Top 7 Signs of a Reliable Plant

Plants that understand reliability measure OEE/TEEP (Overall Equipment Effectiveness/Total Effective Equipment Performance) on their critical assets and actively seek to improve and stabilize reliability using proven tools and methods. 

Ramesh Gulati, in his book Maintenance and Reliability Best Practices, posits that incorporating OEE and TEEP as part of a total productive maintenance initiative yields the following benefits (Gulati, 286):

• Safer workplace
• Employee empowerment and improved morale
• Increased production/output
• No or minimum defects
• No or minimum breakdowns
• No or fewer short stoppages
• Decreased waste, operations and maintenance (O&M) costs

Plants that fail to have standard operating procedures (SOPs) use every excuse in the book to explain why they are not needed or essential. When they are done giving excuses, we ask them if they would ever fly an airline that felt the same way.

In her ReliabilityWeb.com article, “Avoid DOWNTIME: Write Standard Operating Procedures,” Caroline Eisner suggests,

Predictive maintenance (PDM) or condition-based maintenance (CBM) represents forty percent (40%) or more of the top performer’s workload.

A July 22, 2021, McKinsey Institute article, ”Prediction at Scale: How Industry Can Get More Value out of Maintenance,” suggests that several things stand in the way of a successful large-scale PdM program.  Most companies face issues in one or more of the following broad categories:

• Data is insufficient, inaccessible, or of low quality
• Technology is inadequate, with too few sensors or poor IT infrastructure
• Prioritization is difficult, as companies lack a clear view of which assets to include in their PdM programs
• Capabilities are missing, especially the skilled data engineers and data scientists required to build advanced analytical models
• Change management is weak, often because of user-unfriendly design
• Economic return is low due to the high cost of developing models to cover diverse assets and numerous potential failure modes

Top performers understand that the best-designed equipment in the world can be ruined if we do not take the time and effort to ensure it is precision aligned, balanced, and torqued. Top performers allow their people the time to do things right.

Cornerstone offers staff development programs via education/training/certification courses that are instructor-led on-site or offsite. The image below is a sample training roadmap:

To help customers achieve top quartile performance through reliability initiatives, Cornerstone focuses on a data-driven strategy to achieve results:

1. We assess your present state and apply KPIs that align with the plant’s financial goals
2. We combine plant, process, and asset performance metrics with IT/OT data
3. We coalesce reliability goals, master data, and maintenance practices into a holistic plan

Cornerstone strengthens our customers’ reliability organizations through training and education programs, partnering on initiatives and projects, or serving as an embedded resource.  We coalesce our customers' reliability initiatives, master data, and maintenance practices into a comprehensive business strategy that delivers measurable results.

Cornerstone relies on a vendor-agnostic consultative approach, using the software, tools, and assets your organization has already purchased. We offer a holistic, one-stop-shop portfolio for reliability services, products, and education.  Our team includes 150+ certified and experienced reliability professionals and a strong North American network of partners and solution providers.