By Jim Fitch
Machinery Lubrication Magazine
There are 8,760 hours in a year. Few plants manage to produce at full capacity for all of those hours. Instead, there are periodic production stoppages due to tooling changes, product changes, scheduled PMs/inspections and unscheduled downtime (reliability issues). Every hour the plant’s assets aren’t utilized is an hour of lost revenue and profits.
Sadly, many plant managers play games with the numbers by ignoring the potential controllability of “scheduled” downtime. Yes, tooling and product changes are unavoidable, but in most other circumstances, there are often practical ways to minimize lost production from scheduled shutdowns.
This can be seen in the difference between typical and top performers in the same industry. For instance, a standard 900-megawatt coal-fired power plant may produce at 86-percent capacity (44 weeks per year), while top performers can exceed 94 percent (48 weeks per year). This is a difference of four weeks of productivity.
Still, no classification of work stoppage causes more agony than unscheduled downtime. The reasons are quite obvious, as a recent online survey of Machinery Lubrication readers discovered. Following is a list of the top reasons unscheduled downtime is so unwelcome:
- Production losses and schedule delays (business interruption)
- Lost revenue and profit (unhappy management/ownership)
- Promised delivery dates are missed (unhappy customers)
- The blame game and damaged relationships between operations and maintenance (morale issues)
- Hurried (botched) repairs cause future problems (cycle of despair)
- Lack of available replacement parts and skilled trades prolongs the downtime interval
- Repairs are at a “cost premium” due to rushed parts purchases, use of overtime labor and collateral damage
- Scheduled “proactive” tasks are replaced by chaotic reactive tasks (leads to future problems)
- Increased work pressure and job stress (job satisfaction issues)
- Safety risks due to rushed work, unskilled work, inferior parts, cutting corners, job stress, etc.