The Road to Reliability Framework

A simple 4-Step approach to reduce your downtime by 90% ​

Introduction​

Thank you for downloading the Road to Reliability Framework. In this guide I will give you a high

level overview of the four practices you need to master to reduce your equipment downtime by up

to 90%. And when you do so, you will also reduce your maintenance costs and improve your safety

record.

The framework I will introduce is founded in some of our industry’s best research and will work

even in the most reactive environments. It’s not something I’ve invented out of nowhere. I have

summarised the research of some of the industry’s most renowned experts and condensed it into

a simple, practical model that everyone can understand. A framework that everyone can

implement. A framework that works. ​

I hope you enjoy reading this guide and wish you all the best on your own journey down the

R
​ oad to Reliability.​

Erik Hupjé​

Managing Director at R2 Reliability Ltd.

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The Road to Reliability Framework

There are many frameworks in use for achieving reliability.

The table below summarises the findings of this research:​
I believe that most of the frameworks used in industry are
unnecessarily complicated. We’ve all seen the temples or Uptime % Downtime
Tactic change
Uptime
Reduction
pyramids with 10 or 20 acronyms short for one or the other
complex process that we must master to achieve reliability. ​
Reactive Plants 83.5%

Planning Only +0.5%

But must we really? In my experience the “Best of the best”
achieve world class reliability by doing the basics really well.
Scheduling Only +0.8%
And industry research shows the same.

​
Preventive / Predictive -2.4%
Maintenance only

Research done in the 1990’s across a very large group of

manufacturing sites around the world found that reactive A ll Three Tactics +5.1% 88.6% 30.9%
plants typically achieved uptime of around 83.5%.
​ Source: Manufacturing Game and subsequent work by Ledet [Ledet 1994]
Plus Defect Elimination .8% 8.3% 89.7%

14 9

That same research found that the best performing

manufacturing sites achieved uptimes in excess of 98% by These results are somehow not widely known in industry – to
focussing on planning & scheduling, preventive and predictive our detriment – but worse, the table above that summarises the
maintenance and defect elimination. This research, results of Ledet’s research is often misunderstood and therefore
spearheaded by Winston Ledet, lead to the development of the dismissed as incorrect. So let me explain.
Manufacturing game and multiple publications.

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 1 www.reliabilityacademy.com
When industrial plants with

a reactive maintenance
culture implemented only
Understanding the research that 10
Planning their uptime
improved on average by
underpins the Road to Reliability Industrial plants with a reactive
maintenance culture were
0.5% (to 84.0% from 83.5%)​ found to have on average an
uptime of 83.5% ​
Uptime % Downtime
When industrial plants with a 2 Tactic change
Uptime
Reduction
reactive maintenance culture 9
10
implemented only Scheduling Industrial plants that practiced
Reactive plants 83.5%
their uptime improved on Planning, Scheduling and had a
average by 0.8% (to 84.3% 1 Preventive Maintenance
from 83.5%)​ Planning only +0.5% Program, but no Defect
Elimination had on average an
2
uptime of 88.6% ​
When industrial plants with a 3
Scheduling only +0.8%
reactive maintenance culture
implemented Preventive Preventive / Predictive 3 8

Maintenance only their Maintenance only

-2.4% Industrial plants that practiced
uptime decreased on average Planning, Scheduling and had a

by 2.4% (to 81.1% from 83.5%) 4 9 8 Preventive Maintenance

due to the additional All three tactics +5.1% 88.6% 30.9% Program experienced 30.9%

downtime to conduct less downtime compared to

5 6 7
preventive maintenance work.​ reactive plants.​
Plus Defect Elimination 14.8% 98.3% 89.7%

7
4 5 6
When industrial plants with a reactive Industrial plants that practiced Industrial plants that practiced Industrial plants that practiced
maintenance culture implemented all Planning, Scheduling, had a Planning, Scheduling and had a Planning, Scheduling, had a
three tactics of Planning, Scheduling Preventive Maintenance Program Preventive Maintenance Program Preventive Maintenance
and Preventive Maintenance their and had implemented Defect and also had implemented Defect Program and had implemented
uptime increased on average by 5.1% Elimination increased uptime by Elimination had on average an Defect Elimination experienced
(from 83.5% to 88.6%)​ 14.8% (from 83.5% to 98.3%)​ uptime of 98.3% ​ almost 90% less downtime
compared to reactive plants.​
What this shows is that the plants with high uptime achieved So when something fails you make sure it does not re-occur and
this by implementing planning, scheduling, preventive and so over time you reduce the number of failures and increase
predictive maintenance and defect elimination.
your uptime.

