Achieving total quality through capacity assurance: Mills need a novel approach to maintenance in the new millennium.

Editor's Note: This article is based on a presentation at the TAPPI Engineering/ Finishing and Converting Conference held in San Antonio this past December. The presentation was sponsored by the TAPPI Maintenance and Mill Engineering Committee.

Pulp and paper mills have traditionally focused on breakdown maintenance and preventive maintenance. When machinery broke down, technological champions (such as service groups) would ride in on their white horses, solve the problem, then "ride out of town." Mill maintenance workers were frequently left thinking, "Why couldn't I have done that?"

Predictably, this kind of activity fragmented the mill's maintenance organization, hindered the development of a team effort, and allowed for no "owner" input into the maintenance process. Everyone waited until the next breakdown, when the "white horse" champions would again ride into town.

There is a better way. Pulp and paper mills should develop a new maintenance philosophy of "capacity assurance." This philosophy is based on four major principles:

Empowerment: Provide employees with the knowledge, skills, tools desire, and accountability to manage their own jobs.

Community teams: Develop teams that include all "stakeholders in the maintenance process. These teams can then focus on finding the best ways to get quality product "out the door."

Reduction of major losses, Move the focus to reducing losses due to scheduling, equipment failure, production changes, equipment effectiveness, idle time or minor stoppages, defects and/or rejects, and start-up and loading/unloading losses.

Reliability technologies: Use all the currently available reliability technologies when they can be justified by the organization.

UNDERSTANDING MAJOR LOSSES

Developing a system based on capacity assurance requires an understanding of the seven major capacity losses:

1. Scheduling: Ineffective equipment usage is a major cause of losses. If equipment is scheduled to run only two 8-hour shifts a day and is down on the third shift and weekends, the maximum possible equipment effectiveness is about 50%. This means the equipment is scheduled to run only 10 shifts out of the 21 shifts available per week.

2. Equipment failure: This is one of the most costly production downtime situations. Breakdown failures cost about ten times more than planned maintenance and take four times longer to complete. Still, most engineering and maintenance groups focus their efforts on t11ese situations.

3. Production changes: Cleaning equipment prior to using it for another product can cause multi-day losses.

4. Equipment effectiveness: Sporadic equipment failures and production changes cause equipment effectiveness loss (also called loss of "through-put"). while most mills live with this type of loss, a piece of equipment operating at 80% efficiency is so ineffective that it might as well be taking 1.4 days of unearned leave every week! For example, a 30-year old water pump rated for 25,000 gallons per minute is pumping only 20,000 gallons, a 20% loss of efficiency. The pump could be repaired to operate at optimum capacity.

5. Idle time or minor stoppages: These losses--while unexpected--occur frequently, making it difficult to maintain process stability. For example, taking a process sample to the lab for analysis may cause a minor production stoppage; however, if operators were empowered to analyze samples at the production point, the process could continue.

6. Detects and/or reject losses. Most production units already focus on this type of loss through quality management processes or statistical process control (SPC). Instrumentation must be properly calibrated.

7. Start-ups and loading or unloading losses: Not all losses are caused by equipment problems or failures. Other losses are caused by equipment being warmed up or shut down. Another loss occurs when products are run as wastepaper until being qualified to specifications.

As quality and cost control demands become a way of life--or survival--the paper industry must standardize maintenance repairs and parts. This will likely lead to more customer/supplier partnerships for equipment and spare parts control. At the same time, craft workers will require more intensive training. This training should focus on three main areas:

* Job-related training that gives employees academic and/or theoretical knowledge of specific equipment and technologies.

* Continuous job-specific training based on new training materials for repairing specific equipment.

* Process safety management (PSM) will ultimately require craftsmen to have detailed process knowledge and to be certified to do repairs safely and according to standards.

IN THE FUTURE

To be competitive, industries such as pulp and paper must change the way they perceive and manage maintenance. Instead of simply being an expense item on the balance sheet, maintenance must be part of a mill's overall business strategy. Capacity assurance that focuses on overall equipment effectiveness can be as great a benefit to a company as SPC or other major quality initiatives.

NONTRADITIONAL THINKING ABOUT MAINTENANCE

Achieving total quality through capacity assurance requires that maintenance staffs change some of the ways they operate. Key changes include the following:

1. Manage maintenance as part of the business strategy

2. Manage capacity assurance rather than maintenance: Traditional maintenance looks mainly at failures and gives little attention to the other six major lasses (see above).

3. Calculate and benchmark overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)

4. Incorporate operator maintenance: Operator maintenance should be based on the "CLAIR" principles: clean, lube, adjust, inspect, repair.

5. Promote multi-skilling vs. multi-crafting: Multi-skilling allows tradesmen to maintain their "mastery" while giving them breadth into other craft fields.

6. Manage maintenance interfaces: This requires a "community" approach to maintenance, where whoever needs a skill--based on economics--should be equipped with the needed training and tools.

7. Establish condition-based maintenance (CBM): This incorporates the following principles into one system:

* Preventive maintenance (PM)

* Diagnostic-based maintenance (DBM) * Owners" input (feel, smell, sound, or sight)

* Equipment age or life

* Equipment signatures

* Equipment history

8. Promote use of equipment reliability technologies by operators and mechanics: This requires reliability technologies that operators can incorporate into their "bag of tricks" as they manage their business.

9. Institutionalize an instrument calibration program as a key part of statistical process control.

10. Standardize maintenance repair and replacements.

Bill Maggard is Owner of Maggard Consulting & Investment in Blountville, Tennessee, USA. He is author of several maintenance texts the 1997 winner of ASME International's Frederick P. Smarro Award for his contributions to plant engineering and maintenance. Contact him at [phone], or by e-mail: [e-mail]