A global mining and steel manufacturer ran more than 10 factories across North America. Their equipment had been aging. Years of neglected CAPEX left the plans full of machines on the brink of failure, putting the maintenance organization on constant defense.
The problems were compounded by the state of the team. There was a high degree of variance between technician skill and epxerience, and minimal standardization of routines.
The organization was not in a position to inject capital to solve the problems, so the solutions had to come from inside the building, with the existing equipment.
Falconi's Maintenance Management System went in over three phases.
The first was built for speed. The team identified 34 anomalies on the worst-behaving assets, traced them to 44 causes, and proposed 39 corrective actions. We had three deliberately low-barrier criteria: it should be executable in 90 days or less, require no capital investment, and need no senior management approval. That helped us generate a series of quick wins.
The second phase involved making the team more aware of how things were going. We implemented real-time dashboards tracking six performance KPIs and two routine-adherence KPIs. Each had a named owner responsible for acting on deviations.
The third phase helped to rebuild their daily routine. We helped introduce 28 new preventive SOPs and 55 critical check items. We embedded root cause failure analysis into how they handled breakdowns. And we helped them bring spare parts inventory under control.
Unplanned downtime fell by more than half, which for a steel operation has a direct relationship to available production hours. The fire drills that had defined the maintenance culture were replaced by proactive prevention. And root cause interventions helped the organization learn to prevent repeat issues.
The quick wins up front helped generate the momentum to see the larger initiative through. We deliberately used filters that removed reasons to say no. And the execution muscle that was built created credibility behind the larger routines.