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Chapter 1 Introduction to Precision Maintenance About our Founders Phil Hendrix Charlie Beale and Steven Rouse In our lengthy and successful plant maintenance careers in one of the largest process industrial plants in the world we were able to achieve dramatic increases in uptime and equally dramatic reduction in plant maintenance cost by rigorously deploying the principles of Precision 14 Maintenance While thinking we were already successfully maintaining that facility I often tell groups today I feel terrible that I didn t learn the most important skills needed to effectively do my job for 32 years until two years before my retirement Now some ten years of reliability consulting later myself Charlie and Steven along with many others who have joined us to pass on these skills Collectively we ve benefited from being able to look back at 13 what has happened to the actual audited history of the equipment we were charged with putting into a precise state In this manual you will clearly see the positive results from our efforts in establishing a standard of Maintenance Excellence which was a critical piece of our mill s continuous improvement effort More significantly on our return visits we can see the success and pride of all those dedicated craftsmen supervisors and engineers many of whom still perform precision maintenance in that facility today Over the 12 next few pages we will share these results and quotes from some of our suppliers of spare parts and services many of whom have seen their revenue decline by as much as 50 percent because the mill equipment runs significantly longer between required maintenance cycles CURRENT FONT SIZE HENDRIX PRECISION PRECISION NOT PERSUASION MANUAL Introduction to Precision Maintenance CHAPTER 1 4

While sharing these results we will demystify the term Precision Maintenance and we will demonstrate how to achieve it in short order In this weeklong session we will not ask you to believe what we tell you is true All we ask is that you believe what you have experienced and proven to yourself through the hands on simulator exercises that 13 you will perform Each team will measure their machine s results before and after the application of these precision techniques Then we hope you would utilize these precision skills back in your facility and ensure these techniques survive for many years and solidify your facility s operations as a low cost producer in its business segment Our training objective is to increase the skills of those in attendance making you a better craftsperson than 12 before and equipping you with sufficient information and understanding to effectively execute and advance the principles of precision and reliability maintenance CURRENT FONT SIZE HENDRIX PRECISION PRECISION NOT PERSUASION MANUAL Introduction to Precision Maintenance CHAPTER 1 5

13 In the world of maintenance a small issue can become an extremely expensive chain of escalating incidents For example by ignoring the small details necessary for proper equipment alignment an increase of the vibration levels will occur Additional vibration will exponentially decrease the life of the bearing and results in higher energy consumption The failure of the bearing will result in the destruction of mechanical seals and other expensive components coming apart at speeds of several thousand revolutions per minute We now have an unplanned failure event that will cost four to five times the cost of a planned corrective or preventive maintenance event Plus the possible loss of production and a rearrangement of the original work schedules for all those involved in planning and executing the repair effort Precision Maintenance procedures are designed to correct existing maintenance approaches which encourage a reactive state and generate repetitive self induced failures In this Skills 1 manual we will explore the common barriers to optimal efficiency such as soft foot 13 excessive vibration thermal growth equipment assembly or installation errors machine key orientation pipe strain and lubrication errors The instructors will explain how and why they occur and how to remedy their resulting negative consequences The success of a precision maintenance deployment is dependent upon two factors first the maintenance team acquiring the essential craft skills and process expectations necessary to accomplish the above goals second management sponsorship to make sure improvements happens globally and quickly This administrative approach now coined by the term Management of Change will need to be communicated across your facility to create a lasting step change and not a random incremental 13 improvement for a few pieces of equipment It will be a struggle to keep from returning to the former status quo practices and management must document rigid specifications and enforce their expectations concerning precision maintenance else the efficiency gains will be only partially achieved While the Skills 1 class is designed to communicate the necessary skills to the crew and craft level it is equally important that there is active senior leadership support and sponsorship for the precision maintenance initiative This will require management to understand precision maintenance principles and a determination to use their business communication follow up process and leadership skills to make the precision maintenance deployment a success and to sustain it over an extended period For that reason we recommend that plant representatives from the management and supervision personnel attend this class as well Maximizing Reliability through Precision Maintenance Don t misunderstand us in a downtime situation you must do what we have to do sacrificing a piece of 12 equipment s life for the good of the facility s uptime metric But too often that is an easy out and costly excuse to abandon precision methodology categorically In today s global economy maximizing uptime is mandatory to achieving corporate profitability and even survival in our competitive world Precision maintenance is a way to do CURRENT FONT SIZE HENDRIX PRECISION PRECISION NOT PERSUASION MANUAL Introduction to Precision Maintenance CHAPTER 1 7

12 However after ten years of observing people from many different facilities strikes what we think is the correct balance and seeing the financial results achieved we believe that the two philosophies of maximizing production and deploying precision techniques can co exist especially taking into consideration the total lost production cost and the maintenance cost over a period of years CURRENT FONT SIZE What useful life can I expect from a motor if it is installed and maintained with an eye toward precision As illustrated in the graph above prior to a precision state the average life of the motors was 19 6 years By concentrating our efforts on the troublesome and costly motor first and insisting that hundreds 13 of others vibrating at higher than our new minimum acceptable levels be put into a precise state we could easily double the life of our electric motors or conversely cut the failure rate in half in just four years as we did extending the average life to 46 1 years Some eight years later the rate has been sustained and now reflects an even higher average motor life of 52 8 years In addition all the maintenance personnel were directed differently concerning precision installations and maintenance of motors We also had to educate the motor rewind and repair shops as to the precision standards we now expected on rebuilds Strict motor repair standards were set and random audits some unannounced were initiated to make sure the 14 standard was met Not only did we conspire with some of the world s leading experts on large electric motor repair we had to rewrite specifications and even teach motor shop managers and their employees the little details we expected them to do precisely using a trust but verify methodology Our dedicated electrical and instrumentation team also worked diligently to explain what specifications we expected regarding balance vibration insulation etc for new motors to the manufacturers While a few vendors were left behind most met our requests for precision we 14 just had to ask Today motor manufacturers from around the world brag about their products meeting some of these very specifications when our original requests had them complaining about the precision we were demanding What about Pump Life The world s largest installed base of a specific manufacturer s process pumps proved even more lucrative for decreasing cost and improving uptime We had grown to accept that our fleet of 3 500 plus 13 pumps made up mostly of various frame sizes of Allis Chalmers PWO and CSO models were destined to fail every couple of years In some process locations a life of two months was the norm before HENDRIX PRECISION PRECISION NOT PERSUASION MANUAL Introduction to Precision Maintenance CHAPTER 1 9