To succeed in our increasingly competitive global economy, many companies have implemented lean manufacturing, a step beyond just-in-time production systems. Other companies claim they’re "lean" but hedge on the concept. They maintain work-in-progress inventories because they fear the consequences when critical-path machines go down for maintenance breaks—a familiar and time-consuming nightmare.

Some managers simply bolster their maintenance department with people, training, equipment and spare parts so they can quickly address problems when downtime occurs. Or they’ll increase their expenses in order to hand maintenance responsibilities to outside subcontractors. Regardless of whether these vendors service you better than you could, it’s comforting to be able to blame someone outside the company when downtime cripples production.

Still, it’s your downtime.

Inevitably during your progress toward lean manufacturing, you’ll be faced with the necessity of combining new machinery with decades-old equipment. Do you know how to get the near 100 percent uptime that lean manufacturing requires for both? Or will maintenance become the tail that wags your dog? This article describes how lean maintenance can help prevent equipment downtime and all its accompanying costly frustrations.

Overcoming entropy

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