The other day, I heard in the news that an emergency took place in a manufacturing plant, and that the bricks that were holding their kettle scattered.
Because of what happened, their production would be delayed a bit. Although the problem has been contained and they’re now ready to run again, they had just experienced a downtime. Downtime translated in terms of cost and time is expensive, especially in a manufacturing company.
I am sure they have regular TPM or total production maintenance, but I think they would do well with Lean or Six Sigma, too.
I found this article on Feed Forward and it has a good view of how Six Sigma, its tool DMAIC can help in doing a lean maintenance.
Define the problem - Unscheduled equipment malfunctions and the resulting rework, scrap parts, downtime and lost production. Why is this a problem? Because now days the machines and computers do all our work.
Monitor & Measure the problem - Monitor your downtime and measure or calculate what it is really costing… then estimate the potential savings and increased profits that should come from addressing this “problem.”
Analyze how to solve or eliminate the problem - Your maintenance engineer, or an experienced consultant or contract engineer should analyze and identify, for each computer, each machine and each control system how to, in the most cost-effective way, protect or harden the equipment form the above stresses.
Install and Implement - Installation instructions from above should be specific enough that your own maintenance personnel can easily and quickly install the needed protective devices, methods, or changes.
Controlling the project - Controlling Lean Maintenance â„¢ in the future should require little to no effort.
