Book 13 - Making Common Sense Common Practice - Models for Manufacturing Excellence

Here we are, one quarter of the way through the book reading challenge for the year. Loving the book reading and living the dream, as always.

Although this blog was founded on biographies, and was designed to explore people, places or events, this book is very different to that. I could probably fit it into the event category, as it tells a hypothetical story about how a business turns its fortunes around, with the help of strategies from the author, Ron Moore. Ron is a great business mind, and his theories and practical examples for business improvement are outstanding and somewhat easy to adopt and implement.

The reason that I read the book is that I am consulting to a Diamond mine in outback WA at the moment, and the Operations Manager up there read the book, liked it, and recommended that I read it. I committed to do that, over a weekend, all 475 pages of it, and provide feedback on how it could be used to help the operations overcome some of their challenges and to keep continuously improving.

Really, there was a wealth of information in the book, though being a Maintenance Engineer (for want of a better description of the role that I am fulfilling at the moment), the chapters on maintenance systems improvement were the ones I was interested in.

In summary, there were only four pages in the whole book that I 'dog eared' for further review. Saying that, though, I highlighted information on most of the pages in the book (that I thought were important). So, what was on the four pages that I dog eared. Here are the key messages for any Maintenance Manager in a plant of any kind:

1. From page 75: The hypothetical company was struggling with plant reliability issues (everything kept failing), and it "wasn't routinely repairing things. Its new "model" for behaviour was "fixed forever" as opposed to "forever fixing." Now, this is not rocket science, but in a plant that has reliability issues, a change of thinking, and culture, like this is the first step in the right direction.

2. From page 221: There was a very clear definition of the four maintenance types provided - these included Reactive Maintenance (breakdowns), Preventive Maintenance (time based), Predictive Maintenance (condition monitoring based) and Proactive Maintenance (root cause based). Again, simple philosophies, but the understanding of these, and what percentage of each is being carried out in the plant is crucial if improvement is to be achieved.

3. From page 434: There was a 10 point plan provided by Ron Moore, to achieve manufacturing excellence. I won't list the whole ten here, but the essence includes; optimising uptime, minimising losses, applying best practice, implementing a suitable organisational structure and measuring performance. Do these things, and plant performance will improve.

4. From page 453: There was a job description for a Reliability Engineer provided by Ron Moore. In an effective maintenance (or Reliability) department, a competent and committed Reliability Engineer is an essential element. The key attributes of that role include loss accounting, root cause failure analysis, condition monitoring, shutdown support, proactive support and facilitation and communication within and external to the maintenance department.

Overall, the book was a good read - on one condition - you have an application for it. I would not recommend reading this book, unless you were trying to fix your plant, improve your manufacturing process or something similar. I have tried to read many of these types of books in the past, without a case study to apply it to, and I found it difficult. This time it was easier, as I had a case study. Therefore it was a great read, great timing, and it contained great information. I really like Ron's ideas and strategies, and I am sure, applied correctly, would make real differences to organisations.

Overall, from a business perspective, I give the book 4.25 out of 5. Very relevant and very full of great tips.

If you are interested, or for four more great books, go to: http://www.antonguinea.com.au/.

Until next time, keep reading.

Jimmy A