MTBF and Maintenance Costs

 

 

 

As you have learned from your reading, knowing when a part or system will fail is important for a company.
Mean time between failures (MTBF) is the expected time between failures of a part, process, or system and is
a common matrix for a firm to use to understand how often a failure will occur.
Assume that you are the manager of a production line and are responsible for keeping the machines running
24 hours per day, 365 days per year. When a machine breaks, it must be repaired and put back onto operation
as soon as possible. The problem is that your machines are always breaking down, and you really do not have
a good understanding of how often a machine breaks down.
Hint: For this assignment, you will NOT be using the OM software but should use Excel to work the problem.
You decide to run a test to determine the mean time between failures. During the test, you start with 20
operational machines on your production line producing widgets. You record breakdowns during an 80-hour
observation period in which three of the machines broke down. One at 35 hours into the test, one at 50 hours
into the test, and the 3rd failure comes at 75 hours.
Use Excel and the data you collected to calculate the MTBF of your machines. Analyze your results and place
them on the spreadsheet.
Continue to Step 2: Calculate the Expected Breakdown Maintenance Costs . . .
After collecting and analyzing the MTBF data, you were surprised at how often your machines really broke
down. At your last company, you remember that they had a service firm that would come in and perform
preventive maintenance (PM) on your machines and you wonder if this would be an option to reduce
breakdowns. However, before you go to your boss to pitch the idea, you want to see if using an outside PM
firm would reduce your cost.
So you do some research on the cost and run another study on the number of breakdowns of your machines.
Over the last 12 months, the machines have broken down at the rate indicated in the following table:
Number of Breakdowns Number of Months that Breakdowns Occurred
0 0
1 7
2 3
3 2
You also do some research on breakdown cost and find that the average cost of a breakdown to your firm is
$350. You find a service firm and request a price quote from them. The PM service firm costs $200 per month,
but they tell you that you can still expect on average of 2 breakdowns per month even with the PM service.
Use Excel and the data to calculate the expected breakdown maintenance cost versus hiring the PM firm to
service your machines.
Analyze your results and indicate which of the options you will recommend to your boss – hire the firm or
continue dealing with the breakdowns at the current rate?

 

 

 

 

 

Sample Solution

 

 

 

Self-trickery among pioneers is a predominant issue in associations today. The powerlessness of a pioneer to perceive that he/she might be the underlying driver of a portion of the issues found inside their hover of impact renders them insufficient at driving, and thwarts gainful devotee pioneer connections. At the point when pioneers are caught in the case of self-double dealing they may get absent to their counter-beneficial practices, and how these practices are in effect adversely apparent by others. Likenesses can be found between self-trickery and mental models, which can be depicted as cognizant or oblivious convictions, discernments, thoughts, justifications, and even pictures, which are shaped out of our encounters. These encounters control our musings and our activities, constantly through egocentric biased reasoning. As indicated by Senge (2006), while mental models are not innately off-base, left unaltered, “as the world changes, the hole augments between our psychological models and reality, prompting progressively counter-gainful activities” (p. 166).

Degrading Others

Pioneers who are self-hoodwinked consider themselves to be casualties of their conditions as opposed to as benefactors. They assume that others are characteristically defective and uncouth or sluggish and consequently they should be the reason for the incapability, wastefulness, and the diminished efficiency. Pioneers who are in the container legitimize this conduct by concentrating on their positive properties, for example, being dedicated, having the entirety of the vital center capabilities, and having a background marked by progress, while undermining the gifts of others and swelling their deficiencies. In light of a self-bamboozled pioneer’s powerlessness to exhibit defenselessness by sharing shortcomings and errors, he/she can’t manufacture trust with colleagues and putting themselves on a notorious platform (Lencioni, 2002, p. 195). This outcomes in supporter demotivation, withdrawal, absence of genuine responsibility, and stressed associations with pioneers.

