Vitrom Manufacturing Consultants provides TOTAL PRODUCTIVE MAINTENANCE SERVICES.

VITROM will improve your resource constraints and assure your equipment maintenance goals.

VITROM ADDRESSES:

• PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE

• PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE

• PREFABRICATED WORK

• CORRECTIVE WORK

• EQUIPMENT OVERALL

    Vitrom Manufacturing Consultants offer:

• Extensive experienced in Maintenance Systems and the Engineering knowledge to solve your maintenance issues.
• Multi-skilled, able to create cross-craft capabilities.
• Training of your work force to comfortably work with today's maintenance technologies .

Our Believes:

• Equipment performance decline is not related to equipment’s age but rather reflects the level of maintenance performed on the equipment.
• The maintenance function has a major roll on all efforts to optimize product quality and manufacturing efficiency.
• Training of maintenance personnel is vastly overlooked or viewed not as a priority.
• Documentation is the key to effective maintenance. It is the most effective tool to disseminate information and add knowledge to the maintenance personnel.
• With proper documentation, and training, a structured maintenance organization can maintain any kind of equipment regardless of kind or make.
• The degree of difficulty is due to the lack of knowledge about the function of a component and not to the procedure or technique to repair or replace that component.
• If the procedure or technique to replace or repair a component requires special attention than it should be documented.
• Since VITROM has vast knowledge of basic systems, procedures and techniques, it can implement and maintain programs that make maintenance a functional operation.

WHY REACTIVE MAINTENANCE:

• Plant capacity is larger than finished goods demand.
• Stopping of equipment does not affect the cost of manufacturing.
• Equipment down time doesn’t affect finished goods delivery schedule.
• Difficulties in defining the condition of the manufacturing equipment (can’t predict the failure of critical components).
• Difficulties in planning for Equipment Maintenance (maintenance can't accurately estimate time, tools and parts to complete the task).
• The cost of restoring the equipment and educating the maintenance workforce exceeds any proposed foreseeable reduction in costs of manufacturing .

Note:  This assuming that the manufacturing process is optimized.

IMPLICATIONS OF REACTIVE MAINTENANCE:

• Production has to deviate from schedule.
• Maintenance personnel loose focus on quality of work and focus on up-time.  (The band aid phenomena)
• Causes lower quality.
• Causes rework.
• Causes downtime.
• Breaks the momentum of a manufacturing environment.
• Disrupts proper troubleshooting philosophy.

ZERO REACTIVE MAINTENANCE IS NOT POSSIBLE BUT ONE CAN LIMIT THE CAUSES AND THEREFORE REDUCE THE IMPLICATIONS.

VITROM programs have a goal of less than 2% downtime due to equipment malfunctions that require reactive maintenance.

VITROM PROGRAMS ARE BASED ON:

• TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION
• MAINTENANCE ENGINEERING
• MEASURES OF EFFECTIVENESS
• OPTIMIZATION OF RESOURCES
• Before we offer any technical assistance, we make sure we understand the problems and your needs.  That means listening to what you have to say.
• All plans will be discussed with you so that communication will always be present between you and VITROM.
• The programs cover all aspects of preventive and predictive maintenance.
• The programs include a detailed maintenance history record to analyze the equipment and further optimize the performance.
• The programs are designed based on current maintenance and logistic engineering technologies that are right for the application.

PLANNING AND SCHEDULING:

• NEEDS TO BE A TEAM EFFORT.
• NEEDS TO FOCUS ON PLANNING.

A PLAN FOR MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES INCLUDES:

• BILLS OF MATERIALS
• TOOLS NEEDED
• TIME NEEDED (estimate)
• TYPE OF CRAFT
• SAFETY DEVICES
• DOCUMENTATION

Only when a plan is completed, can work be performed without unnecessary delay.

With a completed plan scheduling is an easy task.

VITROM will design and implement a program where the maintenance management elements will control the outcome of all other elements in the maintenance function.

    Our maintenance programs are designed to provide maximum equipment efficiency, greater plant use, while reducing maintenance cost and resources. We target preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, fabricated work, corrective work and equipment overall.

Production equipment is becoming more sophisticated, with increasing automation. Measurement of process variables to great accuracy in real time is a reality enabling to react to those variations to provide stable robust processes. The development of tools (software, virtual manufacturing, etc.) to monitor and control manufacturing processes  substantially increases their robustness. Quality and productivity start to depend more on equipment performance than on processes.  

    Although operation procedures involving automation, setup, and conveyance are possible, maintenance is difficult to automate.  Since automation is only in operations, maintenance still relies on human performance.  Education, teamwork and flexibility are requirements to support the maintenance needs of today’s equipment. Run to fail is still a maintenance method widely practiced among manufacturers.  This method positively guides to reactive maintenance, a practice that diminishes the functional capabilities of maintenance organizations.  This is a known fact recognized even for those who practice it.

