Viewpoint: Focus Your Resources

By Mac Smith, P.E.

The title of this column sounds like a no-brainer! What an idea: Put your employee talents and facilities to work on what a) is most important (critical), and b) has the potential for the largest ROI. But based on my many years in the technical engineering field of design, test, operations, maintenance and project management, it’s clear to me that there continues to be a steady deterioration in this simple premise. Why?

Stated differently, why do we treat everything in our plants and facilities as equal contributors to our business success? And why do we continue to pay a ten-fold economic penalty when things go wrong (aka Reactive Maintenance), rather than spend one-tenth of that to prevent or mitigate problems before they occur (aka Proactive Maintenance)?

One reason is that we are so busy fixing broken things that we “just can’t afford the time” to prevent the breakage. That’s a weak line of reasoning that I doubt we would take if our personal health was the issue! A second reason is that even when time can be allocated, the process of determining where resources should be focused often proves too great a challenge.

In my experience, these two reasons account for about 80% of the input that I encounter across industry. The other 20% I would characterize as a random grouping of management styles that embrace perspectives such as “don’t rock the boat” or “this strategy is beyond the workers’ comfort zone.” The ultimate cop-out I saw was a power-plant that rewarded employees for letting things fail because their technicians “held the record for getting us back on-line.” Conversely, they could not understand why their electricity costs were so high!

In today’s maintenance world, thanks to the CMMS, accurate data capture on work orders from maintenance events is fairly routine. That database is also a virtual gold mine of information. While many of you know this, I think many of you have not yet figured it out. This gold mine, in fact, is the key to properly focusing resources.

To understand how it works, consider the 80/20 Rule, also known as the Pareto Principle after its Italian founder some 100 years ago. The 80/20 Rule asserts that a minority of causes, inputs or efforts will usually lead to a majority of results, outputs or rewards. For example, in a typical church congregation, 80% of revenue contribution comes from 20% of parishioners. Sound familiar? This simple concept can be applied to hundreds of everyday situations in our lives.

In maintenance & reliability, we typically work with large, complex plants composed of many distinct systems. A typical CMMS can provide data for each individual system over time. This would include number of work orders executed, total dollars spent or even unexpected downtime hours accrued. The 80/20 Rule says that when you apply such data to each system, you’ll find that 80% of this data clusters in just 20% of the systems. These are the so-called “bad actors.” These are also the systems that require 80% of our effort and resources.

This 80/20 “imbalance,” as it is often called, provides a ready tool to plan and guide maintenance strategy. If you have not already done so, try it. I think you will like it. MT

Anthony M. (Mac) Smith, P.E., is a senior consultant to government and industry with more than 58 years of technical and management experience. Mac has made pioneering contributions to the introduction of RCM (Reliability-Centered Maintenance) methodology in industry, has published more than 70 technical papers, and is the author or co-author of two internationally recognized books on RCM. Contact him at amsassoc@srcreek.com.