Six Sigma in Maintenance Department

[Geoff Cotton]

Dear forum,

We have a mintenance team that looks after all manufacturing site services, plant and tool stores. We are looking at cost / leadtimes / working practices / sub-contract services, etc.

Anyone had experience of applying 6 sigma to a maintenance environment.

Any thoughts or pointers you could offer would help.

Thanks in advance.

Geoff

[Marc]

Just wondering if anyone is seeing six sigma in maintenance.

Geoff, did you find out anything elsewhere? What did you eventually come up with?

[WALLACE]

At my Ford location they are using Six sigma tools and techniques very loosely within the skilled trades areas of maintenance.
I haven't heard of a six sigma project being initiated per se yet, the tools and techniques are being used within the Ford Production System (FPS) and the Ford total productive maintenance (FTPM) initiatives.
Wallace.

[Geoff Cotton]

Marc,

Had no direct success (yet), however we are about to start a project on reliability and maintainability of our machines.

We have picked up some maintenance issues when working on other projects, which have not particularly targeted the Maintenance dept. directly. Issues such as availability of fitters have come to the surface.

One project on machine uptime identified if we moved from doing length change overs to doing diameter changes instead we saved around 2 hours fitting time per change over and the setter/operator could do it himself – no need for fitters to get involved.

[Marc]

The way I see it, six sigma is just statistics so it should be applicable everywher, actually. Glad to hear you're starting some studies.

I was thinking of this thread when I saw the following. It's an advertisement, however it does illustrate how 'six sigma' is King. It's one of the most vaulable 'pay per click' key words around, by the way... Anyway, it's in financial now so I guess it's everywhere:

Six Sigma Forum to Reveal Best Practices for Financial Services Industry
By PRNewswire
Feb 3, 2004, 15:21

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Originally Posted by WALLACE

...the tools and techniques are being used within the Ford Production System (FPS) and the Ford total productive maintenance (FTPM) initiatives.

Seems to me if they're using the tools, that's what matters.

[WALLACE]

Originally Posted by Marc

Seems to me if they're using the tools, that's what matters.

I agree.
Wallace.