Change Management help for Maintenance Managers

So that we understand a prescription of maintenance, it is first necessary to understand the conflict involved with maintenance. We live in a capitalistic system. We obtain or purchase our facilities or equipment for an actual or intended first yield of service. Maintenance requires that our first yield service class be "NO SERVICE" during our "CORRECTIVE ACTIONS. This is true, regardless if we re-act to a needed maintenance or pro-act to a planned maintenance.

Conflicts within the human anatomy normally require the services of a doctor or his staff. These conflicts are called illnesses or traumas. There is normally some product of a prescription. Prescriptions can either be medical services or medicines. Prescriptions and instructions are controlled and precisely written. We will use the same approach. Maintenance must be considered a corrective action professional service, available to users, operators or owners of facilities and equipment. Maintenance must not provide any products, but only corrective action services which cover the care and repair to our facilities and equipment. Any additional facilities and equipment, necessary to accomplish any requested service of corrective actions must be the sole responsibility of the corrective action group.

Since maintenance is a service, we can consider it a PROCESS and define the process. Four medical terms can be applied to this process:

1)FIRST AID

This is defined as preliminary treatment, before regular medical treatment. To give first aid one must have training. Continued training and practice of first aid will result in improvement of knowledge, techniques and results. On most occasions, first aid will delay the need for regular medical treatment. Successful accomplishment of quality first aid will normally prevent additional component degradation.

2)THERAPY

This is defined as remedial treatment and necessary treatment. Therapists are trained within the limits of their field (s). Therapists administer treatments which are vital, repetitive and routine. Therapists also screen, evaluate and recommend.

3)TRAUMA

This is defined as injury, caused by unexpected actions or re-actions with possible lasting effects or other traumatic effects to other functional components.

Please note: These first three terms might be used to describe today's type of maintenance.

4)TRIAGE

This is defined as the maximum use of limited facilities. Only the Doctor can invoke triage and he must invoke it to limit re-actions. The triage schedule is normally determined by some type of pre-selected priority.

A simplified priority grouping for all maintenance services of corrective action services is as follows:

1)      NON-DISCRETIONARY RE-ACTIVE MAINTENANCE

We must accomplish the service immediately to continue any functional first class yields from our facilities and equipment.

2)      NON-DISCRETIONARY PRO-ACTIVE MAINTENANCE

We must accomplish the service immediately to prevent first yield class degradation from our facilities and equipment.

3)      DISCRETIONARY RE-ACTIVE MAINTENANCE

     We should accomplish the service and it can be scheduled  according the user's or operator's first yield needs of our facilities and equipment.

4)      DISCRETIONARY PRO-ACTIVE MAINTENANCE

We should schedule the service and any procurement requirements according to first yield services required by our facilities and equipment.

Our DEFINED PROCESS of  CORRECTIVE ACTIONS covering all maintenance needs to our facilities and equipment will have six steps:

1)      An acknowledgement of a need, observation or an occurrence which has or might result in a class degradation of the first yield services of our facilities or equipment.

2)      A demand, description and communication from the user or operator to the corrective action group.

3)      A plan to correct the demand, fault or problem.

4)      Accomplishment of the planned corrective actions.

5)      Measurements of the services of corrections.

6)      The Three R's of Maintenance; Report, Record, Recommend.

Step 1 "A Need"

The user or operator must have a need for the corrective action services. The need must be described by an actual condition, a perceived situation or a potential first class yield class degradation of service. The need may be defined by a fault, occurrence or a forecast. The user or operator must determine the need. Advisement of needs may come from any empowered individual or groups including the corrective action team. Advisements will be considered a form of inter-actions. If users or operators are trained, first aid or therapeutic type actions, covering corrective actions, may be self accomplished. User or operator self accomplished services of corrective actions must be reported to the corrective team and recorded by them (Step 6). Recordings should be hard copy.

Step 2 "A Demand"

The user or operator must realize that their knowledge of existing or pending malfunctions might be restricted. Therefore, only a demand for corrective actions can be made. The user or operator can not dictate what, how or whom. The demand can be supported by either symptom(s) or problem(s).

If the demand is described by symptoms, trouble shooting techniques (Module I) should be used. When the user makes a demand, the demand must be placed into any of our four possible priorities by the corrective action group. Since corrective actions are normally limited by man power or materials, the process of triage may be invoked.

