Doing the jishu hozen down at the gemba

Jishu hozen, or autonomous maintenance, is attainable through free Web resources.

By Russ Kratowicz, P.E., executive editor

PlantServices.com

Nobody is an island. It’s necessary for us to interact, hopefully for the common good. When large groups on the world stage start acting in a coordinated manner, it’s an alliance. When smaller groups work together on the plant floor, it’s a team.

The skill levels of team members span a continuum of ability. Only a few are capable of doing the critical, most valuable activities. Every member can do the less demanding activities. A team’s progress peaks when responsibilities, duties and tasks are pushed down the continuum until the next person in the ability lineup can’t do the task. It’s a matter of distributing work in accordance with ability and talent.

This explains why it probably makes no sense for highly trained maintenance technicians to do anything other than the tasks for which they are uniquely suited. That’s the idea behind jishu hozen, or autonomous maintenance to you Westerners out there in readerland. Come along, join me for another dive into the morass we call the Web in search of practical, zero-cost, noncommercial, registration-free Web resources that will help get your operators taking an active interest in the hallowed field of industrial maintenance. Remember, we search the Web so you don't have to.

The respect you deserve
Even though we believe the maintenance function is an important contributor to overall corporate health, sometimes both the belief and the work itself get no respect. Ask around in the plant. See what sort of opinions about maintenance infect the environment where you struggle to do what needs to be done. If you need some fodder for starting a discussion, simply ask if maintenance represents an investment that brings real returns or if it’s merely a cost of doing business that must be minimized. Conquest Business Media Ltd., the UK-based publisher of [i]The Manufacturer[i] magazine, has an article that might be of interest.

“Maintaining an advantage” explains why some people look down on maintenance and reveals how some British plants have responded to that problem. If your desk rodent needs an ego boost, send it to www.themanufacturer.com/uk/detail.html?contents_id=4951 for a bit of well-deserved respite from the constant floggings it endures as it faithfully does your digital bidding.

Doing TPM
A good place to get an overview of the rationale behind a total productive maintenance program and the work that goes into making the program successful can be found in “An Introduction to Total Productive Maintenance” by Venkatesh J, a longish document that covers a lot of territory. For example, it compares and contrasts TPM to a related management concept -- total quality management -– that can work side-by-side with TPM. If your plant ran into difficulties the last time someone tried to bring some TPM in the front door, you might want to investigate the recommended four-step process for introducing the concept into an organization. Instituting TPM isn’t necessarily an easy task under the best of circumstances, so the author also delves into an organizational structure designed to support TPM implementation. You’ll need to reconcile that structure with the current organization chart your plant has in place. Finally, if you let your mouse creep around www.plant-maintenance.com/articles/tpm_intro.shtml [no hyphens], you’ll get a detailed explanation of TPM’s eight pillars.

Follow the guide
Bringing a major structural change such as TPM into a company is never an easy proposition. Progress isn’t always smooth and uniform. Interest can flag. Disappointment can reign supreme. You need an anchor to keep the entire TPM initiative from drifting back to the old days and the old way of doing business. You probably should have a master plan at the outset for keeping everyone on track, for setting people upright again when morale goes flat. At least that is what Barry Shulak argues in his “Phillips 66 Creates a TPM Master Plan” that appeared in the March 1997 issue of [i]Quality Digest[i]. Here’s a case study that gives you something to take home. Get the goods at www.qualitydigest.com/march97/html/f2.htm, and don’t forget to investigate the three sidebar links found on the right at the top of the document.

English style
SaferPak Ltd., a British consulting firm, has its main focus on food packaging safety and related training. Besides using its Web site as a tool for drumming up more business, the company also uses it as a repository for a lot of free tools for business, management and quality. Dispatch thy royal mouse to www.saferpak.com/tpm.htm [no hyphens], to fetch the links to seven articles about TPM. In addition, the site holds good material that isn’t directly connected to maintenance issues. You’ll find these treasures hidden under the pull-down menus on the left side of the screen. Space doesn’t permit a complete description of the whole array, so you’ll need to explore on your own. It’s worth the effort.

From the ivory tower
If you look hard enough, you’ll locate research academicians who have an active interest in the plant maintenance and engineering function. Two such folks are Kathleen E. McKone and Elliott N. Weiss, researchers from the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota and the Darden Graduate School of Business, University of Virginia, respectively. With typical annual maintenance expenses running between 15% and 40% of production costs, and average machine utilization rates hovering near 50%, the field for research in maintenance is ripe. McKone and Weiss produced “TPM: Planned and Autonomous Maintenance: Bridging the Gap Between Practice and Research,” a scholarly, 17-page PDF that first appeared in the Winter 1998 edition of Production and Operations Management. In it, they explore the maintenance-investment decisions for TPM as they describe the elements of a TPM program and sort out the relevant research on autonomous and planned maintenance activities. They posit a five-phase, nine-step approach to moving maintenance much closer to the machinery and the people who operate it. They explain what is expected to take place in the maintenance department and at the machine during each phase. Finally, they highlight the gaps between your day-to-day needs and academic TPM research and offer suggestions to close the gaps. If you can convince your mouse to scale the heights of the ivory tower at www.extenza-eps.com/extenza/loadHTML?objectIDValue=26518&type=abstract it will come back with an education.