Hi all, Creating a Preventive Maintenance (PM) Program is definitely not an easy task. Yet, ensuring it will be a cost-effective program today, next month, in one year time, or maybe in ten years time is as challenging as creating one from scratch. Yes, that is correct. A cost-effective PM program today, may not be cost-effective tomorrow. This is because things change. For instance, a chemical company might introduce a new formula. A mining company might be getting older and its ore is getting harder. A new product has just been released to the market. And the list goes on and on... Yes, it happens. And when it happens, you usually will not have enough time nor information to ensure everything will be perfect. For this reason, one of the biggest challenges for any Maintenance and Reliability Department, is to ensure that they have a living PM Program. Implementing a living Preventive Maintenance Program: 1- Formal process - establish a formal process to ensure your PM is both periodically reviewed and also reviewed based on triggers (operational changes, unplanned failures, equipment redesign, etc). 2- Use data -   Data play a huge part on a reliability professional routine. On this topic it is not different. Use data available, such as increasing maintenance costs, production losses history. Use this data to create a theory. 3- Gather feedback - Once you have created a theory, validate such with operators and fitters. Ask them how often failures have been happening, how the components replaced look like when they come out of the machines. A simple form could be handy on this one by asking your maintenance team to answer questions on this form with their opinions based on what they see when doing your PM tasks (how the components look like, can this maintenance interval be pushed out, what could be improved) and attach it to the work order as part of the history - photos are highly helpful as well. 4- See with your own eyes -  In COVID-19 times this might not be easy. But in normal times, go out there and see with your own eyes what is being done, why, how and look for opportunities. When it comes to reviewing hundreds of maintenance plans at once it might be impossible. But if you keep an eye on those big ones and have a look at them periodically, you will be able to see new opportunities all the time.   Your turn! When was the last time that you reviewed your PM program? What are the triggers used by your company or yourself? How do you ensure it is a living process?   Regards, Raul Martins

Hi @Superman, Good to hear that you have had positive results by using VA. It is definitely a solid technique that allows maintenance department to play an strategic role on the business, instead of simply fixing when something has gone wrong.   Regards, Raul Martins

Hi @Siddiqui, Welcome to Road to Reliability Online Community! Also, congratulations for your career and certifications! Keen to hear your thoughts on our discussions! I had some experience with Meridium in the past and it is definitely an interesting and powerful tool, although not really easy to have it set up and ready to go. Regards, Raul Martins  

Hello All, Am G.Q.Siddiqui, Initially, kick-started my career path with Bachelors of Engineering in Instrumentation.  Overall significant learning happened as I continue to practice and progress with Instrument Asset Integration & Asset Management Stewardship within the Domains of Reliability, Maintenance, T/A, Projects, with SAP, Meridium, SIS/IPF. Meanwhile in this Asset Management Journey so far... Blessed with Professional certifications of FS Eng, PEng, PMP®, CAMA., CPAM, CSSBB.  After Joining this Community amazed to find you all with diverse-expertise and appreciate Erik Hupjé's initiative is making to underpin various mile-stones in continuous improvement of differing Career paths. Many Thank Erik for this blessed opportunity. G.Q.Siddiqui  

Hi Erik,  I will bear that in mind, really there are only a few transactions the technicians will be using and it will be getting them used to using them and as you said explaining their purpose.   Small update, we have compiled the master data for the PM including the task lists and PM plans. It has yet to be loaded into the testing environment as the project team is busy with the other sites that are due to go live before us. Our go live is set now for the 2nd week in November.   The test scripts for the software are now complete we have 6 roles defined Planner, maint manager, maint supervisor, mechanic, part room lead and part room attendant.  The master data that was loaded checks out so far.   The material side of the project is now the focus we have 3-5k parts in the room and no record of them. The process is to log the parts from the shelf to excel and then the SAP codes have to be checked if they are on the system. if not they either have to be created from scratch or requested to be extended from another site.  We have had to bring in external support for this section of the project as the task is so great.   There has been some discussion on how the notifications should be raised at our site. Weather it would be the operations dept or logged by the maint dept. One site that is coming from a legacy system is looking like it will have the operations dept make the requests.  Our site that is coming from excel, were we did not have such a system is looking like the main dept will be asked to log the requests.    I plan to make a presentation to the top management at the plant next week to coerce them into pushing the project team towards the operations team making the requests.  In my head the main advantages are that there will be fewer missed notifications as the operations team will have direct access to the system.  resulting in a better service from the main dept. It will create more items in the bucket list providing the chance for increased utilisation of our workforce, it frees up the planner to do other tasks in SAP. The machine minders will be able to enter a much greater detail and less chance of error than if it had to be input manually by the planner.  Our technical dept will be able to log and keep track of their notifications on fabrication as they are closed out.   If there are further examples, please let me know your thoughts or if you have any tips for securing the top managements support for the project.