Gilbert’s Strategy Discourse Framework For Improving Reliability At Higher Elevations

There are four ways to do strategy: design, experience, ideas and discourse.

Strategy by discourse is by talks, speeches and public media releases and statements. It is popular among leaders and especially politicians.

The key to strategy by discourse is narrative but you must go to that narrative with a framework to build or stack your talk around. A framework is a picture or a diagram or a map, either real or mental, around which you can talk around.

Here is my ‘Reliability Improvement Framework’ for my strategy discourse on the maintenance function delivering on its KPI to deliver on its overall KRA (key result area) of physical production plant’s ‘Availability’. Note that it incorporates my 'Maintenance Availability Triangle Framework'.

A plant’s ‘Availability’ (or maintenance effectiveness) is a lagging result of the leading interaction between ‘maintenance reliability’ (or quality) and ‘maintenance efficiency’ (or speed).

Maintenance quality and maintenance speed are influenced by respective ‘critical success factors’ or conditions that props them up.

These ‘critical success factors’/conditions are like variables in the process of maintenance management which must be properly controlled to deliver plant availability. These ‘critical success factors’ are the ‘specific conditions’ in the definition of reliability (i.e. there are four elements in the definition of reliability. Reliability is the: 1. Probability that a process/system/equipment/component/part will; 2. Perform a specific function; 3. Over a specific period of time; and 4. Under specific support conditions).

Managing maintenance (or taking action in maintenance) is a process that requires understanding of its variables which must be properly controlled to deliver on plant availability and that availability must be continuously improved. Improving plant availability mean improving the leading indicators in plant reliability and plant maintainability.

Improving plant reliability from very high elevations requires understanding of the basics and that is: reliability is inherent in design. This means that reliability is a function of design and it is inbuild or designed into the process/system/equipment/component/part. The process/system/equipment/component/part represents the different physical asset hierarchical levels or structure. The designing in of reliability can happen at two levels in the hierarchical structure: from the equipment level and down; and from system level and up. From the equipment level and down is usually in the realm of OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) while from the system level and up is usually dictated by the end-users.

In PNG we are not a machine manufacturing country. So, from equipment level and down we often only liaise with the OEMs to improve machinery reliability once equipment is commissioned and repeated low characteristic life of components are noted in recurring failures through the equipment's operation. But as owners and end-users, we can have a direct impact on reliability at the process/system level during the upfront design stage of our process/system.

The surest way to build in reliability at the process/system level is to introduce redundancy or standby.

I surely hope that you will find this framework handy for your perusal.

[p.s. I have written the 10th and 11th paragraphs by talking around my ‘Reliability Improvement Framework’]