Maintenance: take care of your goose!

Do you know the Aesop’s fable of the goose and the golden eggs?

This fable is the story of a poor man who discovers one day  a golden egg in the nest of his goose. At first, he thinks that it's a trick, but then he takes it to be apprised. He discovers then that it is made of pure gold. Then, day after day, every morning he rushes to the nest to find another golden egg. He becomes very wealthy and it all seems too good to be true.

But with his wealth comes also greed and impatience. Unable to wait day after day for the next egg, the farmer decides to kill the goose and get all eggs at once. And when he opens the goose, there are no eggs inside and there is no way to get anymore. He killed the goose that produced them.

I read this little story in a book called “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, written by Stephen Covey. I suggest you to read it as well.

Then, what could I learn from this story? This story showed me that we need to find the equilibrium between production and production capability.

But what does it means? It means that we cannot just think about manufacturing and forget to maintain the machine which provides us with products.

A simple example: you have one week of final exams and oral presentations. The hardest ones will happen Monday and Tuesday. You spend the weekend reviewing your books. If you concentrate just in the subject for the two first exams, you will be so tired that you will not be able to study for the following exams. The risk to fail will rise, even if the next ones are not that difficult, because energy reserve is exhausted. It is necessary to remember that keeping ourselves in good health improves our production capability. We need to find the balance between studies and relaxing.

Maintenance is something very important at Alcan.

At Sogerem, the Alcan’s unit where I spent my Alcan day, they need a lot of heavy engines to work in the mine. Trucks, diggers and shovels need to be maintained to prevent from breakdowns to happen. These machines need to be cared for as we care for our cars. Each one has his own follow-up notebook. The difference is the frequency: maintenance will be done according to the number of working hours! For example, each morning, they dedicate 20 minutes to each machine to stoke up and to check oil. Oil will be drained after 250 working hours! Monthly, 2-3 hours maintenance is done to a detailed verification and to replace wearing parts. For the trucks working in the open-cast mine, tires will be replaced after 3000 working hours. Trucks working in the underground mine will have their tires replaced every 1000 working hours.

To ensure a good maintenance of the machines it is also necessary to manage a wearing parts small stock. Sogerem can also count on the just-in-time Caterpillar service! The plant relies on a maintenance service as well. Every Monday morning, 2 hours are dedicated to check every detail. It assures a good restart-up. Yearly, 3 weeks of heavy maintenance is performed and it guarantees an average 15 -20 hours breakdown per year, which is really great!

Maintenance management requires a very high experience level. Observing old events and then planning correctly allows to anticipate breakdowns and then carry out the maintenance before problems happen.

I'd like to thank Claude, Sogerem Technical Director, for such precious information.