maintenance crisis - vibco · quality coming off is, at certain percent-ages, ... while a small...

VERYTHING THAT SURROUNDSus, and everything that is us, needsmaintenance, John Kravontkasays. Look at roads and buildings.

Look at your body. Even better, he says,look at your car.

When it has 50,000 or 100,000 miles

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FEATURE MAINTENANCE CRISIS

E

Manufacturing’s ongo-ing skills gap, plus itsoverall neglect in re-gards to keeping withthe times and propermaintenance proce-dures, have developedsomething of a newcrisis: fewer than 10percent of manufactur-ing companies areestimated to haveeffective maintenanceprograms in place tokeep their equipmentand related systemsrunning effectively,resulting in costly inter-ruptions and machinerybreakdowns. What canmanufacturers do toright their ways? Oneexpert weighs in.

In Dire Need ofMaintenance


under its belt, it takes a certain amount ofmaintenance to keep it in optimum runningcondition. If you defer its regularly-sched-uled maintenance, you will ultimately en-counter repairs – expensive, difficult fix-ups– that likely would have been adverted hadyou maintained your vehicle properly in thefirst place.

The same philosophy applies for manu-facturers – and their equipment. Or at leastit should.

But according to Kravontka, a CertifiedMaintenance Reliability Professional andPresident of Fuss & O’Neill ManufacturingSolutions LLC, in Manchester, Conn., it sur-prisingly doesn’t.

In fact, he says fewer than 10 percent ofmanufacturing companies have efficientmaintenance programs in place to keeptheir equipment and related systems oper-ating effectively.

“It doesn’t matter if the manufacturer isin the aerospace manufacturing sector, orautomotive, or medical, or energy, or anyother sector – much of the equiment thatmakes their products typically do not runwell,” Kravontka tells Industry Today. “Thequality coming off is, at certain percent-ages, not acceptable, and over time thosemanufacturing plants have deferred theirmaintenance.”

The repercussions of inadequate and



“I’ve heard this statistic for a while, and it would suggestthat over 90 percent of all maintenance people now in the

U.S. have not been formally trained.”


insufficient maintenance can be cata-strophic for manufacturers, Kravontka says.Equipment breakdowns and interruptedruns can cost billions in lost productivity, notto mention the subsequent expense of get-ting that machinery back up and running.

He adds that his organization finds thatthe typical OEE – or overall equipment ef-fectiveness – for most manufacturers’equipment hovers right around an unac-ceptable 50 percent.

In addition, a typical breakdown, he

adds, can cost anywhere between five andten times what the cost of regular preven-tive work would ordinarily cost – not just inequipment and productivity expenses, butin labor costs too.

“Even when equipment does not run well– let’s say it has a lot of breakdowns ormanufactures products at a slower pace –production still has to make the product,”he explains. “So a lot of times productionpeople have to work overtime, sometimeseven on weekends, when its time and a half



ABOUTJOHN KRAVONTKAJohn Kravontka is a Certified Maintenance and Reliability

Professional, a Training Specialist, Maintenance

Professional, and Continuous Improvement Consultant.

He has more than 40 years of training, troubleshooting

and rebuild/retrofit experience, with all types of machine

tools and equipment. Kravontka uses many Lean

Manufacturing methodologies to help his clients increase their equipment productivity and

reliability. His strength has been to transfer that knowledge and experience, providing imme-

diate and sustainable results for his clients. He is also a recent author of the newly published

book "Seeing the Invisible – Single Point Lessons" available at www.gbmp.org. He can be

reached at [email protected]

FEATUREMAINTENANCE CRISIS

departments are stuck in this condition,”Kravontka says. “Since a breakdown ismuch more expensive, and 95 percent ofyour work is fixing breakdowns, it’s very ex-pensive for that plant to stay in top-per-forming condition."

He adds, “But there are a lot of reasonsfor getting in that mode. It didn’t happenovernight. It happened over a period ofyears.”

A key driver, he says, is that experiencedmaintenance personnel – those with formaltraining, a variety of apprenticeships, andyears or even decades of machinery expe-rience – are retiring or soon will retire. In theirplace, unfortunately, are candidates whotypically possess none of the above.

“They have no formal training at all,”Kravontka says. “I’ve heard this statistic fora while, and it would suggest that over 90percent of all maintenance people now inthe U.S. have not been formally trained. Thenew ones coming in are basically not evennearly knowledgeable enough to ensurethat the machines are running properly andcontinue the job that the retirees did.”

Consequently, there is now a nationwideshortage of qualified maintenancemanagers.

“There’s really no place for them to beformally trained because the apprentice-ships and training programs that

INDUSTRY TODAY 41


on Saturday and double time on Sunday.That’s even more costs to themanufacturer.”

Sometimes, he explains, manufacturersfail to see that they even have a mainte-nance problem. Constant breakdowns,stoppages and a low OEE are the norm,and management believes that the mainte-nance department is doing all it can inprevention but they’ll actually spend mostof their time fixing broken equipment.

“A lot of manufacturing plants don’t seeit yet,” Kravontka says. “They haven’t madethe connection between the equipment notrunning well and the maintenanceorganization having serious issues.”

FAULTY MANAGEMENTMaintenance is not about fixing faultyequipment – it’s about keeping equipmentfrom breaking. But that has not been thecase in years, Kravontka says.

Most maintenance personnel are funda-mentally stuck in what he calls BreakdownMode. That means, Kravontka says, thatapproximately 95 percent of everything theydo daily involves fixing equipment. Properpreventive measures, he explains, is regu-larly put off or not done at all. They simplydo not have the time.

