Chapter 12

LEAN Maintenance

LEAN is a philosophy and set of principles that is designed to increase efficiency and eliminate waste in business processes. It was originally developed in the manufacturing sector, but has been applied in a variety of industries, including maintenance.

In the context of maintenance, LEAN principles can be used to streamline processes and improve efficiency. This may involve identifying and eliminating unnecessary steps in maintenance processes, standardizing work procedures, and implementing continuous improvement practices.

One key aspect of LEAN in maintenance is the focus on proactive, preventive maintenance. By identifying and addressing potential issues before they become problems, maintenance teams can reduce the need for reactive, emergency maintenance, which is often more time-consuming and costly.

LEAN - 5S

5S is a method to create and maintain an effective, safe and orderly workplace. It is just as easy to implement 5S in an office as in production and it is based on everyone’s participation. 5S comes from five Japanese words which have been translated into English, see explanation in below.

A workplace that has good order simplifies and reduces the risk of injury significantly. It also provides increased opportunities for better maintenance, and reduces waste as well as changeover times and rejects. But above all, it gives a pleasant workplace and a more stable process.

LEAN - Autonomous Maintenance

Autonomous maintenance aims to improve the operational reliability of production equipment by establishing a close level of cooperation between maintenance technicians and operators. Operators have unique insights and knowledge of daily operations that are extremely valuable for maintenance. At the same time, maintenance has a unique understanding of maintenance and functionality. By exchanging and transferring knowledge closer to equipment, undesirable variations can be detected in time and actioned before any faults can develop. Maintenance technicians have a really important role as mentors, teachers and coaches in this work.

Involving operators in the implementation of certain maintenance tasks provides greater opportunities for daily checks and weekly maintenance. Examples of maintenance actions that can be performed by operators include
controls, lubrication, some replacements and basic repair work.

Autonomous maintenance will also free up time for maintenance staff to do more specialized and improvement
maintenance to enhance operational reliability.

Production is responsible for the performance of planned autonomous maintenance according to standard procedures and intervals, the reporting is done according to instructions in the maintenance system. In cases where a deviation is detected during an inspection, it is handled as a follow up job in the maintenance system.

LEAN - Specialist Maintenance

Effective maintenance is aimed at value-creating work from preventive, planned and improvement perspectives. Work requiring immediate corrective action is regarded as a quality deficiency, and actions are taken to reduce the risk of a recurrence. An important aspect for ensuring that specialist maintenance functions well, involves coordinating the work with work performed by operations personnel.

Specialist maintenance is goal-oriented maintenance that continually improves dependability based on the needs of production, by measuring and managing operations in relation to the results. This is created by standardizing how improvement work, goal-oriented management and performance measurement are conducted, as well as incorporating continuous optimization of the existing maintenance plans.

These are examples that can be included as part of specialist maintenance