Optimizing Our PM Programs

Abstract

Whether you call it planned maintenance or use the more traditional term of preventive maintenance (PM), you will certainly have noticed the still-current, somewhat obsessive emphasis on getting PMs done on time. A powerful mystique has grown up around the presumed “preventive” aspect of PM that is difficult to explain in simple, rational terms. Simple logic suggests that a well-designed and wellimplemented PM program does provide two benefits that can be important. The discussion below is intended to examine the extent to which PM can really improve equipment reliability, downtime, and level of safety. Yes—PM does have some impact on the reliability of some items and therefore it does have some beneficial impact on equipment uptime. It does this by preventing some equipment failures—specifically, those that would have occurred if certain degeneration-prone parts had not been replaced or restored to like-new condition. And the performance verification and safety testing that is now a part of many PM procedures does establish certain levels of confidence that the devices being tested are free from hidden failures in the sense that they are not already (between tests) in a degenerated and potentially unsafe condition. Again, however, we need to keep in mind that only some equipment items benefit from this statistical assurance about safety—specifically those prone to developing hidden failures (those that will not be obvious to the typical equipment users) and that could have serious adverse consequences (see sidebar on hidden failures). In addition to these measurable benefits, well-executed PM programs do offer a few less tangible benefits. These include: • Searching the facility for items when they are due for PM sometimes leads to the discovery of other pieces of equipment that have been pushed aside and abandoned without being reported as either damaged or completely non-functional. • Periodically hunting down equipment to perform scheduled maintenance helps validate the accuracy of the facility’s inventory. • Providing the facility’s medical devices with some periodic care and attention generates a certain level of comfort and security in the minds of the clinical staff that everything possible is being done to ensure the safety of their equipment. The fact that PM provides a demonstrable benefit for only a relatively few devices is very important. As maintenance managers responsible for maximizing the return on the resources that our facilities devote to equipment maintenance, we need to be very clear about this for our own management decision-making. We should also make the facts on the somewhat limited value of PM known to the facility managers and equipment users we serve, as well as to those who currently set the compliance rules for our maintenance programs. Data collected from the repair call “cause coding” that we implemented at Masterplan some time ago (described later in this paper) clearly document that even well-implemented PM programs cannot, and do not, prevent the vast majority Optimizing Our PM Programs