3.05 Maintenance Delivery

The Northwest Territories has 33 geographically dispersed communities, many of which are not grid connected for community power supply. The majority are powered by small, local diesel plants with others supplied by three hydro systems which generate the majority of the total power produced annually by the Northwest Territories Power Corporation (NTPC). This paper will describe how the condition of these assets is assessed and monitored, the process used and how the results form part of the annual capital planning and implementation process. Asset management at NTPC is divided into Thermal, Hydro and Transmission and Distribution; the focus of this paper will be primarily on thermal and hydro asset health inspections. On an annual basis, one third of the assets are inspected in person by the relevant asset manager and a small team of subject matter experts. The process by which these inspections are conducted will be outlined, including what information is gathered, and what we look for when carrying out the inspections. The asset condition information for various component parts is entered into one spreadsheet for each asset. The paper will describe how an asset health index for that asset is assigned. The condition of the asset determines what further action or inspections are required and the criteria used will be discussed. The presentation will also outline how the results from the inspections are used as part of a project prioritization process for capital planning. Current reporting practices on individual asset health indices and for each power plant will be described. In discussing this topic, NTPC sees an opportunity to receive feedback from others and to promote discussion on best practice from other power utility companies.

Maintenance planning should provide a huge bump in our work order completion rates. Yet most companies find that planning simply provides a lot of frustration. Six principles of planning and six principles of scheduling plus a consideration of reactive work help us successfully make planning into a best practice with obviously great results. These principles involve protecting planners to run a Deming cycle to make “better” plans over the years instead of perfect plans now and starting maintenance crews with fully loaded, weekly schedules that they are allowed to break. We can also plan some of the reactive work if we don’t have to be perfect and never tell supervisors to wait. These concepts are at odds with traditional approaches of procedures-driven-maintenance, high schedule compliance, and letting reactive work bypass planning altogether. But they make our companies wildly successful in draining huge outstanding backlogs of proactive work.

Maintenance practices have evolved from breakdown maintenance to predictive maintenance. As maintenance practices have evolved, so have maintenance improvement programs. Each evolution added a portion of what drives maintenance value as the key element. These programs created improvements, but generally failed to achieve their full objectives. In part, this was because they focused on one driver of maintenance value and did not consider the other drivers.This presentation will describe a pragmatic approach of maintenance improvement based on the drivers of maintenance value. It will do this by exploring the drivers of maintenance value. It will then examine the maintenance practices and improvement programs such as RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) and TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) and identifying which driver of maintenance value they focused on. The paper will discuss why a sustainable program needs to examine all aspects of maintenance value and describe an approach that can be used to identify and implement improvements.

Equipment Reliability has been a hot topic for years, yet many companies struggle to achieve this goal. This presentation is about maintenance fundamentals and how they affect equipment reliability. The maintenance department will always have lots of priorities on the plate, however in order to deliver equipment reliability there are some basics maintenance battles that must be won. These are not hard battles, they’re not even expensive, however they take some time and a great deal of commitment. These battles are key ingredients that can move the reliability needle in the right direction. The presentation looks at the critical battles all maintenance departments must win. Here are 6 of the simple but well-known categories that will examined during the presentation. 1. Spare Part Storage – Storeroom organization is often overlooked mostly because of the shear amount of work needed to create functional spare parts system. We will look at storeroom best practices and an organizational step by step approach to world class storerooms. 2. Area Improvement Boards – AIBs provided a comprehensive communication tool between operators and maintenance. In this discussion find out this tool can improve equipment reliability in a very simplistic format. 3. Lubrication Standards – Lubrication of the equipment is without a doubt one of the most critical issues of equipment reliability. The need for lubrication has been the single most enduring aspect of maintenance since the industrial revolution. In this critical battle we will look at best practices in lubrication storage and application. 4. Work Order Management - From the time a work order is created until it is populated and closed in a CMMS is a critical to getting work done and recorded. This section of the presentation will explain how to create a work order flow diagram where everyone knows their responsibility the work order flow process as will as best practices for planning and scheduling work orders. 5. Workshop Organization – Maintenance is a professional occupation however we don’t always look that way. See how 5s projects can create a professional looking and functional maintenance area and keep it that way. 6. Maintenance Cultural Change – Maintenance practices and technology are changing quickly. We must prepare and help our maintenance people adapt to changes in how we do things and get their buy in to improve reliability. It is not a complicated process and we will discuss how to help them make the transition.