Absence of Self-Awareness

Blinded by smugness, a pioneer’s actual inspirations are clouded by his/her the absence of mindfulness, prompting inadequate authority and terrible showing. A mindful pioneer exponentially builds their extent of impact over adherents, bringing about aggregate expanded duty and execution. Mindfulness enables a pioneer to perceive those practices that make hindrances and crash a pioneer’s capacity to move others to arrive at their maximum capacity, along these lines making an incentive for colleagues and the association.

At the point when the mindful part of enthusiastic insight is inadequate with regards to, pioneers “expel certain realities contrary with their legend of themselves for different not so much compromising but rather more demonstrative ones” (Diamond, 2008, para. 3). A pioneer that needs mindfulness is basically double-crossing themselves since they may unintentionally incite a similar self-beguiling practices in others, making a culture which upsets progress towards objective achievement and positive authoritative results.

Procedure Fairness

Hierarchical pioneers must settle on troublesome choices consistently to guarantee the long haul manageability and suitability of the business. A considerable lot of these choices can have a conceivably negative effect on partner gatherings. While pioneers can’t change the results of these choices, they do have the power and the capacity to control the procedure of how choices are made and executed. The methodology taken will decide how partner bunches react either tolerating or unaccepting–and can bring about negative frames of mind and practices in the working environment. While the idea of in the case of something is reasonable or out of line is individualistic in nature, pioneers must take uncommon consideration to be delicate to the necessities everything being equal, and have keen procedures and methods set up to limit dissension and settle on the most ideal choices for the best measure of individuals.

Budgetary Implications

The budgetary ramifications emerging from an association that doesn’t rehearse process decency can be considerable, and can undermine the very presence of the association.

Representatives are bound to look for compensatory and corrective harms in the event that they accept they were treated with low procedure decency (Brockner, 2006, p. 45). Some authoritative pioneers may unnecessarily apply costly arrangements with the aim of “fulfilling” the workers that might be adversely affected, for example, in a mass lay-off. Be that as it may, this could bring about expanded costs, for example, lawful expenses, representative turnover and robbery, and diminished efficiency, if the execution of these arrangements were misused. To this end, good sense should direct authoritative pioneers to consider remembering workers for the basic leadership process so they feel as though their suppositions have been heard

Execution Outcomes

It makes sense that associations which practice process decency in all business activities, reward frameworks, enrollment and maintenance, detachments of work, and so on., will have representatives who are increasingly drawn in, progressively beneficial, and profoundly dedicated to accomplishing hierarchical objectives. To this end, good sense should direct authoritative pioneers to consider remembering representatives for the basic leadership process so they feel as though their assessments have been heard, bringing about an expanded likelihood of purchase in. Activities planned for making a culture of decency will improve generally speaking authoritative execution (Simons and Roberson, 2003, p. 20).

Worker Perceptions

Most authoritative pioneers accept that they are in effect more than reasonable when they disperse substantial motivators to representatives, for example, severance bundles. Nonetheless, for some workers the money related impetuses are not as significant as how the association went to the last decision(s), and how the representative was treated simultaneously. Pioneers frequently don’t consider how the workers, who were not affected by the choice, will react. Let us consider a companywide lay-off. Directors center around the workers who are being laid-off however don’t think about their partners, maybe in different divisions, who have solid ties with those being influenced in this way may have a feeling of faithfulness and start to display practices that effect execution. An enthusiastic virus can likewise surface on the grounds that saved workers can have a solid feeling of blame and uneasiness, prompting withdrawal, a feeling of treachery, doubt, and absence of inspiration (Brockner, 2006, p. 53).

Suggestions for Creating a Culture of Process Fairness

There are a few activities that authoritative pioneers can take to make a culture of procedure reasonableness, and diminish or dispense with the negative repercussions of worker saw shamefulness (Brockner, 2006, p. 54-57):

1. Address information holes – Managers and pioneers ought to be set up for the emotionality of procedure decency. They will at that point be better arranged to adapt to negative encounters the may result from connections with influenced representatives.

This question has been answered.

Get Answer