Most fleets are pretty good at preventive maintenance (PM). So, if you are pretty good, why do you still have excessive breakdowns?
If a fleet wants to reduce failures, they have to complete PMs, but a fleet also must correct any defects, damage, or deterioration they find. It does a fleet no good to complete PM inspections and then not get around to fixing the revealed defects and issues.
Failures and reliability
The primary purpose of preventive maintenance is to postpone or stop potential failures in the future. Of course, technicians also find defects that require fixing immediately or soon after they’re found. Repairing these defects reduces the chance of breakdowns in the near future, since those problems have already commenced, and deterioration has already occurred.
Like a lot of areas of study, this is an oversimplification.
I’m going to say something about failures that might get me run out on a rail or tarred and feathered. It goes against every text you’ve read and a few I’ve written. Here is the truth:
- You can never PM your way to reliability.
- You can never plan your way to reliability.
- You can never schedule your way to reliability.
- You can never invest or buy your way to reliability.
- You can never scan, using any technology, your way to reliability.
- No silver, gold, or platinum bullet will give you reliability.
The only thing you can do is reduce the number of defects and waste entering your system faster than defects and waste are added. In other words, focus on eliminating defects and waste.
Find the balance
A defect is anything that adversely impacts your assets and the health, environment, and safety of your people. A fleet’s vehicles, storeroom, and the shop are like an Olympic-sized swimming pool full of defects.
You are already removing defects. PM inspections, CDL driver pre-and post-trip inspections, basic maintenance practices, driver logs following hours of service rules, and even a vehicle’s remotely connected computers making recommendations for part replacements can all help get rid of defects.
But defects are likely flowing in faster than you are dealing with them. That Olympic-sized pool is filling up.
Any one of these defects might be able to turn into a breakdown, and you won’t always know which defect will transform and go to the dark side. According to Winston Ledet, a consultant and instructor of proactive manufacturing and maintenance, defects come in five flavors:
- Defects that flow in with raw materials (including engine oil and diesel fuel)
- Defects due to carelessness or mis-operation of the asset
- Defects due to a lack of proper maintenance craftsmanship or because of maintenance carelessness
- Defects due to inadequate, bad, or counterfeit parts
- Defects due to design flaws, or procurement of assets with insufficient capacity
Defects I would also add to this list include waste of any labor, utilities, raw materials, fuel, or from poor routing, poor tooling, poor scheduling, etc.
Where to focus
Many of you have seen and studied the safety pyramid. As a reminder, the base of the pyramid represents hundreds or thousands of minor incidents, near misses, or slight safety items. While the highest level of the pyramid is the smallest in size, it represents major items such as lost-time accidents, injuries, or even loss of life.
The critical message is to deal with every little issue, minor incident, and near miss. If you want a safe shop, you need to deal with all the minor issues. You don’t know which ones will be among the causes of the more significant event. In a way, it doesn’t matter which incidents you deal with first if it is an ongoing process. Though, personally I would recommend addressing safety issues first.
Defects are the same: you don’t know which one will contribute to a breakdown. The only logical thing to do is work a little every week on reducing defects. Just a little effort is all you need if you are in it for the long-term. Where you start eliminating defects is less critical. It’s more important to begin the process in the first place, and then continue to work at it. Here are some examples of what a fleet can do:
- Focus on reducing the incidence of careless work habits from everyone who drives, repairs, fuels, moves, and cleans your equipment.
- Focus on removing defects and remediation of their causes.
- Focus on eliminating contamination and bad chemistry in fuel, oil, and antifreeze.
- Focus on waste elimination.
- Focus on doing jobs right and returning units to the road in like-new condition.
- Focus on getting good quality spare parts and be alert for counterfeits.
- Focus on buying the right equipment for the job in the first place.
Joel Levitt is the president of Springfield Resources, a management consulting firm that services a variety of clients on a wide range of maintenance issues. Levitt has trained more than 17,000 maintenance leaders from more than 3,000 organizations in 38 countries. He is also the creator of Laser-Focused Training, a flexible training program that provides specific, targeted training on your schedule, online to 1-250 people in maintenance management, asset management, and reliability.
