All Member Open Forum

Hello all,
My current project consists of looking at significant downtime events for our entire fleet of mobile equipment for 2022. One of the questions brought up was how much of the issues were related to operator care and what can be done to modify our operator training and practices to help reduce downtime. This question stumped me as I do not know how to quantify operator care or abuse. How do you measure the effects of operator care or abuse? Any information and guidance are welcomed. 

Thank you,
Tatiana

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Tatiana Koski
United States Steel Corporation
Mountain Iron MN
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To measure the effects of operator care or abuse on downtime in a fleet of mobile equipment, you could consider the following steps:

 

Collect data: I usually focus on machine before people because of 80/20, 20% of the things or systems that cause 80% of the business or income (value creation).

I have successfully implemented condition monitoring using acoustic ultrasound (stethoscope) and infrared thermography.

Now the computer can sense the history of the times you have braked hard and the speed at which you drive:

The only form of high impact and base of the economic perspective are the people in constant education and training and that impacts even an increase in the shares in the company's stock market.

Gather data on equipment downtime, maintenance history, and operator behavior. This data can be used to identify patterns and correlations between operator behavior and downtime.

 

Implement equipment monitoring systems: Installing sensors or monitoring systems on the equipment can help track operator behavior, such as excessive speeding or rough handling, and how it affects the equipment's performance.

 

Conduct surveys or interviews: Surveys or interviews with operators can provide valuable insights into their training and practices. This can help identify areas for improvement and highlight any issues that may be contributing to downtime.

 

Compare with industry standards: Research industry standards for operator training and practices, and compare your company's current practices to these standards. This can help identify areas for improvement.

 

Develop metrics: Develop metrics to quantify operator care and abuse, such as the number of maintenance incidents per hour of operation or the number of incidents caused by operator error.

 

By implementing these steps, you can gather data and develop metrics that can help quantify the effects of operator care or abuse on downtime in a fleet of mobile equipment.

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Edgar Garcia Parada BEng
CEO
Preditek
Tepecoyo
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Hello,

Just for a better understading, What kind of moble equipment? Which is the context?

I recommend any conbination of these:
- try to make a list of the top "bad actors" (damaged components,  behaviours, ...) that cause downtime. Use RCA, equipment logs, historics, ...
- create status equipment check list- by shift , by equipment, .... to fill in just before using it, follow up, priorize solve what you find to make it consistent
- Is the mobile equipment included in your CMMS? look for information reporting gaps, 
- monitorize how operators use the equipment
- create CILT tasks
- 1to1 surveys, operator by operator, prepare the questions carefully
- genba
- observation of behaviours, stay apart and observe for hours, stay focus, use CCTV if available to observe complete shifts and identify "bad actors" cases
- audit procedures, step by step, details, missing/unclear undefined steps
- monitorize skills and trainning logs
- choose a few well-defined KPIs, priorize something you can monitorize and improve , use 80/20 criteria, ...
- ranking your losses
- if not standarised, try starting by standarising operators best practices
- let operators to participate in continuous improvement, ask them "how would you improve this?"

this is what I can provide from my experience, I hope it helps!

kind regards,

Eduardo

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Eduardo Rivero Fernandez
Maintenance Leader
Bilbao
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