nod when they really mean “No.” They don’t “buy-in” to the system. “Buy-in” is obtained through a combination of ways: workshops where people actively participate in the solution, communicating the vision and setting realistic expectations, meeting project commitments. Every person affected by the system will want to know how it affects him. Buy-in will not happen until that question is answered. Effective change management addresses this issue.

Management support is essential
Effective change management also requires senior plant management and staff support for the project. Support means more than just signing the project’s Authorization for Expenditure. It means visibly supporting the goals and objectives of the project by clearly indicating to the plant staff the importance of the system to overall plant success. It means providing time to attend critical project reviews and recognizing successes when they occur. It most of all means taking a leadership role that communicates to the rest of the plant staff that “this is important to me and it should be important to you, too.” If plant management is not behind the project, rank and file plant staffers quickly perceive that and act accordingly. MT

Bill D. Parker is a managing consultant in MCI Systemhouse Corp.’s process industries practice, responsible for maintenance management. He can be reached at MCI Systemhouse, 16945 Northchase Dr., Suite 1300, Houston, TX 77060; (281) 875-2007; e-mail bparker@shl.com.

Montana Power uses a variety of machine condition monitoring techniques, including vibration analysis and lube oil analysis. The Colstrip plants were seeking earlier, more accurate identification of bearing problems, and decided to purchase complementary technology specifically designed for early detection of bearing damage. They chose Shock Pulse Analyzers from SPM Instrument, Inc., Marlborough, CT. In a single reading, with no prior trending, the analyzer indicates bearing condition as good, reduced, or bad, and further codes the “bad” condition according to its severity.

While taking readings on one of the motors at the plant, Obland and his coworker, Norm Evans, found a bearing that showed “COND 65—Severe Damage,” indicating the need to perform maintenance immediately. “We couldn’t get the bearing changed without confirmation by vibration analysis—that was the policy. But when we checked with a vibration analyzer, we didn’t find anything that would indicate a damaged bearing,” Obland said.

Because vibration analysis looks at all the signals being generated in a rotating mass, the bearing signal may have been masked by other, stronger nonbearing signals. Vibration analysis involves trending data to determine if there has been a change in a signal and that it is a bad change. Historical data on the Colstrip bearing signal was not available.

A decision from management broke the impasse. The motor was taken apart. The bearing was found to be within days of complete failure. That bearing was the first of a series of bad bearings that were identified with the analyzers before equipment failure occurred.

The instrument analyses the compression waves caused at the first moment of impact between the rolling elements and the raceway, an extremely brief period during which no surface deformation has occurred. The molecular contact at points of impact produces material acceleration, propagated ultrasonically in compression waves (shock pulses). The magnitude of those shock pulses depends on the condition of the surface and on the peripheral velocity of the bearing.

Shock pulses generated by a bearing can increase 1000 percent between the time when the bearing condition is good, to when it needs to be replaced. The company has charted typical shock patterns of the most common bearing types under various load, speed, temperature, and lubrication conditions; the data is part of the instrument’s permanent program.

The analyzer indicates bearing damage by displaying an arrow against the red section of the condition scale; a condition number increases with the severity of surface damage.

The predictive maintenance department at the Colstrip plants has already made a contribution to the bottom line through improved bearing condition monitoring. The team has been diligent at keeping track of its activities and presenting the results of the program to management. “In the first eight months, we had direct traceable savings of $19,696.57 in maintenance hours and parts, by avoiding outage just because we were able to identify and replace bad bearings so quickly,” Obland reports. MT

Among other things, this obliges us to try to identify every failure mode that is reasonably likely to affect the functions of all the assets in our care, to understand the consequences of each failure mode, and to select the most cost-effective failure management policies.

In the absence of any comparable asset management strategy formulation processes, the only satisfactory way to do this for modern, complex industrial systems is to apply Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM). The only truly responsible way to do so is to apply RCM correctly.

However, applying RCM correctly is time-consuming and expensive. My last article in this series (MT 4/98, pg 50) mentioned that this is leading some people to focus too heavily on the cost of strategy formulation processes like RCM rather than on what they achieve.

