The RELIABILITY Conference - 48:26
by John Reeve, Total Resource Management

Defect elimination may be the most significant initiative within the maintenance and reliability program of which the CMMS community has no knowledge of. It may also provide the most return on investment in terms of asset reliability and plant uptime. Defect elimination can be used to focus on unwanted events (either one-off, significant failures, or chronic failures) - and to address potential future (but not experienced) failures.

Defect elimination, if successfully implemented, can result in significant reduction in failures. This is achieved with (a) staff training, (b) creation of cross-functional teams, and (c) operator involvement in basic PM (basic skill; no disassembly; no tools). The goal should be to engage the entire workforce in defect elimination using action teams as a means of creating culture that encourages equipment improvement as a normal part of the everyday job. The following tips were extracted from Winston Ledet books on Defect Elimination.

1. All maintenance staff should attend the defect elimination workshops.

2. Establish action teams with cross-functional representation along with system proprietor. Need corrective actions (not just recommendations).

3. Capture success, and share (document) findings in Continuous Improvement forum.

4. A worthy goal is for 1% of every repair work order, Don’t Just Fix It, Improve It.

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