These are contracts between functional areas of the plant which have an effect on overall reliability. I came across a study recently which claims that departments affect reliability in the following %
Sales (15%), Production (23%), Maintenance(17%), Procurement (12%), Plant Engineering (22%) and Management(11%).
Wow. How did they figure that out?
Anyone working with a company where there are such agreements in place between internal departments AND they aren’t ignored the first time there is a problem??

(Study was done by the RM Group in co-operation from the Reliabilty Manufacturing Association)

Happy New Year and ….Regulations – who cares?

We’re pretty anti-regulations here in Ireland. (Just look at the number of people still driving around talking into their mobile phones).

In maintenance, our anti-establishment leanings come to the fore particularly around audit time. We are pleased when we have managed to scrape through a particular issue or (better again) pulled the wool over the auditors eyes. I’m not saying its right but……can those who are without sin please stand up now??!!

The regulators/auditors are getting better though.

And the reality is that the regulators of our businesses are focussing more and more on maintenance.

At a recent get together with fellow maintenance managers, all from the Pharma/Healthcare side of manufacturing, all the talk was of how much more the auditors were scrutinising us in maintenance.

Regular questions asked were:

Can I see your backlog please? I mean your maintenance backlog. I want to see what maintenance tasks were not carried out.

Please provide me with a list of equipment failures in the last 1 month, 3 months, etc etc. I want to see what you have done about ensuring these failures don’t reoccur.

Can I see all your deviations in the last year.

A comment from one attendee ” They have drilled down through all the quality and validation stuff for years – now they are coming after us” .