And - in hindsight – this makes perfect sense. You need planning What is may be surprising is the big impact Defect Elimination
& scheduling to enable efficient and effective maintenance. has on overall uptime. This tells us that all our plants are full of
Without planning & scheduling you will find yourself with (hidden) defects that result in failures. You see, we introduce
unnecessary long machine and plant outages.
defects at every stage of a plant’s lifecycle. During the design,

construction, commissioning of our plants but also during the
And you need both elements combined; planning or scheduling operation and maintenance phases. If you don’t tackle these
on their own do little to drive efficiency. Planning reduces delays defects they eventually lead to failures.

during jobs and scheduling reduces delays between jobs. One

without the other simply won’t work.

Maintenance doesn’t address defects and good maintenance

can only help you to achieve your plant’s inherit reliability. So
Preventive maintenance (PM) and predictive maintenance (PdM) you need a defect elimination program to remove defects to
are essential to increasing uptime. They enable you to prevent achieve high reliability. To fix forever rather than forever fixing.

failures or detect them early so rectification is quicker, less

costly and with less impact on overall availability.

My model for achieving reliability adds one more element to the

equation and that is Leadership & Culture. And that’s because I
And the biggest finding from the research was the impact of know from experience that without leadership you’ll get
Defect Elimination, which in essence is making sure ‘you fix nowhere. And without Culture you won’t sustain your
forever, rather than forever fixing’.

improvements.

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Keeping it simple

I refer to my model as the Road to Reliability™ and it I’ve seen it so many times, companies focus on too many things
comprises of just 4 Essential Elements: or the wrong things and lose their way on the Road to
Reliability.

Planning & Schedulin

Defect Eliminatio Most of these companies eventually give up on their reliability
Preventive Maintenanc improvements and simply accept the status quo. They accept
poor reliability.

Leadership & Culture

But our Road to Reliability shows that it doesn’t have to be that

Implement these 4 practices really well you will make
way.

tremendous improvements in your business. You will

increase reliability, production, profits and safety.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact it’s really quite simple.

But make no mistake, travelling the Road to Reliability will take
Adopt an overly complicated approach like you commonly
a lot of hard work and commitment.

see in industry and you lose sight of the essential basics.

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 The Road to Reliability Framework
There are many frameworks for reliability improvement. Most are unnecessarily complicated. The best performing plants in
the world are the best, because they focus on the few basics that really matter. We have created a simple, yet proven framework to
improve reliability focusing on 4 Essential Elements.

Increase your maintenance 40% - 60% of PMs add little

workforce by 35% without value. Learn how to
hiring anyone. Reduce eliminate them to reduce
costs, improve safety and work-load, reduce costs and
increase morale. increase uptime.

80% of failures that occur 70% of change initiatives fail.

in a plant have occured Without Leadership you’ll get
before. Fix them forever nowhere. Without Culture
and stop forever fixing you won’t sustain anything.

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First: Make a start

The Road to Reliability is in many ways like every long journey. And yes, everybody’s Road to Reliability is different.

It starts with just a single step forward.

But what I do know is that everybody who has made significant
You take that step the day you’ve had enough. The day you are progress down the Road to Reliability will have implemented
finally so dissatisfied with the fire fighting, chasing emergency these 4 Essential Elements.

after emergency that you decide to do whatever is necessary

to get yourself out of this mess.

What order you tackle these in depends on where you are

today. And what is holding you back the most. The best way

to determine that is to do a simple self-assessment or get

And as with every long journey you need to know your
someone to help you with that and then determine a way
destination and have a map to get you there. And that is
forward. Now, lets explore those 4 Essential Elements in a bit
exactly what this framework shows.

more detail.

Take it. Use it. And get going!

Just remind yourself, this is very much a journey, a marathon,

and most certainly not a sprint. It will take time, dedication and
persistence.