“I would say about 60 to 70 percent ofmanufacturing companies’ maintenance

40 INDUSTRY TODAY


“A typical manu-facturing plant

greatly struggles tofind experienced

maintenancepeople. It typicallytakes a long timeto find someoneknowledgeable.”

what it is: a cost center,” he says. “If main-tenance is done correctly, and we get outof that breakdown mode, not only can youget the equipment to run better, but we canultimately lower our maintenance costs ifwe can get out of that breakdown mode.”

A LONG RECOVERYFixing maintenance’s maintenance prob-lem, Kravontka explains, will undoubtedlybe a time-consuming process.

“It will not be easy, and it will not be fixedin a day, a month, or even a year,” he says.“This storm of experienced maintenancepeople retiring and the lack of apprentice-ships and training for newer generations,

plus companies continuing to look at main-tenance as a necessary evil, it all happenedover the course of the last 25 years. We’renot going to get out of it overnight.”

But there are solutions, he says. While a small portion of manufacturers

have or soon will outsource their mainte-nance needs, the vast majority will try to im-prove their maintenance operationsin-house. When that happens, manage-ment will formulate an action plan afterevaluating how their current set of opera-tions is faring.

At Fuss & O’Neill, Kravontka says, this isdone by comparing and contrasting clients’methods, techniques, and procedures with

INDUSTRY TODAY 43

companies used to have are gone,” he ex-plains. “A typical manufacturing plantgreatly struggles to find experienced main-tenance people. It typically takes a longtime to find someone knowledgeable.”

And those who are brought oftenconfuse simple machinery problems withcomplex ones because “they don’t knowwhere to start,” Kravontka says, adding thisorganization is able to spot deficienciesright away because the staff is made up offormer apprentices, former maintenancemanagers, and certified maintenance andreliability professionals.

“We see minor defects all over the equip-ment, things that just aren’t right,” he

explains. “We can see them when we walkup to the equipment, but most of the main-tenance techs cannot. It’s invisible to them.”

And as new technologies are introducedinto the manufacturing landscape, mostcompanies have done a rather poor job ofkeeping abreast of maintenance best prac-tices. In fact, a large number of manufac-turers have instead cut a portion from theirmaintenance budget, labeling it somethingof a “necessary evil,” Kravontka says. Thisstrategy, of course, does little to nothing inimproving, fixing, or better maintaining de-fective equipment and machinery.

“Most plants just treat maintenance as acost to be minimized instead of treating it

42 INDUSTRY TODAY



“What we’re trying to show, and we’veshown it, is that if we do the right things, if

we can get out of thatbreakdown mode – and remember, a

breakdown is much more costly than doingsomething preventive – it is going to have a

huge impact on maintenance costs andmanufacturing productivity.”

to work inside a plant, on an apprenticeshipor internship basis, that can begin trainingthem,” Kravontka says. “They’re reachingout. They’re trying. But it’s difficult, and it’sgoing to take time.”

An alarming amount of time, he adds.“Everyone in manufacturing is dealing

with this. They’re all looking for skilledprogrammers, mechanics, welders,managers,” he says. “And while manufac-turers are trying to turn things around, thecondition is only getting worse. More andmore Baby Boomers and skilled personnelare retiring.”

But there’s a sliver of silver lining in that:“When a community or technical college

calls that retired baby boomer and says,‘Hey, can you help train or teach some ofour new maintenance students,’ they endup going to those technical and communityschools,” Kravontka says. “That’s a goodthing because you want the experiencedtutoring the inexperienced.”

What is most important, Kravontka says,is that this issue is brought to the attentionof American manufacturers, who have ig-nored the ongoing dilemma for far too long.

“What we’re trying to show, and we’veshown it, is that if we do the right things, ifwe can get out of that breakdown mode –and remember, a breakdown is much morecostly than doing something preventive – itis going to have a huge impact on mainte-nance costs and manufacturing productiv-ity,” he says, adding that his organizationhas seen up to a 20 percent reduction inmaintenance costs while upping overallOEE levels and uptime.

“If you do the right things in regards tomaintenance, you can get a double hit,”Kravontka says. “You can get more reliabil-ity, more productivity from your equipment,and you can lower your maintenance costs,all while educating and developing a newworkforce who will work to make sure yourequipment continues to work effectivelyand up to speed.” •

INDUSTRY TODAY 45


others maintenance departmentscategorized as “world class maintenance”organizations.

“That’s when we find out what the clientis doing well, what they’re not doing well,and why they’re not doing well,” heexplains. “From there we start piecingtogether a strategy.”

Placing interim maintenance managers isalso growing in popularity, he adds.

“It’s becoming a bigger part of ourbusiness because we know and we’reseeing that the manufacturer just cannotget a maintenance manager out there whocan evaluate where they are, put a visionand a strategy in place, and begin gettingthem out of that breakdown mode,”Kravontka says.

But these methods serve more as tem-porary fixes than long-term solutions. So is,in a way, buying and installing automatedequipment, Kravontka says. True, you needfewer operators to run these types of ma-chines, he explains, but you need moremaintenance personnel to keep them run-ning smoothly.

That means, ultimately, there is only oneway to solve this crisis of sorts, Kravontkasays: Fix the ongoing sector’s skills gap.

After all, he explains, if there aren’tenough qualified personnel to run modernday’s advanced and automated machinery,

there certainly are not enough to maintainor fix these complicated pieces of equip-ment when they break, malfunction, andunderperform.

Manufacturers countrywide have alreadytaken drastic steps to ease the burden,Kravontka says. Most notably, they’rereaching out to their local communitycolleges, technical schools, and highschools to craft quasi-apprenticeships,push for new training programs, and as-semble new-look curriculum that centerson science, technology, maintenance, andmathematics – all subject matters that man-ufacturing employs daily.

“They’re looking for ways to get students

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maintenance crisis - vibco · quality coming off is, at certain percent-ages, ... while a small...

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