by Daniel L. Moss, Director of Operations, Performance Consulting Associates

Over the past decade, facility equipment reliability has been elevated from an often vague ideal to a mission-critical goal with benefits that outweigh both cost and complexity. As a result, well-run organizations now consider reliability to be an important element of their strategic and tactical plans and initiatives. This new reality impacts nearly every function, from procurement to maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) parts inventory management.

Over the same period, savvy plant management has also embraced the philosophy that maximum reliability requires more than well-functioning equipment. Organizations must also engage in correlated activities, such as:

• Building a culture of reliability into operating principles;
• Developing strategic customer and supplier relationships to ensure MRO parts are always available at the most advantageous price possible;
• Collecting and analyzing operational and maintenance-related data, then using that information to effect positive change.

Because all of these are more often lofty goals in plants rather than concrete absolutes, it’s vital that plant managers and their teams have a realistic plan, including a cohesive vision of their goals, mechanisms by which they will attain them, and a means to benchmark their progress and ensure they are staying on course. In other words, they need a functional roadmap and know how to use it effectively.

Recently, while reflecting on the most important experiences of my youth, it occurred to me that my boyhood vacations are a good analogy for the roadmap concept.

Our vacations were usually spent with my grandparents, and the trip from Cincinnati to rural Arkansas required a long drive in the back of our family station wagon. One aspect of the trip I especially enjoyed was scouting our route on the map and noting milestones along the way.

Quickly finding the map’s legend to understand the distances involved, estimating our rate of travel, and noting interesting waypoints were all elements of the trip I keenly appreciated as a child who was more than “just along for the ride.” I enjoyed the journey because the roadmap gave me knowledge and insight. It made me an informed traveler.

The roadmap for any facility’s reliability journey will do many of the same things, provided travelers also follow the logical steps.

• Start with an Honest Appraisal.
  When looking at a map, you must first know your starting point. Today’s map apps quickly locate where we are through GPS tracking. When traveling towards reliability in plant performance, however, our starting point is an honest appraisal of where we are relative to industry-identified best practices.Once we know the starting location, we can determine our destination and identify the most efficient potential paths — just as if we were evaluating a map.
• Identify Your Destination.
  How do we establish our destination? While each plant may have a specific target that rises to the top during evaluation and discussion — sustainability in a difficult market, more efficient production in an oversold situation, better safety performance, attaining a lower cost position, etc., each improvement initiative is, at its core, a mechanism to improve performance in the people and machines at our plants.As a result, the destination becomes the “coordinates” to which we will travel in our journey to better outcomes from our people and the equipment they operate.
• Map Your Route.
  With our starting point and destination confirmed, we can identify potential routes. In my youth, the interstate highway system was not fully completed. My family could travel across long segments of our trip on a divided interstate highway with mile markers and periodic rest areas. Yet, at times, construction required a detour.During these detours, careful navigation was crucial. Identifying the safest, most efficient side roads took both a good map and the ability to understand the map’s detail.The same is true of any reliability journey. Unexpected impediments will invariably arise, necessitating management and teams to “reroute” their effort. During these detours, it’s critical that stakeholders not become distracted. Navigating through a detour should always focus on getting back on track for the agreed-upon goal.

Final Thoughts: Learn from Your Experiences

My family made that journey at least a half-dozen times before I was 10. Over time, the road map became enhanced with the knowledge that we gained from previous trips. We knew the areas to avoid due to the likelihood of traffic or the presence of difficult road conditions.

The same is true for a journey to reliability. After you have completed your initial roadmap and taken the first journey, don’t stop there. Tweak your course with the lessons you learn from every trip, update the roadmap as route conditions change, and fine tune the desired outcomes as you explore and learn.