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Planning & Scheduling
Soon after you make that first step you will need to implement a Planning & Scheduling No matter what studies or benchmarks
process. Planning & Scheduling is all about maximising your maintenance productivity you look at, they all show that typical
by ensuring the right work gets done, at the right place and time, with the right tools, maintenance productivity or wrench time
materials and people. is somewhere around 30%. With proper
maintenance planning and scheduling you
can drive this to 45% and the Best of the
Best achieve 50% - 55%.

Getting Planning & Scheduling in place

and working well is a critical step in
fighting your reactive work environment.
It will finally create some space in people’s
busy schedule for proactive activities.

It will help you to stabilise your working

environment so you can get ready for
Increasing your maintenance productivity from 30% to your next step on your journey to high
45% is the same as increasing your workforce by 35%. reliability.​Unfortunately few organisations
Just without hiring anyone!​ get this right. But it really isn’t that hard.

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 Want to find out more? Check out these online articles:​

How to sell planning

Without planning and scheduling How to implement maintenance
and scheduling to your CEO you will fail planning & scheduling
Many implementations of Maintenance Maintenance Planning & Scheduling is Most organisations that implement
Planning and Scheduling fail. Often one of the 4 Essential Elements on the maintenance planning and scheduling
because senior management was never Road to Reliability. Planning & do not achieve the long-term results
on board to begin with. In this article, ... scheduling, or work management... they expected.

Read now Read now Read now

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Preventive Maintenance
With Planning & Scheduling under your Centered Maintenance has taught us. ​
belt and Defect Elimination well and truly Understanding the different failure
under way you will soon find gaps in your patterns and how to manage these with
Preventive Maintenance (PM) program – PM tasks – or not – is the key to building
if you haven’t already. E
​ xperience shows an effective and economical Preventive
that up to a third of the tasks in most PM Maintenance program.​So often I see
programs add no real value. Another organisations react to equipment failures
or poor reliability by adding more
third would usually benefit from a change
preventive maintenance. And more often
of frequency. And we haven’t even talked
than not, more Preventive Maintenance
about the quality of the work
does not help. In most of these cases
instructions!

more PM’s do not increase reliability or

reduce failures. What it does do, is
Simply put, most Preventive Maintenance
increase your costs and it can reduce
programs are not very effective and
availability. ​ ​

waste a lot of time and money.​

Although the principles of RCM have with a bit of effort and probably some
But before you tackle your PM program been round for 40 years, most training you can soon apply these
you need to make sure you understand organisations and maintenance teams principles in your organisation so you
the principles of modern maintenance. can’t seem to effectively apply these can do less preventive maintenance yet
You need to understand what Reliability principles in their work practices.​But achieve higher reliability.

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 Want to find out more? Check out these online articles:​

9 Principles of a modern preventive Why the FMEA is my equipment not 6 Steps to Dramatically Improve your
maintenance program reliable? Preventive Maintenance Program
In this article, I provide a brief history of Failure Modes and Effects Analysis – or Most of us would probably say that our
the development of Reliability Centered FMEA for short – is widely used across preventive maintenance programs
Maintenance (RCM). And from there we many industries. Often in the design could use some work. But where to
explore 9 Principles of a Modern... phase of new equipment. even start?

Read now Read now Read now

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Defect Elimination

Once you have implemented Planning & Scheduling you will and for all. Rinse and repeat. So whilst Root Cause Analysis is
start to see the amount of unplanned work reduce. As you all about removing the big ticket items you also need a process
create a more stable work environment, with better planned for eliminating the smaller, niggly little things. ​

work, and a sound Weekly Schedule you will find time to think
ahead. As soon as this happens you need to take your next Because in just about every plant around the world, the little
major step forward and implement Root Cause Analysis and issues add up to a lot.​​This is where Defect Elimination comes
Defect Elimination. in. Defect Elimination aims to empower your front line and the
wider support teams to independently tackle the many small
issues that cause failures.​The beauty of Defect Elimination –
Root Cause Analysis is all about preventing problems
when it’s done well – is that it drives you towards a Reliability
from reoccurring. It’s about getting rid of the 20% of
Culture in several ways.


issues that cause 80% of your breakdowns,
downtime, corrective maintenance and repair costs.
It removes defects and makes your plant more reliable. But it 

is also the vehicle to engage a large part of your organisation 

When you encounter a significant breakdown you analyse the in reliability. ​To make reliability everybody’s responsibility – just
failure, determine the root cause and resolve it. You fix it once like safety.

