A universal feature of traditional asset procurement is the
insistence that the equipment manufacturer should provide
a maintenance program as part of the supply contract for new
equipment. Apart from any thing else, this implies that
manufacturers know everything that needs to be known to
draw up suitable maintenance programs.
In fact, manufacturers are usually at best no better informed than traditional maintenance planners about the
operating context of the equipment, desired standards of
performance, context-specific failure modes and effects,
failure consequences and the skills of the user's operators
and maintainers. More often the manufacturers know no-
thing at all about these issues. As a result, schedules compiled by manufacturers are nearly always generic, with all
the drawbacks discussed under maxim 11.
Equipment manufacturers also have other agendas when
specifying maintenance programs (not least of which is to
sell spares). What is more, they are either committing the
users' resources to doing the maintenance (in which case
they don't have to pay for it, so they have little interest in
minimizing it) or they may even be bidding to do the maintenance themselves (in which case they have a vested interest
in doing as much as possible).
This combination of extraneous commercial agendas and
ignorance about the operating context means that maintenance programs specified by manufacturers tend to embody
a high level of over-maintenance (sometimes ludicrously so)
coupled with massive over-provisioning of spares. Most
maintenance professionals are aware of this problem. How ever, despite our awareness, most of us persist in demanding
that manufacturers provide these programs, and then go on
to accept that they must be followed in order for warranties
to remain valid (and so bind ourselves contractually to doing
the work, at least for the duration of the warranty period).
None of this is meant to suggest that manufacturers mislead us deliberately when they put together their recommendations. In fact, they usually do their best in the context of
their own business objectives and with the information at
their disposal. If anyone is at fault, it is really us – the users
– for making unreasonable requests of organisations which
are not in the best position to fulfil them.
A small but growing number of users solve this problem
by adopting a completely different approach to the development of maintenance programs for new assets. This entail asking the manufacturer to supply experienced field technicians to work alongside the people who will eventually operate and maintain the equipment, to use RCM2 to develop
programs which are satisfactory to both parties.
When adopting this approach, issues such as warranties,
copyrights, languages which the participants should be able
to speak fluently, technical support, confidentiality, and so
on should be handled at the request for proposal/contracting
stage, so that everyone knows what to expect of each other.
Note the suggestion to use field technicians rather than
designers (designers are often surprisingly reluctant to admit
that their designs can fail, which reduces their ability to help
develop a sensible failure-management program). The field
technicians should of course have unrestricted access to
specialist support to help them answer difficult questions.
In this way, the user gains access to the most useful information that the manufacturer can provide, while still developing a maintenance program which is most directly suited
to the context in which the equipment will actually be used.
The manufacturer may lose a little in up-front sales of spares
and maintenance, but will definitely gain all the long-term
benefits associated with improved equipment performance,
lower through-life costs and a much better understanding of
the real needs of his customer. A classic win-win situation