The reliability fallacy

Ask anyone working at a cement plant and all would agree that reliability – of equipment, of the process, of production output, of product quality – is critical. FLSmidth would also agree. In fact, the company even provides a reliability centred maintenance (RCM) service specifically designed to help cement plants prioritise reliability. Ask who is responsible for reliability and they would probably all point to the maintenance team. And here, FLSmidth would disagree.

It is true that the maintenance team is at the frontline of delivering reliable performance: the RCM approach is predicated on that fact. But unless the other business functions – from management through to sales and production – also consider reliability in their activities, it can become very difficult, if not impossible, for the maintenance team to deliver.

What is reliability?

One of the problems that FLSmidth often encounters when called in to perform reliability studies is a fundamental misunderstanding of what reliability is, how it is achieved – and how it is lost. So, before exploring any further, it is worth taking a step back to consider what reliability actually is.

One definition of reliability is that a particular piece equipment simply runs without failures or faults that result in unplanned downtime. However, this is short-sighted because it does not take into account how well that equipment is running, simply that it is running at the moment. In this scenario, a plant that meets its annual production target, but has to run 10% longer to do so than its performance specifications indicate it should, or consumes 10% more energy in the process, is still reliable.

Is this reliability? No. Reliable equipment not only runs continuously without unplanned downtime but performs well when doing so. Achieving this is more complicated – but much more profitable in the long term. Several key factors go into it:

• Setting production targets that are deliverable by the equipment available.
• Operating the equipment within realistic limits.
• Developing a proactive, preventative and properly funded maintenance strategy.
• Ensuring the right people have the right skills, time and understanding to deliver that maintenance strategy.
• The quest for reliability thus begins not with the maintenance team but in the upper echelons of company management.

Don’t forget the maintenance team

The goal of all cement manufacturers is to produce more cement at less cost. In a hot market, there is even more pressure to do so. Seeing a chance to cash-in on rising demand, the management team calls for a 10% increase in production. The sales team immediately jumps on this and starts to sell that extra production. The plant operations team is now on the backfoot and pushes the equipment to get every possible tonne out of it, even if it means operating for longer, at a higher load, than the equipment was designed for.

Who is missing from this picture? The maintenance team! This relatively small group of people are then suddenly tasked with delivering reliability in a scenario where the equipment is being pushed too hard and too long, not only increasing the risk of unexpected failure, but also cutting into the time available for maintenance. As a result, inspections are performed only perfunctorily, or skipped altogether. Inevitably, at some point, something breaks.

The key point here: if management does not understand the impact they have on reliability, it becomes very difficult – if not impossible – for those below them to deliver it. Targets should always consider the ability of the equipment and personnel to meet them, otherwise any short-term gains in production will likely be outweighed by the long-term cost in equipment wear and replacement. This long-term cost will threaten a plant’s ability to meet commitments to customers and thus damage its competitive position. It may also create a highly stressful work environment that pitches the plant operations team against the maintenance team.

The position of management will also feed down to the sales team. In an extreme example, FLSmidth encountered a sales team telling plant personnel when they could and could not stop for maintenance in order to keep production on top of orders. This may not be common, but when sales volume is set over and above all other considerations, reliability will fall by the wayside.

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Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/special-reports/06112023/the-reliability-fallacy/