Yes, another tip on justification. At every reliability conference you will hear at least one story where a reliability program is struggling to justify their existence. In one presentation it’s world class performance backed by management and everyone is motivated and every maintenance dollar is linked to a return. Cross the hallway to another presentation and hear about a struggling facility with a “what have you done for me lately” management support, reliability technology used for troubleshooting only, and a poor taste in the mouth of the technician tasked to keep the equipment reliable.

Justification of finds and downtime prevention is very important when you are part of a reliability effort with an existing management team that has been around for a few years. The importance of justification increases to critical when a management change is under way. Don’t wait. Create a basic template for case studies that can be easily documented and shared with existing and new management to prevent the nullification of the reliability effort. Find ways to get management involved in looking at the KPI’s collected such as integrating reliability data into asset management software for dashboard review or ensuring all the technology data acquired can communicate with the latest IOT data analytics package that new management will likely be interested in. New management will be looking for cost cutting opportunities. Case studies to justify a program don’t come every day and take time to collect. Gather accurate information and document finds when the reliability support is good, so you don’t have to jump through hoops to try to save your program when the support is not.

For a look at a variety of case study examples visit our website at http://www.pdma.com/PdMA-case-study.php.