Basic Equipment Care Savings - Capture and Report

A Basic Equipment Care Workshop (BEC) is a powerful event.  It can literally transform people’s behaviors and way of thinking – turning skeptics into believers.  BEC events usually consist of a cross-functional team whose goal is to improve the reliability of a specific piece of equipment. This is done by identifying and repairing defects, as well as designing and implementing improvements and countermeasures. In addition to reliability improvements, BEC events are great for establishing a “team-based” culture and strengthening operator ownership.

Often just by having all of the equipment Operators, Engineers and Maintenance personnel working together in a team environment, defects that cause unscheduled breakdowns or minor stoppages are identified and repaired.  By eliminating possible causes for unscheduled breakdowns and minor stoppages there are monetary savings with improved equipment uptime, production output, product quality, SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Dies) improvements, and standardization of both operations and maintenance tasks.

For those using BECs as part of their Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) implementation, it is essential to accurately capture and report all savings gained from your BEC efforts. Often times, organizations will allow TPM Coordinators to use part of the savings accrued through to purchase items such as tools and equipment for BEC tool cabinets, lunches for the BEC teams during events, additional training for TPM Coordinators, etc. It is especially important to accurately track savings from TPM so that savings can be compared to cost of TPM implementation to justify TPM efforts.

I suggest that TPM Coordinators work closely with their steering committee and comptrollers to establish savings formulas that accurately calculate TPM savings based on labor rates, machine burden rates, scrap and off-quality product costs, set-up reduction savings, etc.

Often times we get caught up in the excitement of BEC events because our equipment is running more reliably, our operators and maintenance techs are working together to maintain and repair the equipment and production numbers improved due to reduced breakdowns. All of these positive outcomes are key indicators that our TPM implementation is progressing in the right direction. We must remain cognizant of the Marshall Institute 8 phase Implementation Model and realize that BEC is a tool within TPM implementation. I like to view BEC as the kindling that ignites and TPM fire- it burns hot and bright and is essential to kick-off our TPM efforts. But if we fail to add some solid logs to our fire by following through with building robust teams that focus on maintenance excellence, equipment improvement, equipment design improvements, process standardization, and accurate TPM Savings, our fire will burn out.