Step 3 "A Plan"

Maintenance must plan a remedy of correction for the described user need. The remedy must be agreed to by the user. In offering the plan, maintenance must advise the user of all available options and consequences. Plans should define costs, times, materials (of user ownership), manpower and expected results. If there is no defined problem, a plan can not be made. Facility or equipment therapy is excluded from this step of the process. Therapy planning will be covered under Forecasting (Module F) and Empowerments (Module H).

Step 4 "A Corrective Action"

Maintenance services must accomplish the corrective action service as prescribed, no more, no less. If, during the corrective action, additional items of malfunctions or other potential remedies are determined, the user must be informed and step 2 ,"Demand", must be adjusted. If, during the corrective actions, any significant change to the details of the plan (ie: time, money or results) are obvious, the user must be informed.

Step 5 "Measurements"

After completion of the corrective actions, two distinct measurements must be accomplished. The first measurement must be made by the maintenance service group and should consider costs, time, materials (only of ownership of the corrective action group) and man power. The measurement must evaluate corrective action services and the success or failure of the actions. The measurements may be qualitative (yes, no or successful, non successful) or they may be quantitative, based on some mutually accepted formula. The second measurement must be made by the user and can also be either qualitative or quantitative. It should address if the corrective actions did, in fact remedy the real or perceived problem. If a conflict exists between the user and the corrective action group, the user should consider entering a new "DEMAND". Measurements are not limited to the completion of the corrective action services or plans. In following our management cycle, intermediate measurements can be used to adjust either corrective actions or plans.

Step 6 "The Three R's"

We must Report to the user. We must report the success or failure of our actions. We should report causes or root causes of the defined problem(s). If a Failure Analysis System (FAS) is being used, the results must be reported to the user.

We must Record our action, both details and acceptance or non-acceptance of the user. Recordings are history and can be used for such things as forecasting, risk management, statistical controls or procurements.

We must Recommend, either future actions or possible preventions. Since maintenance services are professional services, we would be remiss in not offering our professional advice. Recommendations can be targeted at future use of the facilities and equipment by the user-operator or reference for future corrective actions including therapeutic services. Professional advisement must be limited to the Doctor's expertise, technical knowledge and the theorem of "KNOW WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW".

This module has defined a process of corrective actions of our facilities and equipment and a method of prioritizing the actions. Since the elements of our services are now defined, they can be controlled, assured and improved.

A flow chart outlining and defining this process is shown in Exhibit "A". Some of the details are not referenced or covered in this module, but will be covered in the following modules.

This module might seem to be very complex. Believe me, it is not. A grid system is nothing more then a means of identifying locations and a energy system is a descriptive following the rule of continuity. An entire process has been dedicated and written to cover the systems of MAINTENANCE EVALUATION TECHNIQUES (MET's).

Like our anatomy, our facilities and equipment are made up of many different systems, sub-systems, components and sub-components. Each have their own defined functions. Each have an inter-dependency on others. In the medical field, charts are available to show locations and functions of the various anatomical systems and components. These charts are used by the doctor and his staff to identify components, locations connections and inter-connections. Normally, there might be two views; a frontal view and a side view. Special cross sectional pictorial views are available for more complex areas. We will use the same approach.

In the case of man made facilities and equipment, locations and functions are seldom the same due to our rapidly changing needs and technologies. Where as, we will usually get some type of drawings or blue prints with our facilities and equipment, they are of little value in accomplishing maintenance services.

Drawings are produced so that man can fabricate a facility or piece of equipment. The drawings are segregated according to trades and crafts and usually different forms of energy. Drawings are not produced to aid us in corrective action services. Therefore we need some type of system to define and locate facilities, equipment and inter-connections of all ingressed variables. We need a location grid.

All facilities and equipment take space. Space can be measured in either two or three dimensions. Dimensions can be either scientific or pragmatic. We will define a grid system of two dimensions. If a third dimension is needed, due to either system complexity or processes, the same principal can be applied. If complexity requires additional definition, we can use pictorials, referencing the grid.

  Let's consider that a certain piece of equipment within our facility takes a floor space of 24 feet by 30 feet. Our facility will have an enclosure of 150 feet by 80 feet.

Let us define our equipment and then our facility.

