Case Study: Two manufacturers take a non-intrusive approach to reliability optimization

In the unending quest to increase operational efficiency and performance, it is easy to assume that reinvention or transformation is required to achieve substantial improvement. But revisiting selected processes and making them better is a less intrusive strategy with high rewards. Maintenance and reliability processes especially are ripe for refinement. 

A food producer lifted its top cause of downtime to nearly 100% uptime by upgrading the equipment’s preventive maintenance (PM) and line setup procedures. An automotive component manufacturing plant increased the reliability of critical assembly machines by reducing PM inspection downtime activities by 50% and improving PM processes. 

The organizations achieved these gains and more with help from Eruditio, specialists in reliability and maintenance assessments, training, consulting, and coaching. 

Popular food manufacturer establishes strategic alignment of planning and scheduling processes

The maintenance planner for a midwestern food processing plant accepted a rare opportunity from headquarters to refine his planning and scheduling skills and drive critical process improvements. Unplanned equipment downtime was uncommon but costly, and the top pain point across the plant was sheeter machine wire breakage.

Each week, the plant averaged 4-5 failures of sheeter wire feed systems, totaling 2-3 hours of downtime. In the first three quarters of 2024, that equated to roughly 100 hours of downtime, $51,000 in downtime costs, and 200,000+ pounds of lost production. Line setup issues that placed stress on the wire contributed to the challenge, as did a generic, subjective sheeter PM procedure that relied on legacy knowledge.

The strategic objectives were threefold: to improve the maintenance team’s technical effectiveness; increase the mean time between failure (MTBF) and uptime for sheeted product lines; and reduce the mean time to repair (MTTR) for production lines with wire feed systems.

Following Planning & Scheduling Inspired Blended Learning (iBL) training from Eruditio, the planner set out to upgrade the sheeter wire feed system’s PM processes. Goals included establishing a quantitative PM procedure and one-page optimal line setup procedure and minimizing risks to culture change. 

Facilitating procedure adoption involved starting with a clean slate; consulting manufacturing specifications; leveraging input from cross-department leadership, technicians, and line operators; and arranging for role-based training. 

Solution optimizes asset reliability and operations and maintenance effectiveness
The new, comprehensive PM procedure provides the detailed guidance needed by less experienced team members. The new line setup procedure is designed to ensure the wire feed system is in good mechanical condition and set up properly by line operators to avoid production and maintenance issues. 

Once implemented, a single wire failure occurred in the first week, causing 0.51 hours of downtime. That incident was addressed with additional operator coaching on the setup procedure. During the second week, there were no failures. Consistency was evident in the results:

• Unplanned wire break downtime and related costs dropped to near zero.
• MTBF and uptime increased for sheeted product lines.
• MTTR decreased for production lines with wire feed systems.
• Culture change for wire feed system maintenance and operation was achieved.

Additionally, the planner’s successful completion of Eruditio’s iBL program earned him RMIC Planning and Scheduling Practitioner Certification, accredited by the University of Tennessee’s Tickle College of Engineering, increasing his value to the organization.

Automotive component manufacturer enhances reliability leadership, processes, and culture

PM optimization was needed at a major American component production plant to replace a reactive “find and fix” maintenance approach with proper planning and scheduling. PM days typically included two hours of inspection time and six hours of corrective maintenance, causing eight hours of machine downtime while planners worked in firefighting mode.

A baseline plant assessment led to the business case for refining PM processes on a critical assembly machine for a quick win and then piloting the processes in a strategic plant area. Deliverables would include:

• A detailed maintenance business process improvement plan and pilot implementation timeline
• An optimized, reliability-focused organizational chart with no change in head count
• Consolidated planning and scheduling processes reflecting realigned roles, responsibilities, and priorities
• Reviewed and improved PM routines
• Defined KPI metrics for work execution quality, schedule adherence, and work closeout efficiency
• Targeted iBL training for all affected roles

A cross-functional plant team supported by a third-party expert completed the central PM optimization initiatives: a PM scrub and a revised PM execution strategy. The PM scrub removed non-value-added activities and ensured the remaining activities were failure-mode based. The team reengineered 58% of the PMs, replaced 22% with predictive maintenance, reassigned 13% to operators, and left 7% unchanged. For all reengineered and unchanged activities, judgement criteria and corrective actions were included in the instructions. The scrub enabled a 50% reduction in inspection downtime activities.

Transitioning to a proactive PM execution strategy improved workforce efficiency, maintenance quality, and uptime while reducing operational risk. Now, a two-hour, all-hands PM inspection is followed by proper work order planning, scheduling, and kitting for a four-hour correction window a few weeks later.

KPI tracking validates the plant’s reliability-centered leadership, process, and culture improvements:

• PM downtime activities dropped by 50%
• Planned and scheduled work surged by 800% 
• Inspection and repair durations decreased by 20%
• Planner efficiency and technician utilization increased
• Plant productivity and equipment availability increased.