Reliability Academy

“Reliability is simple”. I have been teaching this concept for a long time. Because in my 20+ years of working in the maintenance game... I’ve seen plenty of plants achieve high reliability by simply doing the basics really well. And it’s not just me. Winston Ledet’s research shows the same. You see... Ledet’s work has become the foundation of what I teach in my Road to Reliability Framework. In his research (summarised in the table), he studied hundreds of plants around the world. And he found that the best performing plants achieved uptimes of up to 98%… simply by focusing on these three things: 1.) Planning & Scheduling 2.) Preventive and Predictive maintenance 3.) Defect elimination. Let me say that again. 98% uptime. That’s virtually having NO downtimes in your plant...all from effectively implementing 3 practices. If you think about it... When you compare that to the huge amount of waste and inefficiencies of plants today... that’s pretty amazing. That’s why it frustrates me that, somehow, we’ve got people convinced that to achieve high reliability, you need to successfully implement a model with 10 to 20 different elements. You know what I mean. We’ve all seen the pyramids and temples of acronyms. Most of these models, however, are more complicated than necessary. And the idea of having to implement all those elements would be daunting to just about everyone. Including me. But like I said... reliability can be simple. You don’t need 10 or 20 elements to achieve high reliability. In my experience... and from Ledet's research—the “Best of the Best” get to World Class Reliability by doing the basics really well. #ReliabilityAcademy #planningandscheduling #maintenance

Planning & Scheduling are not the same. You need both. #ReliabilityAcademy #planningandscheduling #maintenance

Can you believe this? A supposed 2-hour maintenance job can take 6 to 8 hours to finish... …all because the job wasn’t properly planned for. And you might think I’m exaggerating… But I’m not. It’s something I’ve seen repeatedly in organisations stuck in the firefighting culture. And there are a lot of reasons why this could happen… … technicians looking for missing parts … incorrect repair methodology in the work instruction … the job was labeled “ready for execution” when it truth, it wasn’t Among other reasons. But on the flip side... If you effectively implement maintenance planning & scheduling in your organisation, you can actually do things faster, and save a few hours. Just imagine… What would you do if your team had an extra few hours a day? Hours you gained NOT because you did overtime… or you skipped a few tasks. No. But because you were efficient. What would you do? #planningandscheduling #maintenance #ReliabilityAcademy

Such a common mistake: burying your planner in non-planning related work and then wondering why you incur so many delays during the execution of your maintenance work.

Solving maintenance problems starts with yourself. As an individual, you need to be proactive. You need to take action. You need to educate yourself. And you need to challenge the status quo. Never be complacent. If you want to escape the vicious cycle of reactive maintenance... Instead of putting the blame on others or on the systems you have in place, Start by asking: “What can I do?” Sadly, I’ve seen too many people who’ve lost hope for their organisation. All they see is the chaos and turmoil of working in a reactive maintenance environment. They’ve accepted that things won’t improve. And in doing so they forgot to see that they can make a difference Even if the difference you make is small, make it regularly and it will build up over time. Over time one of your colleagues will get on board, and eventually one more. Then another. And one day you will look back and see what a difference you made. So if you’re tired of the vicious cycle of reactive maintenance... If you want to stop the firefighting… If you want to create change in your organisation... Then looking in the mirror. And the person you see is the person that can make that first change. Let us know in the comments what change you’re going to make! #maintenance #reliability #ReliabilityAcademy

Can you call your workplace a ‘stable working environment’? It’s an environment that nurtures teamwork, builds trust, and establishes shared priorities. One that lets us communicate to operations that, “Yes, the job is getting done. And you’ll get your equipment back soon”. Sadly, you can’t have a stable working environment… …when you’re too busy running around fighting fires and chasing missing parts. See, what often happens in a highly reactive maintenance environment is that maintenance is overwhelmed. Things take too long. Operations don’t get answers fast because maintenance is ‘too busy’. And since the equipment isn’t getting fixed as fast as they want it to be fixed, and there isn’t clear communication when things will be fixed… ... Operations lose ‘trust’ in Maintenance. They scream louder and louder until someone jumps and gets their equipment fixed. Sure, that’s one way to prioritise... But the problem is… that often makes the reactive environment worse. It stops maintenance from properly preparing the work and increases waste in the organisation. That’s why if you want to create a stable working environment… You first have to deal with your problem with reactive maintenance. And you can do that by effectively implementing maintenance planning & scheduling. This gives you the time and breathing room to actually sit down and communicate with the operations team. #maintenance #reliability #ReliabilityAcademy

What is your opinion of work packs? To execute maintenance tasks efficiently, your maintenance crew needs a complete work pack. That work pack should include everything a technician needs to know to do the job safely and efficiently. Nothing more, nothing less. If the work pack is incomplete, then chances are, your crew will waste their time looking for the information they need in manuals, drawings, and procedures. Or worse, they won't look for it ... Either way, without a complete work pack, you’re creating heaps of waste and inefficiencies. No a complete work pack is not necessarily a big heavy A4 binder of documents, it could be just a couple of pages of paper. That's why you want a Maintenance Planner with a solid trade background, someone who knows how to do the job and who can document it effectively. If you want to learn more about creating work packs and other responsibilities of the Maintenance Planner, then you can check the article on the first comment. Do you use work packs? How good are they? #maintenance #reliability #planningandscheduling #ReliabilityAcademy

There are many versions of maintenance planning and scheduling processes floating around. But, in essence, they all come down to the same basic phases: 1 – Identify & prioritise 2 – Plan 3 – Schedule 4 – Execute 5 – Closeout 6 – Review & improve #maintenance #planning #scheduling #planningandscheduling #workmanagement #cmms #productivity

No - elaborate solutions are NOT always the best choice.  Sure, they look colorful and flashy—but they’re not always effective. Sometimes, the best solutions... are the simplest. Sadly… humans like complex solutions. It’s our nature. You see... we have this behaviour called “Complexity Bias”. Just as buyers intuitively think a more expensive product is better than a cheap product... …people naturally think a more complex solution is better than a simple solution. That’s one reason why we engineers also love complicated solutions. Since we constantly face difficult challenges that could affect the lives of many people, we err on the side of safety, on the side of complexity. As a result… when we optimise our work processes — we routinely make things unnecessarily complicated. This is very apparent when it comes to low reliability. Even though there’s a simple and effective solution available... Too many organisations choose the complex path. That’s why you’ll see reliability models asking you to implement 10 to 20 elements to master reliability. But the problem is most companies still struggle with the simple ‘basics’ to effectively make use of these complex frameworks. That’s why I always emphasise the effectiveness of simple yet proven frameworks like the Road to Reliability. In fact, in my 20+ years of experience in the industry, I’ve seen plants improve their reliability greatly by simply doing the ‘basics’ extremely well. By focusing on the foundational elements, you can get the most results from only implementing four elements— Planning & Scheduling Preventive Maintenance Defect Elimination Leadership & Culture If you think about it, Pareto's principle can be applied here: 80% of the results (improving reliability) come from only 20% of the elements you see on those complicated frameworks. #maintenance #reliability #planningandscheduling

It's not rocket science. Maintenance Planning & Scheduling doesn't have to be all that difficult. But many organisations still struggle to get long-term results from it. Here are just a few of the most common mistakes organisations make that keep them from succeeding. #maintenance #reliability #planningandscheduling #ReliabilityAcademy