LEAN Maintenance and Reliability Louis Soucy, ing.


 

By Louis Soucy, Eng. 
Associate Director  

LEAN Maintenance may seem like a new idea for improving maintenance but it is a derivative of Total Productive Maintenance, or TPM.

LEAN Maintenance takes the proven LEAN Manufacturing process as a starting point and applies new tools to give TPM a better defined and more measurable implementation structure.

LEAN Maintenance is therefore an optimized TPM initiative for reducing and even eliminating waste related to equipment and its uses.  This is done while maintaining their shared goal: to achieve top equipment performance at the lowest possible cost. 

The objective of TPM is also to achieve maximum equipment performance throughout its lifecycle while reducing costs.  This quest for performance requires the participation of every employee and department and involves the following tasks: 

  • Getting key players to participate at all levels and offering them all training required
  • Assigning basic cleaning, inspection and maintenance duties to operators
  • Implementing effective methods for increasing equipment availability.

 

These are the basic principles of LEAN Maintenance.   Furthermore, the TPM approach combines the basic LEAN:

  • Defining value
  • Value Stream Mapping
  • Optimizing flow
  • Implementing pull flow
  • Achieving perfection

These concepts are applied to Master and Support processes to ensure efficiency and quality when performing maintenance tasks.  Moreover, LEAN Maintenance excels through a structured approach based on fast, measurable and sustainable results thus ensuring that these principles are rigourously applied when developing, applying or monitoring maintenance activities. 

LEAN Maintenance stages:

1. Nomination of a LEAN Maintenance Champion

2. Evaluation and initialization (2 to 4 months): Measure and prepare maintenance activities based on:

  • Best practices
  • Equipment availability
  • Internal Maintenance Structure
  • Demand Management System
  • Parts Management System
  • Planning, organizing and scheduling 
  • CAMP
  • Maintenance Documentation and Engineering

3. LEAN Maintenance Preparation (2 to 6 months): Inform and train all parties involved.  This step marks the beginning of the transformation phase.

4. Launch of Pilot project (1 to 3 months): LEAN Maintenance training is put into action.  Activites consist of:

  • Improvement KAIZEN on selected processes
  • KAIZEN Action Plan follow-up
  • KAIZEN post-mortem, presentation to maintenance staff and support departments

5. LEAN Maintenance principles mobilization (6 months to 1 year): Strengthening acquired LEAN principles through promotional tools and continous reinforcement by Management.

6. LEAN Maintenance Expansion (4 months to 1 year): Expand acquired principles to external maintenance activities (subcontractors, parts management, equipment purchasing, etc.).  The major activites of phase 6 are: 

  • Optimizing inventory through computer-assisted maintenance programs for Just-in-Time supply
  • Standardizing parts, consumable items and suppliers
  • Standardizing equipment and parts repair 
  • Analyzing predictive maintenance cost, technological needs and the possibility of subcontrating these activities

7. Maintenance and follow-up (ongoing): Setting up monitoring, measuring and continuous improvement activities.  This will ensure that progress continues in all acquired LEAN Maintenance practices.

A LEAN Maintenance initiative gives the Maintenance service control over processes and methods resulting in an efficient and proactive function. 

After thorough implementation and proper follow-up, a LEAN Maintenance initiative will result in efficient value-added tasks thus reaching GREATER EQUIPMENT RELIABILITY AT A LOWER COST.

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To learn more about Reliability, we suggest the following course: RCMII- Reliability Centered Maintenance (in French) on March 25-26-27, 2008 at our Boucherville office.

For more information, please contact Claudia Ravello by e-mail at cravello@pmtn.com or call at (450) 655-0033, extension 211.