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LEAN MAINTENANCE
Applying lean principles in maintenance environments
Maintenance \ Remanufacture \ Repair
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Lean Maintenance is the application of lean principles in maintenance environments. Lean principles shouldn't be limited to company operations. All areas of the company can benefit from the application of lean principles, ensuring lower costs, higher quality, and better service & delivery.

Specific considerations for implementing lean in maintenance environments are listed below. If you'd like to comment on or add to these considerations, or if you have specific questions, a form is provided at the bottom of this page.

MAINTENANCE
Maintenance operations (as opposed to REMANUFACTURE or REPAIR) are characterized as departmental operations which focus on keeping facilities and equipment in operational or servicable condition. Other terms which describe these tasks is PREVENTIVE and PREDICTIVE maintenance. A structured program of preventive/predictive maintenance is necessary in order to rely on our systems to function to their operational requirements.

In lean environments, the reliability of our systems is critical, because we don't build in costly capacity in excess of requirements. Equipment downtime removes capacity from our systems, and can never be recaptured. Some lean tools which improve maintenance functions include:

  • Total Productive Maintenance
  • Overall Equipment Effectiveness
  • 5S programs
  • Establishment of Standard Work
  • Visual Management tools and techniques
  • Teian systems
  • Mistake-Proofing techniques

REMANUFACTURE
Remanufacture operations take used equipment and restore it to 'as-new' condition (to current factory specifications). As you might imagine, the equipment which forms the basis of REMAN raw material is received in a wide variety of conditions. In order to keep reman operations competitive with their manufacturing counterparts, reman operations must tightly control costs, quality, and service/delivery. Some lean tools which can assist reman operations include:

  • Overall Equipment Effectiveness
  • Establishment of Standard Work
  • Visual Management tools and techniques
  • Teian systems
  • Mistake-Proofing techniques

REPAIR
Repair operations differ from MAINTENANCE functions in that the equipment/systems being worked is no longer functioning properly. Repair functions require a much higher level of skill (particularly in diagnostics and internal equipment funcitons).

  • Total Productive Maintenance
  • Mistake-Proofing techniques
  • Overall Equipment Effectiveness
  • Teian systems
  • 5S programs
  • Establishment of Standard Work
  • Visual Management tools and techniques

Of course, all maintenance, remanufacture, and repair functions are supported by other company functions, which should be included in lean efforts. Understanding ALL of the costs which make up our processes is essential in order to identify the wastes that exist throughout our systems.

Would you like to comment or question the information above?

This area is provided for your input:

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