This project involved the development of maintenance plans across three mine sites in Central Queensland coal fields. The maintenance plans were created using RCM principles and implemented in SAP as part of the project.

This project involved a site wide audit of maintenance system, procedures and methodologies at an injection molding plant in Ireland.

The plant is a world class manufacturing facility producing parts and sub-assemblies for a range of high-tech industries including Pharmaceutical, Computer and Electronics component manufacture.

This project involved the updating of the Asset register, development and implementation of a Criticality Assessment methodology for rotating equipment, the development of criticality based Maintenance Plans, an assessment of critical equipment spares using SCAS and facilitation of several Root Cause Analysis workshops.

These components form the basis of the planned maintenance systems for these sites allowing a transition from reactive work to planned and scheduled maintenance work.

Conducted a multiple site audit of maintenance systems, procedures and methodologies at quarries to identify current practice and develop an organization wide improvement plan.

A maintenance improvement plan was developed as well as a timetable to achieve specific targets. A maintenance improvement program was designed to meet the needs of the client and the various components are currently being established and implemented.

JAHCon was commissioned to carry out a FMECA on a selected set of assets at a Waste Water Treatment Plant as part of a pilot study to develop systems, procedures and practices which would be rolled out across the organisation over time.

A comprehensive FMEA/FMECA solution was prepared based on BS5760-Part 5/MIL-STD-1629A and all prompt sheets, guides and other aids to a consistent and comprehensive FMEA/FMECA were developed as part of this process.

JAHCon has been commissioned on a number of occasions to manage multiple, relatively small projects within the Pulp and paper industry. In this role JAHCon provides the industry and consulting expertise to take these projects from concept stage to ready for implementation.

The client required a RAMS study to be carried out as part of the project and JAHCon was commissioned to carry out the study. The proposed plant layout was assessed including equipment types, location, redundancy, maintenance and operating schedules etc. and a model built to represent the plant. A number of trials were run to determine if the proposed plant could meet project targets as designed and what if any changes were needed to achieve these targets. Several changes were made to equipment redundancy, spare parts holdings etc. as a result of the RAMS study.

Failure analysis is undertaken to learn lessons from previous failures so that future failures can be prevented or their impact reduced. In practice Failure Analysis tends to be applied to those failures that have had a significant impact on the organisation or have given us such a 'scare' that we think we better have a look at the underlying problem. Failure analysis is aimed at understanding the underlying causes for a specific failure and therefore has a lot in common with Root Cause Analysis.

This project was based on the concept of 'User Centred Design' and involved a formal knowledge transfer between site and the project design team for a large mining client who recognised the potential for design improvement using this approach. The aim of the project was to improve the project outcome by refining the design of the new plant, using site experience to design-out undesirable features and reinforce those known to be beneficial.

Using this process, site experience was fed into the early design phase of the project using a formal and systematic methodology. The majority of useful information coming from Operation and Maintenance experience with similar plant, over an extended period of time and in a similar operating context. This feedback is especially valuable when similar equipment or systems is to be used in the up-coming project. Even if the project includes unfamiliar equipment, site experience with familiar sub- systems and management structures is still relevant and valuable. While the use of this methodology is relatively new to the client (and I believe, in industry), there is an established body of material called ‘User Centred Design’ on which it is based. My first publication on this topic was in February 1994 and was called ‘Design and Maintenance – Closing the Loop’. This title provides a good indication of the underlying concept with the aim being to close the ‘loop’ between end user experience and the early design phase of later projects. It was not until this latest project that I have come across its ‘formal’ use in industry.

There are many ways in which this methodology can be implemented with most being qualitative in nature and requiring no specific software or special ‘tools’ to implement. Regardless of the format used to manage the knowledge transfer, the minimum necessary components include:

• a willing source of experience and information from the site.
• a willingness to listen on the part of the design team.
• a structure to manage and promote this dialogue.