This will cover the Theory of Technology Implementation: Technology, Process, and People – Pyramid. Any technology implemented is as only as good as the people who use it in the processes you have. With proper training and clear, consistent processes, technology results can be amazing! Mobile has been floating around Plant Maintenance for around a decade but finally got the political will and funding in 2018. We were able to leverage that we were also setting up our Maximo system with Assets and PMs to make them Mobile and reporting friendly, from the start. Our Requirements gathering included realizing that we needed a disconnected solution because we work in many areas without a signal, like Subway track level and we have emergency exit buildings all over the city with no network connection. We chose Maximo Anywhere on Samsung Tab As. We are using the Train the trainer method now with COVID, to limit contacts outside each section. We have a training video produced by IT for basic functionality, but individual training material still needed to be produced. For training of our people we took the slow and steady wins the race approach, allowing each crew to really get personalized support at the beginning of their Tablet use. I always encourage people to ask questions and speak up. I even started a 10 minute rule: If you can’t figure it out in 10 minutes – call/text me! There was also training to be done with Forepeople and Supervisors: How do I see the results? What to do I do with the results? Management has been very happy with results – a picture is worth 1000 words. The Good: Results The Bad: Connectivity issues The Ugly: Early Negotiations over items that when everyone got to test on the tablet, there was an immediate consensus.

Picture yourself driving to work on a cold, dark, winter morning. It’s Monday. You pull into the parking lot and note with surprise that the plant is much quieter than it should be on a Monday morning. As you walk inside to your office, your growing apprehension turns into the sudden realization that something serious must have happened over the weekend…Whether you work in a manufacturing facility, a continuous production facility, a hospital or building infrastructure, the need to prevent failures from reoccurring is familiar. So how is this accomplished? By applying root cause analysis methodology. Root Cause Analysis Made Simple covers the four fundamental steps to RCA. Quantify the magnitude of the problem – Why? When? Perform the analysis using the appropriate technique – Who? How? Develop a list of options for solving the problem Document the results and implement recommended actions This book provides an overview of RCA. It is intended to support you in understanding the business impact of preventing reoccurring failures and provide some tried-and-true practical approaches to conducting a root cause analysis.

Reliability Centered Maintenance – Reengineered: Practical Optimization of the RCM Process with RCM-R® provides an optimized approach to a well-established and highly successful method used for determining failure management policies for physical assets. It makes the original method that was developed to enhance flight safety far more useful in a broad range of industries where asset criticality ranges from high to low. RCM-R® is focused on the science of failures and what must be done to enable long-term sustainably reliable operations. If used correctly, RCM-R® is the first step in delivering fewer breakdowns, more productive capacity, lower costs, safer operations and improved environmental performance. Maintenance has a huge impact on most businesses whether its presence is felt or not. RCM-R® ensures that the right work is done to guarantee there are as few nasty surprises as possible that can harm the business in any way.RCM-R® was developed to leverage on RCM’s original success at delivering that effectiveness while addressing the concerns of the industrial market. RCM-R® addresses the RCM method and shortfalls in its application -- It modifies the method to consider asset and even failure mode criticality so that rigor is applied only where it is truly needed. It removes (within reason) the sources of concern about RCM being overly rigorous and too labor intensive without compromising on its ability to deliver a tailored failure management program for physical assets sensitive to their operational context and application. RCM-R® also provides its practitioners with standard based guidance for determining meaningful failure modes and causes facilitating their analysis for optimum outcome.Includes extensive review of the well proven RCM method and what is needed to make it successful in the industrial environmentLinks important elements of the RCM method with relevant International Standards for risk management and failure managementEnhances RCM with increased emphasis on statistical analysis, bringing it squarely into the realm of Evidence Based Asset ManagementIncludes extensive, experience based advice on implementing and sustaining RCM based failure management programs 

Focused on the HR aspect of maintenance management, this presentation will provide insight into how “asset maintenance management is about managing the people who manage assets.”We’ll look at how individuals’ confidence, competence, and validation of skills play a significant role in the overall reliability and costs of the assets we manage.

2020 was a challenging year for everyone, but in our facility, we were able to sustain the site reliability through the successful implementation of Total Productive Maintenance. Total Productive Maintenance allowed us to minimize equipment downtime throughout the year through the combination of keeping equipment in its base condition and producing clear operational and maintenance triggers to catch problems before they become in-process failures. The talk will go through the initial implementation phase (pre-lockdown) and how we navigated through internal and external challenges in 2020 to sustain the TPM and Reliability activities.

Let us look at an ordinary omnipresent part of Asset Management: bolting and fastening the machinery or structure. This single vital activity turns out to be remarkably neglected with undesirable consequences for reliability. Motion Amplification®, a new technology has the capacity to show machinery and structural movements, and so naturally brings out looseness or unnatural behaviors. Fastening errors seem to be one of the most prevalent occurrences and it is therefore important to look at what we can learn and how the technology can drive improvements and uses of best practices. A variety of problems are shown, such as forgotten difficult to access bolts, rusted/corroded fasteners, improper tension, improper washers, bolt grade or size and custom modifications such as a bunch of small shims. Some of the issues can be attributed to design errors, some to lack of asset information provided, some to installation errors, lack of training and proper tools or a culture of installation and maintenance excellence. Sometimes and improvement push comes with the integration of more advanced tools, for example tools exist where the torque can be properly managed. This requires that many other items come into place, such as the missing information, correct parts, training and cultural to get the job done properly.