7 Steps of Autonomous Maintenance
How to effectively integrate maintenance in Production
What is Autonomous Maintenance
Autonomous Maintenance aims to empower the operator of a machine to clean, lubricate and inspect his machine. It should lead to:
- Higher knowledge of the operator about his machine
- High reliability of the machine
- Fast detection of abnormalities
- Allowing mechanics to spend more time for Preventive Maintenance
Role of the operator in Autonomous Maintenance
Compare it to the driver of a car. While cleaning your car, you might detect irregularities like a new scratch, a flat tire, rust or oil leaks. You do not need to solve those yourselves; you may call for a mechanic, schedule an appointment or ask for advice. Small things you may do yourselves: checking petrol level and washer fluid and fill it up. Checking air pressure of your tires etc.
The more such tasks the operator can do, the more time is freed up for the technician in order to do more complex task, that need a higher qualified technical job. And the more technical knowledge the operator gains, the better he can operate his equipment.
Role of the technician in Autonomous Maintenance
The trained mechanic will take care of more complex issues. The mechanic may observe unusual situations and ask the operator questions. He might give him advice how to prevent this. Or teach him how a certain component works in order to make the operator understand the machine better and be able to operate it in a better way.
He also will teach the operator essential technical knowledge about the equipment, so the operator:
- can be his ‘ears and eyes’ at the machine,
- will prevent wrong usage of the equipment which might lead to defects or abnormalities.
7 Steps of Autonomous Maintenance
Below find a scheme explaining all 7 steps of AM, what is done in each step, what is aimed for and what is the role of the supervising manager(s). If you need any help, give me a call!
Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.
Step 1.
Initial cleaning
Major Activities
- Conduct education for lubricating
- Develop overall lubrication inspection
- Establish lubrication control system
- Set cleaning and lubrication standards
Aims from equipment perspective
- Expose hidden defects by removing contaminants
- Restore defective areas in equipment
- Identify sources of contamination
Aims from human perspective
- Become familiar with group activity by way of easy tasks such as cleaning
- Group leaders learn leadership
- Look at and touch every corner of equipment to enhance its care and to promote curiosity and questions
- Learn “Cleaning is inspection”
Managers' supervision and support
- Lead by staying one step ahead, comprehending TPM through practice, and demonstrating with examples of managers’ models
- Teach defects of equipment
- Teach importance of cleaning, lubrication and tightening
- Teach “Cleaning is inspection”
Step 2.
Countermeasures to sources of contamination
Major Activities
- Remedy sources of contamination
- Prevent contaminants from irregular and undesirable dispersion
- Improve difficult cleaning areas to reduce cleaning time
Aims from equipment perspective
- Prevent contaminants from generating and adhering to equipment in order to enhance reliability
- Definitely maintain equipment cleanliness so as to improve maintainability
Aims from human perspective
- Learn motion and working mechanism of machinery
- Learn methods to improve equipment focused on sources of contamination
- Encourage interest and desire to improve equipment
- Feel pleasure and satisfaction with successful achievement of improvement
Managers' supervision and support
- Teach motion and working mechanism of machinery
- Teach where-where and why-why analyses to examine problem
- Assist in implementing ideas for improvement
- Promptly respond to work orders
Step 3.
Cleaning and lubrication standards
Major Activities
- Remedy sources of contamination
- Prevent contaminants from irregular and undesirable dispersion
- Improve difficult cleaning areas to reduce cleaning time
Aims from equipment perspective
- Correct difficult lubricating areas
- Apply visual controls
- Definitely maintain basic equipment conditions (cleaning, lubricating, tightening) to establish deterioration prevention system
Aims from human perspective
- Set rules by oneself and follow them
- Know importance of following rules and autonomous supervision
- Encourage awareness of one’s own roles and teamwork
Managers' supervision and support
- Prepare lubrication control rules
- Provide education and practice in terms of lubrication
- Teach how to prepare cleaning and lubricating standards
- Assist actual preparation of standards
Step 4.
Overall inspection
Major Activities
At each inspection category:
- Conduct education and practice
- Develop overall inspection
- Remedy difficult inspection areas in equipment to reduce required time
- Set tentative inspecting stan-dards
Aims from equipment perspective
- Detect and remedy minute defects
- Thoroughly apply visual controls
- Improve difficult inspection areas
- Maintain established equipment conditions by means of routine inspection to improve reliability further
Aims from human perspective
- Learn structure, function and inspection methods of equipment to master inspection skill
- Master easy servicing procedures
- Group leaders learn leader-ship through conducting roll-out education
- Learn recording, summarization and analysis of inspection data
Managers' supervision and support
- Prepare overall inspection schedule, check sheets, manuals, and other teaching materials
- Promptly respond to work orders
- Provide training for easy servicing
- Teach how to improve difficult inspection areas by applying visual controls thoroughly
- Teach inspection data handling
Step 5.
Autonomous Maintenance standards
Major Activities
- Set autonomous maintenance standards and schedule to finalize activities focused on equipment
- Faithfully conduct routine maintenance in accordance with standards
- Move forward aiming at Zero Breakdowns
Aims from equipment perspective
- Assess successful remedies achieved in other processes, and apply them to similar equipment
- Totally review visual controls
- Preserve equipment in highly reliable condition along with operability and maintainability
- Realize an orderly shopfloor
Aims from human perspective
- Understand equipment as a total system
- Develop ability to detect signs of abnormalities to prevent breakdowns
- Train knowledgeable operators
- Establish autonomous supervision system conducted by PM group
Managers' supervision and support
- Allocate inspection work
- between autonomous and full-time maintenance
- Teach basic maintenance skill and easy machine diagnosis
- Teach examples of breakdown prevention
- Teach particular function of each piece of equipment to understand equipment as a system
Step 6.
Organisation
Major Activities
- Prevent outflow of defective products to downstream processes
- Prevent manufacturing of defective products
- Attain process quality assurance and move forward aiming at Zero Defects
Aims from equipment perspective
- Assess process quality
- Attain a reliable process to prevent outflow of quality defects
- Assess quality conditions
- Attain a highly reliable process to prevent manufacturing of quality defects
Aims from human perspective
- Train knowledgeable operators on equipment and quality aiming at new type of engineering status
- Attain autonomous supervision within each operator
Managers' supervision and support
- Teach quality specifications, quality causes and quality results along with their relationship
- Teach the five criteria for ease of observation
- Teach the five criteria for quality assurance
- Address matters of quality with cooperation by all related departments
Step 7.
Autonomous Maintenance
Major Activities
- Maintain, improve and pass on current TPM levels
- Calculate the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (O.E.E.)
- Analysis of the failure of the equipment
Aims from equipment perspective
- Predict abnormalities to prevent breakdowns and quality defects prior to occurrence
- Attain Zero Accidents, Zero Breakdowns
- Move forward aiming at higher level of production technology
Aims from human perspective
- The O.E.E. shows the week spots of the equipment
- Firmly establish self-supervision to be able to develop factory’s strategy by SGA groups themselves without managers’ detailed instruction
- Detect and resolve arising problems by SGA groups themselves by way of short remedial program
Managers' supervision and support
- Assisting with the calculation of the O.E.E.
- Assist activities to maintain, improve and hand down current TPM status
- Encourage further improvement of technical knowledge and skills
- Move forward toward Monozukuri