It may seem like getting downed equipment back online constitutes a completed repair because product is flowing again. But for how long is it flowing? Ask that question, and what appeared to be a completed repair often isn’t. Improving reliability should always be one of your repair work goals. Do you look for ways to mitigate or eliminate the downtime cause so this failure doesn’t happen as frequently if at all?
In many maintenance organizations, the performance metrics focus on single-event turnaround time rather than total production time saved. Three cheers if that motor can be replaced in under 30 minutes! But are you shaving a few minutes from an individual downtime event only to accumulate much more downtime overall?
The first step in repairing the reliability problem is to identify the failure cause. Send that motor out for an autopsy. Don’t use motor replacement cost as the justification, use total cost. At one plant, each hour of downtime cost $680,000 in revenue. They kept paying that rather than fix the failure cause of a “not worth the autopsy cost” 10 HP motor.
