Precision Maintenance is talked about in many companies and implemented at many companies, many with great success, however most companies do not understand Precision Maintenance. In this paper I will clear up some misconceptions and untruths concerning it.

1. Precision Maintenance?
“Everything you wanted to know about Precision Maintenance but were afraid to ask”
By Ricky Smith, CMRP
Chairman, SMRP Oil, Gas, and Petrochemical SIG
Precision Maintenance is talked about in many companies and implemented at many
companies, many with great success, however most companies do not understand
Precision Maintenance. In this presentation I will clear up some misconceptions and
untruths concerning it.
What is Precision Maintenance?
Precision Maintenance is the application of effective:
1. Maintenance skills
2. Effective Maintenance Procedures
3. Preventive and Condition Based Maintenance
4. Planned Maintenance
Why does a company want to focus on Precision Maintenance?
Precision maintenance is the one area that allows equipment to run failure free for the
longest period of time. Self Induced Failures are mitigated by combining known
maintenance and reliability best practices along with effective skills in a discipline
manner.
Let’s look at Precision Maintenance in a different light and disect each area for a
moment.
1. Maintenance Skills
To many companies want their maintenance staff to be skilled in maintenance repair,
rebuild, preventive maintenance, etc however studies have shown that less than 30%

2. actually have the knowledge and skills required for their position. For your maintenance
staff to have the proper skills you need to know what are the knowledge and skills
required to perform maintenance activities at their facility in an effective manner.
Actual Skills Assessment Report – 35 Maintenance Technicians Assessed
Knowledge and skills need to be identified through a job task analysis. This
accomplished by identifying, with the maintenance staff, what are the required duties
and tasks required at this facility. Under each key task one must identify the
performance standard required of the task in order to validate knowledge and skill
transfer has occurred.
Many companies use different methods to “train” their maintenance staff and look for
the path of least resistance in training. In most cases training is accomplished via web
based training, workshops, etc without connecting the knowledge to the skill and
demonstrated execution to standard.
2. Effective and Repeatable Maintenance Procedures
Many organizations do not take into account that we as humans have a high propensity
to make mistakes. Depending on the day, how we feel, if we are rushed, or just forget,
repairs, preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, and operating procedures
vary from person to person and day to day.
A maintenance technician once told me that he was a true maintenance professional
and did not need a procedure to accomplish any task given him after all he had been in

3. maintenance for over 20 years. I ask him if he ever forgot where he laid his car keys at
home, or maybe made a repair which did not last as long as expected? He stated he
never had any of these problems. Next I told him that if this was true he had a infalliable
and unlimted memory. With a human it is not possible.
In one study I conducted with over 300 companies we found that 85% of equipment
failures were self induced. People either did not use the tools required for the job (like a
torque wrench), did not know the true specifications so they made an intelligent guess,
or just made a mistake. Think about your large horsepower electric motors which are
lubricated on some time interval and no one ever removes the grease relief plug.
What a company needs are repeatable, effective procedures otherwise failures and root
cause analysis will continue forever on the same failures.
3. Preventive (PM) and Condition Monitoring (CBM)
If I were to ask you how your organization measures effectiveness of your PM / CBM
program what would the answer be? PM Compliance? A few may give a good answer
such as Mean Time Between Failure, Percent of Assets with No Identifiable Defect, or
even PM Labor Hours versus Emergency Labor Hours.
I always make the statement, “you know you are in reactive maintenance if you are
conducting PM and CBM and continue to have equipment failures. Let look at the
definition of failures according to the Nowlan and Heap RCM Study from the 1960s.
“A functional failure is the inability of an item (or the equipment containing it) to
meet a specified performance standard and is usually identified by an operator”.
“A potential failure is an identifiable physical condition which indicates a
functional failure is imminent and is usually identified by a Maintenance
Technician using predictive or quantitative preventive maintenance”
We want our PM and CBM program to be focused on the early detection of failure
wherever possible so we have time to plan work effectively without rushing the job and
without risking loss of production output. This is why I do not identify with term
Predictive Maintenance anymore. I do not want to predict failures, I want to know their
condition and make decisions based on their defect severity (a failure mode is
beginning to exhibit itself) and asset criticality. A company’s PM and CBM program
should focused on the Condition of an Asset (Healthy or not) or Prevention of specific
failure modes and validate regulatory compliance.

4. Looking at the PF Curve above you may identify Precision Maintenance is to the left of
when Failure begins. Another point is predictive maintenance will provide one with the
earliest detection of potential failures. I was at a company who just completed a PM
Optimization Project in one large area of their operation and I ask the lead technician on
the project how many of the new PMs addressed specific failure modes. He was in
shock and ask an honest question, “what is a failure mode?”. In fact I have found in
many cases when a company performs a PM Optimization the results show that most
failure modes by a PM. So everything looks like a PM because no one of the PM
Optimization team is an expert in Predictive Maintenance.
4. Planned Maintenance
Planned Maintenance is the development of maintenance work which in most cases
includes the following:
• Effective Procedures are developed and ready for execution
• Parts required are kitted and staged prior to scheduling
• Potential Parts Identified and Reserved in Stores
• Specifications have been defined
• Special tools and equipment identified and possibly staged or at least reserved
• Special permits identified
• Estimated labor and work execution hours determined
• And other items are identified and prepared to ensure effective work is executed
to standard and is repeatable.
• Preventive (PM) and Condition Monitoring (CBM)
If I were to ask you how your organization measures effectiveness of your Planned
Maintenance program what would the answer be? % of Planned Work? MTBF may be
a better performance measure.

5. Scheduling was not addressed in this paper even though scheduling work is just as
important as planning a job. If a job is rushed or a repair is not scheduled in time then a
functional failure in most cases will occur.
If you have questions on this paper please send me an email at rsmith@gpallied.com.