How to Establish Maintenance Policies & Simulations

Simulations are practice runs of how to follow maintenance policies and procedures.

Maintenance policies define when and how often equipment will be checked, maintained and upgraded. Simulations provide practice on how to perform maintenance tasks. Maintenance can be corrective (fixing broken things) or preventative (managing wear and tear) to maintain performance. Simulations also help managers set maintenance policies, from determining how much time to allow to how many people are needed.

Things You'll Need

• Maintenance manuals
• Work schedule
• Calendar

Instructions

Methods

1. 

   Read the manual. This should be the basis of your maintenance policies.

   Review the maintenance manuals provided with the equipment. Ask the equipment manufacturer or vendor for copies of the maintenance manual if you do not have them. The maintenance procedures and periods the manufacturer recommends should be the basis for your own maintenance policies.

2. Run simulations of how to perform maintenance. Verify that you have all of the necessary tools and skills to perform the work. Determine how many people and how much time is required to perform the work while running simulations.

3. Set a work schedule for maintenance to be performed. This will be a reoccurring entry on the calendar. Mark the days the maintenance is to be performed.

4. Add the maintenance window, the time frame when equipment will be shut down for maintenance and repairs, if any are found necessary, to the employee schedule. This will identify who will perform these tasks in the next maintenance window.

5. 

   Provide time to fix things when something goes wrong.

   Provide adequate time in a maintenance window for repairs to be made during that time. Set policies to allow more time than required to complete the work in case any repairs are found to be necessary. It is very common to find damaged parts or necessary repairs while performing maintenance. And it is better to repair it when production is already shut down for maintenance than to have an unexpected failure.

6. 

   Run simulations to make sure employees know how to follow maintenance policies.

   Verify that employees are following maintenance policies. Perform spot checks of workers performing maintenance to verify they are doing the work correctly. Have employees who have trouble following maintenance policies run through simulations of proper practice under skilled supervision.

7. Review maintenance policies periodically. Process improvements should be captured in the policy updates.

8. Include maintenance, shop floor management and engineers in the periodic review of maintenance policies. They may be able to provide recommendations for improvements or identify problematic areas.

9. Determine the average rate of equipment failures in the facility. Then establish maintenance policies that ensure at least having sufficient staff on hand to fix the number of expected failures per day. Have enough staff to cover both expected failures and still perform planned maintenance. Another option is to have slack in the maintenance schedule to move preventative maintenance to cover unusually high corrective maintenance demands. Simulation of multiple failures can help determine if the regularly scheduled teams can cover the increased demands.

10. Measure maintenance policies by the results they produce. If too much time between systems checks results in frequent breakdowns, shorten the maintenance interval.

Tips & Warnings

• When new equipment arrives, perform maintenance simulations with the new equipment. Ensure that employees are familiar with its maintenance procedures before installing the item or turning on the power.

• If there is too much idle time by maintenance staff, consider allowing them to help with operations work as long as that work doesn't interfere with their ability to respond to repairs.

• Verify that production and maintenance schedules are in sync. Never send staff to work on running equipment if maintenance should be done on powered down equipment.

References

• "Maintenance Excellence"; John D. Campbell, Andrew K. S. Jardine, Joel McGlynn; 2010
• "Total Productive Maintenance"; Terry Wireman; 2003
• "The Certified Quality Engineer Handbook"; Connie M. Borror; 2008
• "Recent Advances in Maintenance and Infrastructure Management"; Roberto D. Cigolini, Abhijit Deshmukh, Lorenzo Fedele; 2009
• "Complex System Maintenance Handbook"; D. N. P. Murthy, K. A. H. Kobbacy; 2008

Resources

• "Maintenance Policy and Procedures, Second Edition"; Lawrence Bush; 2008