It is proved that reactive maintenance is more expensive than planned maintenance.  By having a work plan it’s estimated to save 20 to 30% reduction on the cost of labor and materials.  If one adds downtime, % yield and manufacturing element costs to these figures, the savings are much bigger.  Profit quickly replaces the initial costs because productivity increases.

Today, CMMS (computerized maintenance management systems) and predictive maintenance systems apply to most types of equipment.  These tools, function based on the documentation and specifications of the equipment.  Without a database containing technical documentation and specifications these tools have little advantages over the traditional manual systems.

    VITROM believes that documentation is the key to a capable maintenance.  Documentation sets current information concerned with the material upkeep, check, test, repair and operation in a manner to provide the desired equipment performance. The time has change when maintenance personnel could properly perform their work without written technical aid.  Today,  technical documentation is mandatory to perform a maintenance function. 

Effective and prompt maintenance is essential for operating any manufacturing plant.  The skills and integrity of the maintenance personnel are essential for the success of any maintenance organization.  These skills largely depend on the documentation available and how maintenance personnel use it during the maintenance function.  In autonomous maintenance, documentation is necessary to train new workers and serve as a reference to the experienced worker.  The results of poor documentation and the lack of documentation are known as; high downtime, costly inventory and downgrade of process capabilities.  One can say that documentation it is one of the key elements on the definition of planned manufacturing.

    From a technical point of view, equipment is either adequate or inadequate for the manufacturing needs. There are several approaches to achieve equipment adequacy in manufacturing:

• Purchasing new equipment has the advantage that it most likely will have the lasted technology advances in the field as standard features.

•     Remanufacturing offers viable more economic solutions on customized equipment with sound structures.

•     Rebuilds are the least expensive approach but often does not gain the benefits of the latest improvements in control technology.

We don’t measure performance of equipment relative to its age. We measure performance of equipment based on the maintenance that it has received.  Proper maintenance controls the life cycle, cost of ownership and assure its capability.  

    The relationship between the output capacity of a manufacturing process (Capacity) and the output demand (Output) mostly determines the method of equipment maintenance. The capital expenses of equipment (CAPEX) are often only considered in the initial stages of manufacturing development and rarely take in consideration replacement of the equipment. In turn the operating expenses (OPEX) are optimized due to its impact in the organization's balance sheet. Since the life of equipment is not considered as a basic necessity, and it isn't a line item in the balance sheet, maintenance functions are structured mostly on perception basis unless there is liability risk or other factors that require specific maintenance needs.

             Reactive maintenance has the following effects in your plant:

1.      Production has to deviate from schedule.

2.      Maintenance personnel lose focus on the quality of work and focus on up time (the band aid phenomena)

3.      Finished goods quality loses even if within the AQL limits.

4.      Causes rework, downtime, breaks the momentum of the manufacturing environment.

    A competent troubleshooting philosophy aims at preventing a malfunction before repairing the resulting damage.  Reactive maintenance will disrupt the philosophy and make the manufacturing plant less efficient.  All breakdown occurrences are preventable.  Not all breakdown occurrences are economical preventable. Even so, there are instances where one can prove the economical value of reactive maintenance if one is to attribute economic value on safety, moral etc, preventing equipment malfunctions should be the mode of operations.

    The most difficult step to overcome is to gain confidence that the plan will meet the schedule within the budget estimates. We recommend a joint effort when planning and scheduling maintenance.  Planning and scheduling functions complement each other, but are very different.  When all the emphasis is placed on scheduling, leaving out planning, scheduling becomes a mere paper exercise. If one uses CMMS than it becomes a computer game.  We provide you with all the information needed to perform any of the required maintenance tasks before you start.

    Planning includes; labor, materials, support services and time available.  A plan will reduce delays and create harmony.  Scheduling is the assignment of many planned tasks into a defined period.

We believe we can provide a program that improves confident production schedules and smooth managing of equipment usage.  We will strive to perform our work so that it doesn’t interfere with the production schedule of your plant. We have three engineers each with more than 20 years of international experience in manufacturing systems.  This team works hard to provide you with comprehensive and cost effective services.  We offer maintenance programs not to replace your maintenance work force, but to help your maintenance working function. With 24 hours support, seven days a week, we guaranty customer that VITROM is serious about its services.

You add all this factors and give us a chance to assess your equipment and documentation.  We will give you our view of the condition of your equipment, and a proposal for a solution including cost analysis. Emphasizing the most important jobs at a facility is the key to assure that one performs the right work at the right time.  This way you can meet the facilities long and short-term requirements.

VITROM will improve your resource constraints and assure your equipment maintenance goals.