Efficient Plant April 2018 - 8

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Check Your
R&M IQ
Dr. Klaus M. Blache
Univ. of Tennessee Reliability
& Maintainability Center
(RMC)

H

OW MUCH DO you know about what makes a successful R&M (reliability
and maintenance) program? What about your colleagues? Management? This
month, we have an R&M IQ test to help you establish a knowledge baseline
and likely identify areas in which some adjustments are needed. Answer True or False
to each statement, then turn to the "On The Floor" department on p. 35 for answers and
explanations.
1

Size of the facility has minimal impact
on R&M.

2 Age of the machinery and equipment
has a significant impact on R&M.
3 Moving from the 4th to the top quartile means being 7X less reactive.
4 If your reported schedule compliance
exceeds 90%, you know that your planning and scheduling is working well.
5 R&M improvements are more possible
in high-volume production versus
continuous-process manufacturing.
6 A maintenance cost as percentage of
RAV (replacement asset value) of 2.0%
is a good number for a facility with
average plant-floor best practices.
7 Unionized organizations are better at
R&M than non-union operations.
8 Moving from the 4th to the top
quartile can result in maintenance
cost reductions approaching 20%.
9 Preventive-maintenance optimization
works better in older facilities.
10 The level of contracted resources has
minimal impact on R&M success.
11 Although there may be an increase in
maintenance costs to get to best practices, the improvement in availability
can result in a 10-to-15 times greater
savings, versus maintenance costreduction savings.
12 Turnarounds have minimal impact on
reliability and availability.

Based in Knoxville, Klaus M. Blache is director of the
Reliability & Maintainability Center at the Univ. of
Tennessee, and a research professor in the College of
Engineering. Contact him at kblache@utk.edu.

8

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13 Managing your backlog is critical
if you want to reduce reactive
maintenance.

14 Performing root-cause analysis has a
significant impact on R&M, even with
an informal process.
15 Craft skills are not that important if
you have well-written PMs.
16 Precision maintenance can generate
as much as 50% more savings than
general training on plant-floor
improvements.
17 Involving the operator helps, but only
slightly, when it comes to root-cause
analysis.
18 Reactive-maintenance levels in
top-quartile facilities are only
about 25%.
19 At least 25% of your resource allocation should be spent on predictive
technologies (finding only, not fixing).
20 Good lubrication practices are only a
concern if you don't have good housekeeping practices.
21 Top-quartile companies have
spare-parts costs similar to the other
quartiles, because parts are needed
just in case.
22 Predictive maintenance is not used by
50% of North American manufacturing operations.
23 About 80% of maintenance trades/craft
time should be scheduled; the other
20% is for unplanned activities. This
approach avoids backlogs.
24 Any planner should be able to handle
about 15 trades/crafts people.
25 Having a good team culture will solve
all of your R&M problems.

Turn to p. 35 for the answers and explanations. EP

APRIL 2018
http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Efficient Plant April 2018
