Our story goes way back to the very beginning of our journey, to the inception of an idea that we can be better at what we do, that there is more to learn and a better way of doing business.
by Dave Humphrey, Allison Transmission, Indianapolis, IN
Introduction
Allison Transmission, General Motors Corporation is the world leader in design, manufacture and sales of commercial-duty automatic transmissions, hybrid propulsion systems, and related parts and services for on-highway trucks, buses, off-highway equipment and military vehicles. Aside from its primary location in Indianapolis, IN, Allison Transmission, part of GM's Powertrain Division, has International regional offices in The Netherlands, Japan, China, Singapore and Brazil and is represented in more than 80 countries via its 1500-member distributor and dealer network.
The Total Motor Maintenance (TMM) concept is a strategy that is used every day from motor inventory and delivery, to testing and reliability of motors.
Wrench time, or tool time as it’s called in some countries, is an often touted measure for determining maintenance productivity since it’s intended to measure the actual time technicians spend working with their tools at a given job. Typical numbers observed are 25 to 35 percent, meaning technicians typically spend 65 to 75 percent of their time not working or, at least, not getting the work assigned done. Is this a valid measure or conclusion? Is it useful to measure wrench time? The answer is yes, if properly done, as well as a resounding no, if not properly done, which happens more often than not!
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What is the ultimate vision for enterprise reliability? If you’re like me, occasionally you find yourself drifting off into a day dream. One of the recurring day dreams I’ve been having for the last 10 years involves this question. I often lapse into deep thought, pondering, “How is all of this reliability and maintenance stuff supposed to work?
Background and Introduction During a recent meeting, a mid-level manager with a large petroleum company was asking my opinion about which manufacturing and industrial companies were the best in the world. My reply was that most large organizations had manufacturing plants that covered the spectrum ranging from very poor to excellent, but none that I had direct experience with stood out to me as being consistently excellent in their manufacturing practices across the board, that is, in most all plants. As part of that discussion, he also asked "How much autonomy do site managers have (in the organizations you've seen)?" I had to think for a moment, at which point I said, "They have very little financial autonomy, and nearly complete operational autonomy, a recipe for highly variable performance, and ultimately, failure." I'll explain my view.
VibrAlign introduces the Live Advice Button for the ONEPROD HAWK machinery diagnostic tool. Now the HAWK not only empowers mechanics to instantly diagnose the health of their rotating assets, it gives them a way to directly connect with experts in vibration analysis to verify the HAWK's findings and recommendations, to better understand complex diagnoses with multiple issues, and to gain confidence in the power of this ground breaking new tool.
For the past 40 years, I have observed many companies; including DuPont (where I spent 27 years) pursuing planned maintenance with the standard tools of planned maintenance: inspections, planning, scheduling, materials procurement, CMMS systems, etc. with the same results.
At a recent Reliability Chapter meeting, a gentleman boldly stated, “If you threw all your preventative maintenance (PM) out the door, your productivity would shoot through the roof.” The reaction by most people in the room was to articulate why this is illogical.