EQUIPMENT

  Equipment can be anything; a rolling mill, a melting facility, a kitchen, a pencil, an automobile, a computer or a heating and ventilating system. Of major importance is the fact that the first yield must be adequately defined. The complete definition of yields should be part of an operating process or procedure. For our example, we will define a system of supplying hot water and conditioned air. The first yield will be that of "Comfort Service" to the user of the facility. The complexity of an HVAC and HW system is greater then yester-years open fire and pan. Both would have a first yield of "Comfort Service" to maintain or improve the Quality of Life.

FACILITY

Our facility will be a single level Care Home for seniors. The objective of the facility will be a "Quality Life Service for Profit".

Our facility description will be an "x" and "y" co-ordinate system with the origin being in one corner of the graph. It is normally easier to set the south west corner as the origin or benchmark.

Let us divide our "x" axis (West, East) into ten equal units and our "y" axis (South, North) into ten equal units. Since the facility has a scientific measurement of 150 feet (S/N) and 80 feet (W/E)our "Y" increment would be equal to 15 feet (150' / 10)  and our "X" increment would be equal to 8 feet (80' / 10).

Our equipment will be located in a described facility area, 56 feet from the "Y" origin and 60 feet from the "X" origin.

To locate the origin (benchmark) of our equipment, our "X" locator would be 7 or 56' / 8. Our "Y" locator would be 4 or 60 / 15. The origin of our equipment can now be described as 7.000, 4.000.

The room size containing the equipment or system will be 30 feet (S/N) by 24 feet (E/W).

Using this method, we can describe origin, closure, limits or locations of sub-systems or individual components which may require various types of Corrective Action Services.Additional uses of this type of grid identification might be cost accounting, planning, risk management, therapy or even re-engineering.

If we maintain our 10 unit graduations and use decimal multipliers of 0.100, 0.010 or 0.001, we can describe any location down to  1/16 inch.

            For example, an "X" locator of 7.343 would be  8 x 7.343 =  58.744 feet or 58 feet, 8 15/16 inches. This might be the location of the entry of electrical energy into our defined equipment.

Exhibit "B", shows a facility grid layout. Exhibit "C", shows the equipment grid layout. Exhibit "D",  is the equipment list contained within the facility of the  VAC / HAW  system and enclosure.

ENERGY

Like our human anatomy, we must input energy into our facilities and equipment in order to provide the first yield of service. Human inputted forms of energies might be solid (food), liquid ( drink), gas (oxygen) or even medicines prescribed by the doctor. There can be many forms of inputted energies. The actual energies of usage for any of our anatomical components or services may be transferred into some usable mode to accomplish the required functional work. We can describe the required work of our facilities and equipment in similar fashion. We will describe a system with ingressed forms of energies and various sub-systems and components with various modes of transformed and transported energies. Our sub-systems and components should also be defined by functional usage (either intended, designed or actual).

Some examples of  transformed modes of functional usable energies might be electrical to mechanical, electrical to thermal, electrical to light, natural gas to thermal, electrical to mechanical to fluid to mechanical,  electrical to mechanical to pneumatic to mechanical and many others. Some examples of transferred modes of energies might be electrical wires, light energy transfer cables, pipes, hoses, drive shafts or even a wheel.

Based on this, let us use four terms to describe our energies as follows:

 FORM OF ENERGY

The scientific, recognizable state of an energy, ingressed to a system or a defined described sub-system.

MODE OF ENERGY

The scientific, recognizable state of transformed energy within a sub-system or from a sub-system to another sub-system or component.

LEVEL OF ENERGY       

The scientific, recognizable, maximum, measurable value of potential work.

VOLUME OF ENERGY       

The scientific, recognizable time measurable value of first  and second yield work. In order to use these energies, either ingressed, transformed or transferred, we must have a flow of energy. In order to have a flow of energy, we must have a transfer of energy, either into our first yield of services or our second yield of wear or waste.

• Therefore, we can state that usable forms and modes of energies must be continuous.

• Non-flowing (potential) energy will be described as static and flowing energy will be defined as continuous and dynamic.

• All usable energy, either ingressed form, transformed mode or transported mode must be available at point of ingress to our system(s) and must maintain continuity for the first yield services of the functional components of our facilities and equipment.

• All usable dynamic energies must be transformed, transported or used in some for fashion, either in our first yield of services or our second yield of waste.

• Under the law of continuity of energy, all occasions of wear or degradation, which is our second yield, will be on these lines of energy. If we define the flow of energies, we have defined all locations of wear, waste and component degradation.

  Let us flow chart all critical flows of energy into and within our facilities and equipment.