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 Want to find out more? Check out these online articles:​

Defect Elimination why you can’t do What effective Defect Elimination How to implement Defect Elimination
without looks like
Knowing that Root Cause Analysis and
With the Road to Reliability Framework One of the most powerful ways you can Defect Elimination are critical to your
you can reduce your downtime by 90%. improve the reliability of your plant is reliability success is one thing.
And although you need all 4 Essential by implementing an effective Defect Implementing them successfully and
Elements to... Elimination program. But what does... sustaining the change in the long run is
a very different story.
Read now Read now Coming soon

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Leadership & Culture

When you’ve come this far in your journey, plant availability is Leadership and courage is required to move away from the
way up, productivity is high and the defects that pop up are status quo and take your first step.​Leadership is required to
effectively addressed.
​ determine the vision and stay the course along this winding and

sometimes bumpy road. Leadership is required to overcome
You, and the people around you, enjoy work more with so the resistance you will encounter along the way – and you will.

​
much less frustration. And have you’ve noticed that the
number of times people getting hurt has reduced too – when Leadership is required to embed all the changes along the way
to make sure it all sticks and doesn’t become the flavour of last
did that happen?​

month. And Leadership is required to know that you are never

truly finished.​

But, by now you’ll have also realised that there is no real end

to this journey. You’ll never get there as there is always

This is why Leadership is an essential element in our Road to
something to improve. And so that is what you do. All the time
Reliability Framework. Not just Leadership in general, but
another step forward. Getting better and better. Continuous
specific leadership requirements to make this Journey to world
improvement. You can see that the Road to Reliability must
class reliability.

indeed be paved by Leadership. ​

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 Want to find out more? Check out these online article:

Why are we so bad at maintenance Your people are not your biggest The Road to Reliability is paved with
management? asset culture and leadership
No matter what industry or which There is classic saying in business A frequently used saying is that
country you look at, maintenance literature that your people are your leadership is about doing the right
performance is pretty poor on average. biggest asset. And just about everybody things and management is about doing
That’s obviously not a good thing. repeats this mantra everywhere you... things right. But, to succeed on the...

Read now Coming soon Coming soon

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How to start

For most plants there is a simple and logical sequence to issues, your operators may run the equipment outside of the
implementing the Road to Reliability Framework.​
recommended operating ranges or you may be buying wrong

or inferior parts.​​Defect Elimination and Root Cause Analysis will
help you identify these issues so you can resolve them.​

Planning & Scheduling comes first​

You start with planning & scheduling to help stabilise your

And this is exactly how I kept the Road to Reliability Framework
work environment, get on top of your real priorities and
so simple. I’m not telling everyone to work on vibration
make space for some proactive work. Once you have
monitoring and precision maintenance skills and operator care
planning & scheduling embedded you need to focus on
and spare parts etc. Instead with Defect Elimination and Root
Defect Elimination and root cause analysis. This starts to
Cause Analysis it is your Plant that is telling you what you need
remove the repetitive failures that you are experiencing in to focus on. Simple, but highly effective.​

your plant. And you’ll slowly move from forever fixing to

fixing your plant forever.

​
Make your PM program efficient & effective
​

With Defect Elimination under way you will need to focus on

W
​ hy Defect Elimination is so powerful​
your Preventive Maintenance Program. And that’s because
As you go through Defect Elimination you will identify other pretty much every plant at this stage of the journey to reliability
areas that you need to address. Imagine your plant is will have an inefficient and often ineffective PM program. And
experiencing repeated bearing failures, as you get down to you can’t afford that. Maintenance resources are scarce and
the root cause you could find that you have issues with your you need to deploy them where it matters most. ​
lubrication program, or you may have an issue with
installation practices, there could be vibration
​

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Final words

Sure, there is much more to reliability than just the
 Want to continue the discussion?

4 essential elements.

No matter where you live or work you can reach me at:​

But my objective with the Road to Reliability Framework is to www.reliabilityacademy.com/contact or drop me an

help you focus on what truly matters and not get distracted email at [email protected].

by the many different tools, solutions, software packages etc.

that are out there.

Focus on these 4 basics, get them working, get really good at

them. Then and only then should you consider progressing
into other areas. Sure there will be exceptions to this rule,
but for the vast majority of us this simple approach to
reliability will yield big results!​

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