W. Klingenberg

Lean Production and information technology: Connection or contradiction?

The principles of Lean Production have enabled organisations in the manufacturing and service sectors to significantly improve their competitiveness. The application of Lean principles, derived from the Toyota Production System has enabled many organisations to simultaneously improve productivity, quality and customer service. Similar benefits have been achieved through the application of information technology (IT). The application of IT and Lean principles are claimed to be interdependent and complimentary by some; whilst others have seen as the approaches as being mutually exclusive. This article presents reviews the role of IT in achieving the principles of Lean Production. Three important topics are reviewed: the use of IT in production logistics; computer-aided production management systems; and advanced plant maintenance. It is shown that the roots of different ways of working were similar, but that subsequent developments followed in opposite directions. Later, when the acceptance of Lean Production became more pervasive, the practices typically converged into hybrid production systems, applying elements of several systems in a way that is consistent with the principles with Lean Production.

Condition based maintenance in the context of opportunistic maintenance

Condition based maintenance (CBM) uses the operating condition of a component to predict a failure event. Compared to age based replacement (ABR), CBM usually results in higher availability and lower maintenance costs, since it tries to prevent unplanned downtime and avoid unnecessary preventive maintenance activities for a component. However, the superiority of CBM remains unclear in multi‐component systems, in which opportunistic maintenance strategies can be applied. Opportunistic maintenance aims to group maintenance activities of two or more components in order to reduce maintenance costs. In a serial system, this may also result in less downtime of the production line. The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of opportunistic maintenance on the effectiveness of CBM. We simulate a small system consisting of three components in series and vary the number of components under a CBM policy, the length of the opportunistic maintenance zone, the cost benefits of grouping maintenance activities, and the chance of a failure occurrence within a preventive maintenance (PM) interval. The results show that within the current experimental settings, CBM remains cost effective in the multi‐component serial system, but is less effective than ABR in grouping maintenance activities. When the chance of failure is small and the length of the opportunistic maintenance zone is large, ABR may even be a better option if line productivity is important.

Managing condition‐based maintenance technology: A multiple case study in the process industry

Purpose – Condition‐based maintenance is the diagnosis of component failure or a prognosis of a components time to failure. The aim of this paper is twofold: a summary of the main assumptions regarding condition‐based maintenance found in the literature into eight postulates, and a comparison of the postulates against industrial practice. The postulates were formulated regarding the technical system, the managerial system and workforce knowledge.Design/methodology/approach – The postulates were examined in a multiple case study of five large firms in the process industry.Findings – The results indicate that some postulates were supported with empirical findings. Limited or no support was found for postulates concerning the application of prognostic activities, use of dedicated software, use of procedures, use of training, and the active management of domain‐related knowledge availability.Practical implications – Practitioners can use the eight postulates as key elements in the management of condition‐bas...

Typology of condition based maintenance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is the development of an empirically based typology of condition based maintenance (CBM) approaches, including the relevant characteristics and requirements.Design/methodology/approach – An exploratory case study was conducted in a major gas production facility. The CBM typology that resulted from this case study was subsequently tested against a large set of CBM literature.Findings – In the literature, CBM is usually presented as a single theory or practice. The paper finds that CBM in fact includes several different approaches and that each of the approaches is only suitable in situations where the specific characteristics of the approach match the situational characteristics. Aided by these findings, a new typology for CBM was developed. The typology is based on the method for obtaining the expected value, or trend (through statistical vs analytical modeling) and the type of data used (process vs failure data). A subsequent literature survey reveals that the proposed...

A quantitative method for Failure Mode and Effects Analysis

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is commonly used for designing maintenance routines by analysing potential failures, predicting their effect and facilitating preventive action. It is used to make decisions on operational and capital expenditure. The literature has reported that despite its popularity, the FMEA method lacks transparency, repeatability and the ability to continuously improve maintenance routines. In this paper an enhancement to the FMEA method is proposed, which enables the probability of asset failure to be expressed as a function of explanatory variables, such as age, operating conditions or process measurements. The probability of failure and an estimate of the total costs can be used to determine maintenance routines. The procedure facilitates continuous improvement as the dataset builds up. The proposed method is illustrated through two datasets on failures. The first was based on an operating company exploiting a major gas field in the Netherlands. The second was retrieved from the public record and covers degradation occurrences of nuclear power plants in the United States.

