Downtime Count

[ashishdevikar]

Here is thing that always surprises me; every time i talk to my friends working in Maintenance or Production department they really don't stop complaining and fighting for uptime of machine on which they work.

Men working with Maintenance really have strong point that when they call a machine for a shutdown, they really do a good and a value adding job for the machine. (Well VALUE ADDING: they have a separate definition for it, any job done on machine that would help increase MTBF or decrease MTTR of the machine is termed as Value adding job.) They say this time that spend on the machine should not be counted as the downtime but as lean method time. Considering the Fact that "downtime" is still considered as a Offense one maintenance engineer and his team does here in India; Management pressurizes to reduce it to minimal, and failing that would affect into poor evaluation grades of the team.

The next set of person are the Production department people, who always try to over utilize and over stretch the machine while in Uptime. Result the "Value Added Work" goes waste as the machine goes to breakdown.
They follow the SOP's (Statement of Procedure)in this period and show a increase in the production; so the management doesn't really considers over utilizing as a Offense. But the penalties of Downtime are also paid by the Production team in evaluation. And ask that the increase in production should be seen as the scale of how well the machines and equipments are performing.

Please consider this that above scenario is more or less same for many industries here. What surprises me more is that many of my friend are working for industries which have been already awarded for Lean Methods they follow.

I am trying to ask a single question is WHO is wrong here? The Management, the Production Guys, or the Maintenance guys??
What i can say is the Management uses the awards as advertising stunt (many of times) and they still live and practice the old production trend.

I strongly think that Management should ensure that the lean awards they get are not just shield for shelf but are the proof of cultural change in the industry. And needs to be practice and educated to every level of management.

Please comment back if agree or Dis-agree.

[KKohls]

They are using a traditional paradigm (Value is how I define it, everyone needs to be fully utilized) instead of Lean Paradigm (Value is defined from the customer's perspective, Flow is more important that utilization). Even people who are trying to transition to a Lean culture may be caught in this trap - Let's try to make Lean work in a traditional environment, with traditional measures. Management is usually the culprit, they want the improvement that Lean promises, they just want to change their own behaviors and measures. They end up awarding psuedo lean efforts, since they aren't seeing any improvement in Net Profit.

Improving flow means improving that workstation that most restricts flow - the constraint or the bottleneck. Management should focus on improving flow through the bottleneck, Maintenance should concentrate on improving flow on the bottleneck (even if it doesn't have the worst downtime, worst MTTR, or worst MCBF). Production should actually we working to REDUCE the utilization of the bottleneck - the bottleneck in a system usually has the highest efficiency and utilization, because is does not spend a lot of time blocked and starved.

The solution ultimately rests with management. They must use Hoshin Kanri planning to get everyone on the same page. They must implement Lean Accounting to make sure we evaluate progress with a dollar sign, to indicate true progress that hits the bottom line. They must 5S their measures, using Lean Metrics to create lean behaviors. This is due to the basic fact that people behave how they are measured. Efficiency and utilization aren't lean metrics, it turns out, but traditional measures. Finally, management must set up a system to find the bottleneck, and then continuously improve the bottleneck.

Bottom line - Traditional accounting and traditional measures can not co-exist with Lean methods and behaviors. The result will be what are currently seeing - local optimization and redefining measures to demonstrate progress, since bottom line impact are not appearing.

Kevin Kohls

[ewilliams]

Kevin Kohls's comments are excellent, and I'd like to add a few words of sympathy for the maintenance people who very often DO add value by taking the machine down for needed checkup and preventive maintenance even if ("especially if") it is "working fine" and the production people want to keep running it "until it breaks." My mother taught me "a stitch in time saves nine." A wise boss I had at Ford years ago frequently was heard to remark "It's amazing what preventive maintenance will prevent." The wise maintenance mechanic or supervisor is very much akin to the automobile owner who has the brakes checked and relined BEFORE they start to squeal. It's the responsibility of upper management (by that I mean management high enough to be "above" the production people and the maintenance people) to support preventive maintenance by word and deed.