This search for “silver bullets” is leading to the development of shortcuts that all lead ultimately to dangerously superficial or incomplete maintenance strategies. The following paragraphs list the most common shortcuts, and reviews their main shortcomings in the light of parallels between financial and physical asset management:

• Applying RCM in reverse to existing maintenance schedules: This shortcut asks what failure modes are being prevented by existing maintenance schedules, and applies the RCM consequence assessment and task selection process only to those failure modes, without asking what other failure modes may have been over-looked by the existing schedules. This is like basing this year’s accounts solely on last year’s transactions.

• Using generic failure modes effects analyses (FMEA): this shortcut asks us to take FMEAs developed elsewhere and apply them to our own assets as part of the RCM process, on the premise that if machines are similar, then surely they will suffer from more-or-less the same failure modes. This is akin to borrowing a set of financial ledgers used by a different organization in the same line of business and using them to make our own financial decisions.

• Using generic RCM analyses: this shortcut asks us to acquire entire RCM analyses performed on similar assets used elsewhere, and apply them to our own assets. This is like basing our financial decisions on an entire set of accounts developed by another, similar business.

• Applying RCM to “critical” processes only: this is akin to asking our accountants to track only the 20 percent of our transactions which account for 80 percent of our expenses—an approach which would greatly reduce the costs of bookkeeping but which would also rapidly lead to financial chaos.

• Using computers to drive the RCM process: this shortcut suggests that it is possible to speed up the RCM decision process by computerizing it. This is akin to asking a computer to make all our investment decisions for us—a process that not even Wall Street has mastered yet. (Of course, computers are as helpful in storing and sorting the results of RCM analyses as they are for tracking financial transactions. They cannot, however, be used to make the decisions for us.)

• Using inadequately trained people to apply RCM: this shortcut entails using people with only 2 or 3 days of training—sometimes less—to lead the application of RCM to complex assets. This is usually done in the belief that any reasonably experienced maintenance person would be able to master RCM with minimal guidance. This is like suggesting that anyone with a reasonable grasp of arithmetic should be able to prepare a full set of accounts after attending a 3-day course on finance.

No sane accountant would allow shortcuts like these to be applied to financial assets. To do so would lead to chaos and eventually to ruin.

In the experience of the author, applying such shortcuts to the development of physical asset management strategies is aslo ruinous - suicidally so in some cases, if only because people develop a totally lase sense of security about assets to "a sort of" RCM.

Consultants and practitioners alike have written articles about workflow, data, information, and software, and how they must be congruent. Wherever software and work processes don’t agree, one or the other must be adjusted or the project will fall short of expectations. Considerable analysis and planning is always required. One of the biggest stresses comes from having to assign some of the best people to the project while trying to keep daily operations current.

As I listened to the stories and edited the articles, I could sympathize with the writers, but I couldn’t feel their pain—until now, but just a pinprick compared to their heart attack pain. I’m facing a microscopic desktop version of the choice between installing enterprise resources planning (ERP) software or a best of breed computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). I’m trying to decide whether to use Microsoft’s Outlook 98 (the ERP) or to upgrade my contact management software (the CMMS) so it can link with other best of breed software.

With Outlook, I get an outstanding integration of a variety of functions, but at a substantial investment of time learning the software and customizing it. With the contact manager, I get some slick features that can really speed some of my work, but I have to supplement it with other software. As I try to decide between the new and powerful and the familiar and speedy, I toy with a third option—using the application development wizards in my database manager to build my own custom solution. But first I have to look at my current job and separate the must do and should do tasks from what I used to do and what would be nice to do.

Perhaps it really doesn’t matter, for me personally or for most maintenance organizations. From what I hear, few if any maintenance departments use anywhere near the full potential of their current maintenance information software. I know my contact manager has a lot more to offer than I'm using.

Unless you have the discipline to use the software, it's not going to do much for you. On the other hand, if you have the discipline, the software becomes less important. MT