Failure mode and effect analysis in asset maintenance: a multiple case study in the process industry

Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is an important method for designing and prioritising preventive maintenance activities and is often used as the basis for preventive maintenance planning. Although FMEA was studied extensively, most of the published work so far covers FMEA concept design. Little detailed comparison to industrial practice regarding the application of FMEA can be found in the literature, which is the contribution of this study. This paper summarises the main descriptions and assumptions found in the literature on FMEA into six postulates, and compares the postulates to industrial practice. This was done in a multiple case study conducted at six companies in the process industry. Some postulates were supported by empirical evidence, whereas for others, limited or no support could be found. The results suggest a fundamental problem in the FMEA procedure, namely, the reliance upon expert judgement in general and the reliance upon design engineering expertise for keeping the FMEA up-to-date in particular. Also, a number of operational and information management problems that companies suffer from when conducting an FMEA were identified. Practitioners can use this paper to assess their potential for implementing FMEA and to learn from the insight into the identified pitfalls. Researchers can use the findings to guide further work on improving and developing the FMEA procedures.

Editorial: Advancing lean manufacturing, the role of IT

This introduction to the special issue discusses the changing role of information technology (IT) in advancing lean production. Lean principles and techniques have been applied in a wide variety of organisations, from make-to-stock to engineer-to-order industries, and even in typical service sectors, such as healthcare. In order to apply lean principles in various areas, variants were developed of well-known techniques, such as Kanban, Kaizen, SMED, and 5S. IT is used to develop such variants. Over the years, the role and use of IT in the application of the lean principles has changed. In this introduction, we discuss the main findings of the papers that were selected for publication in this special issue.

The influence of condition-based maintenance on workforce planning and maintenance scheduling

Condition-based maintenance (CBM) is generally considered an attractive maintenance policy for a single component: it uses the operating condition of the component to predict a failure event and therefore tries to avoid any unplanned downtime and unnecessary maintenance activities. However, operations managers tend to be much more interested in optimising the performance of the entire asset-system, where the grouping of maintenance activities and the availability of maintenance workers may play a role. Therefore, this paper focuses on the impact of using either CBM or age-based replacement (ABR) in serial and parallel multi-component systems (1) without worker constraints, (2) with a single internal maintenance worker, and (3) with external maintenance workers with a significant response time. With an internal maintenance worker, the sequential execution of maintenance activities prevents efficiency gains in the serial configuration and here CBM performs better. Also in the parallel configurations, the efficiency under CBM is generally better than under ABR. However, with external maintenance workers, CBM is not able to group maintenance activities as well as ABR, which results in a lower efficiency in the serial configuration. CBM performs better than ABR with respect to total maintenance costs, while ABR results in a smoother maintenance plan.

Applicability of the capability maturity model for engineer-to-order firms

Most of the well-known management and improvement systems and techniques, such as Lean Production (e.g. Just-In-Time (JIT) pull production, one piece flow) and Six Sigma (reduction in variation) were developed in high volume industries. In order to measure the progress of the implementation of such systems, companies and consultants use reference frameworks, which contain descriptions of best practice processes. The core principles of these systems are applicable in any type of industry or service (e.g. focus on reliability and minimisation of waste). However, the best practice references and other implementation tools are dependent on the context in which the principles are applied. For the Engineer-to-Order (ETO) industry, many of the traditional practices (e.g. JIT logistics or line balancing) are not applicable. In this paper, it is demonstrated that the Capability Maturity Model Integrated CMMI), a best practice reference framework widely used in the software industry, contains practices which are also widely applicable in ETO companies, but that the original model needs to be enhanced. CMMI provides a philosophy, as well as a set of hands-on guidelines and measurable stages for process improvement. CMMI may provide practical techniques to ETO companies which other companies acquire from systems such as Lean Production and Six Sigma.

Reducing costs by clustering maintenance activities for multiple critical units

Advances in sensor technology have enabled companies to make significant progress towards achieving condition-based maintenance (CBM). CBM provides the opportunity to perform maintenance actions more effectively. However, scheduling maintenance at the unit level may imply a high maintenance frequency at the asset level, which can be costly and undesirable for safety reasons. In this paper, we consider systems consisting of multiple critical units for which a strict and conservative maintenance strategy is enforced. Although this implies that benefits cannot be obtained by delaying maintenance activities, the clustering of them can be beneficial. We consider two simple, practical systems for condition monitoring that involve either one signal (alarm) or two signals (alert, alarm). Our analysis and results provide general insights into when and how to cluster maintenance operations, with the objective of minimizing the total maintenance costs. Moreover, they show that clustering is essential for a broad range of circumstances, including those at a considered real-life case of equipment maintenance at Europe׳s largest gas field.