Poka Yoke Machine Maintenance 1

[ducatiman583]

Hi All,

Does anyone know if it is possible to Poka Yoke machine maintenance? It's all too easy to tick a box to indicate that the oil levels have been checked, without actually doing it. I need to introduce a system whereby it is impossible not to perform the necessary machine maintenance tasks. How do I ensure that someone has looked at fluid levels, gauge pressures or wiped down a machine cover? Thanks for your help.

 

[tomwalz]

Over the years I have come to believe that preventive maintenance is best addressed from a corporate culture standpoint. At the moment my shop foreman sees that it is done because he is fussy (good fussy) and likes things done properly. I have also had people who wouldn’t put oil in a company vehicle even when the driver said that it needed it. (I was out sick. When I got back we needed a new engine.)

You can try colored tags, check sheets, follow up inspections, our sourcing maintenance and so on. Mostly I would warn them then fire the ones who don’t listen.

My guess is that you ought to fire the guy who worries you now. Maybe that could be called a little hard but what happens when you have to rebuild that machine.

For too many years I tried all kinds of motivational ideas. Finally came to realize that they are pretty well set when you hire them. Hire nice conscientious people whose mothers taught them manners. Check criminal, driving and credit histories. It is really cheap and there are professional agencies all over. People with screwed up lives don’t make good employees.

Having said that, when I was in my twenties I had a pretty screwed up life. Traffic tickets and bad credit. I finally got things straightened out. Now 28 years without missing a payroll (if you don’t count me.)

Anyway getting someone to reliably operate independently requires a reliable person. Now all you have to do is find them.

I used to have 52 employees now I have a lot fewer employees and a lot more equipment and I am much happier.

Good Luck,
Tom


Thomas J. Walz
Carbide Processors, Inc.

http://www.carbideprocessors.com

 

[CoryPad]

Tom provided great advice. It is difficult to do what you are asking. Having multiple people independently check a condition is one possibility, but then you are increasing your requirements on either the amount of staff or amount of time spent by the staff to do a specific function.

Regards,

Cory

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips Fora.

 

[unclesyd]

Adding to the very good advice post above. The lubrication end of RCM has always been a problem in some form due to the perception of the job as a whole. I've heard it compared to the flagman on road crew, the dumbest of the lot but can stop the biggest truck on the highway. I have seen almost every approach possible to get lubrication maintenance under control.
The key to good control can be put into one word "Ownership".

My experience.
As our group carried out all failure analysis on site it was quite evident that the root cause of many failures was from lubrication in one form or the other. I took it on myself to see if something could be accomplished by improving the existing lubricants and maintaining the lubricants being used. When I started on this quest the lube patrol was performed by a mechanic who was serving as a lubrication man for a quarter. This was a penance that every mechanic had to serve. This was viewed as a terrible waste of highly skilled labor to do a so called menial job.
Over the years I had observed that one or two mechanics were very conscientious while doing their time. Based on this I was able to approach management about the possibility of creating a slot for a lubrication mechanic as a full time job. A meeting was held that included management and all the foreman and top level mechanics were it was agreed that this could work if we set the pay scale right. It was agreed to pay at the rate of a full mechanic.
Three of 90 mechanics volunteered for the opening. The one selected happened to be the one I had picked. We were able to get him started based on existing routes and immediately tasked him to improve these routes. We were able to partition off a small office in the oil storage room with a desk and later a terminal. He was ask to participate in ways to improve the lubrication program by any means. From this he was also given lockout tags similar to a mechanics, a stethoscope, and a contact pyrometer. When I started on a campaign to improve lubrication with lubricants in certain areas I involved him from the start and he was a great help. I asked him which bearings he though would benefit from improved lubrication and his reply was for a number of fan and blower bearings that were running hotter than one would like. We changed lubricant type and immediately saw an across the board improvement. I asked him to present his temperature data to a monthly maintenance meeting and the presentation went over well. I continued to work with him until he retired. Prior to his retirement he helped select his replacement. The person he selected was a contract mechanics helper who we were able to get hired at an entry mechanics pay. This mechanic is still working at the job and has been given additional duties under what might be called a RBM group.
The arrangement of having a full time lubrication technician allowed the improvement the on line reliability by several orders of magnitude.
A few of the things accomplished.
Using proprietary lubricants instead of stock lubrication products.
Reevaluating the operating parameters of bearings.
Changing from grease or oil to an oil mist system.
Automatic lubricators where applicable.
Greatly extending some times for periodic checks on some equipment.
Locating all the trouble points.


Within a year I went from having a basket bearing a week to maybe one a month.

Lately a change was made from using the lubrication technician to check on pumps in one area of site to requiring the local operators to run the route for their building. This failed miserably as there was a tendency for an operator to underevaluated anything that might require them to switch pumps. The end result was the routes were turned back over to the lubrication technician. One thing that was found out during this experiment was about 1/3 of the younger operators had problems hearing high frequencies, that is couldn't hear a squealing bearing.

Later on we discussed us various ways and means to approach a periodic check of different checkpoints, like the use of bar codes as keys and clocks for a time stamp. We do use bar codes now but as a means to quickly enter data for computer uploads.

As stated above it takes someone who will take ownership either as the whole lubrication arena or ownership of a critical piece of equipment to be able to relax when it comes to lubrication.

PS:
I accomplished this outside of my job description as nobody else wanted it or recognised what might be accomplished with proper lubrication monitoring. Never received any formal kudos form management but got quite a few from the mechanics for not having to change out some bearing in tough spots.

 

[tomwalz]

Unclesyd’s advice is excellent. I was thinking a much smaller shop where this duty was part of other duties. I have seen unclesyd’s approach work beautifully but I have never owned a large enough organization to use it.

About all I can add is that non-contact pyrometers are now relatively inexpensive and are fun to use. We have one we loaned to a customer and they found hot spots that had never occurred to them.


Thomas J. Walz
Carbide Processors, Inc.

http://www.carbideprocessors.com