Having just completed a week of travel, I encountered several “hiccups” during the week. These events caused me to think about maintenance and operations in a plant or facility. What if maintenance treated operations the way that the airlines treat their customers? Let’s consider a couple examples.
Suppose that operations wanted to exceed the capacity of their equipment? Well, maintenance could then do what the airlines do when a passenger checks a bag with an excessive weight – charge them. For example, one airline has the following rules:
- 51-70 lbs $100 each
- 71-99.9 lbs $200 each
- Depending on the route up to $400
So let’s propose this – If operations wants to run:
- 10% above the asset’s design capacity –
- 10% of the value of the hourly production for the time capacity is exceeded
- 20% above the asset’s design capacity –
- 20% of the value of the hourly production for the time capacity is exceeded
- Over 20% above the asset’s design capacity
- 50% of the value of the hourly production for the time capacity is exceeded
We could then take the total amount and deposit it a special capital equipment fund to purchase the new assets that are going to be required to replace the assets operations just wore out.
Let’s suppose operations wanted to make their equipment easier to operate or more ergonomically correct. We could follow the airlines example for “special seating” (or actually seats with the proper amount of seat space). The airlines charge from $5.00 to $75.00 for the extra seating space. So to make the equipment more “operable” maintenance could charge the same $5.00 to move an indicator light and up to $75.00 to move a switch. The funds could be collected from each operator and the maintenance department could purchase special tools and equipment to make their jobs easier.
I probably shouldn’t cover the topic of installing pay toilets…
This might work with the airlines – but I don’t think it will “fly” in our plants. But then, maybe it should…