by Terrence O'Hanlon, Publisher and CEO Reliabilityweb.com and Uptime Magazine
I hear it over and over again from maintenance reliability leaders. Maintenance costs are one of
the first things to get cut when the company decides to tighten its belt.
After all – the results of maintenance cost cutting will
probably not manifest for years and by then, the management who made that
decision will have likely moved on. On a side note: Management mobility is one of W. Edwards Deming’s deadly diseases.
In a recent discussion at LinkedIn, a couple is interesting
issues were raised about maintenance cost.
Cliff Williams related
a story of how in one plant he works in, maintenance costs actually went up but
because of the benefit, maintenance cost per unit produced actually dropped
from its previous level. Note: Cliff
will deliver a very lively keynote address at IMC-2012 The 27th International Maintenance Conference in Bonita Springs Florida this December.
Do you track Maintenance Cost related to production units or
revenue? It might prove to be much more
valuable than simply having an accounting person decide what is included in the
maintenance cost bucket.
Joseph Rambaldi stated that one of the largest
stumbling blocks is that budgets rarely are managed or analyzed in a way that
captures all costs. It is quite common for "maintenance" to capture
PM and corrective work costs but perhaps not pick up the depreciation costs for
replacement of capital equipment.
That creates a disconnect between seeing the
value in doing more Preventive Maintenance (PM) and less equipment replacement.
Likewise when equipment is down and
manufacturing personnel are idle those costs are not typically documented and
almost never assigned to the same cost center that the equipment repairs will
be captured creating another disconnect between the equipment cost of
inadequate PM and the business cost of the same.
Thus total costs of equipment reliability
are never summed so it is hard to know what changes in budget or practice
actually makes a difference unless the difference is so dramatic that it is
undeniable. Unfortunately few companies have the patience or faith to let those
undeniable improvements occur, it is only by completely understanding the costs
of equipment reliability that this can truly be solved.
Of course no company has a goal to reduce or grow
maintenance cost, companies have a plan to grow revenues and profits. The difficult part is choosing a “leap of
faith” to believe proactive maintenance reliability is the right thing to
invest in or finding a way to ensure all benefits delivered are credited to
cost.
Do you have any comments you can share about your experience
about tracking the cost and benefits of maintenance?
No comments:
Post a Comment