Developing a precision culture for business success

摘要

Tremendous changes are occurring in the global business world. Companies are attempting to position themselves to be competitive in new areas and to hold on to their market in their traditional business arena. To achieve this end, companies are increasingly trying new methods to improve their competitive model. Unfortunately, much of this effort has contributed to the "flavour of the month" feeling within the company as almost all of these improvement methods will not produce immediate results and quite often, unfortunately, the front office loses interest and tries to find another miracle cure for their problems. Of interest to the delegates of COMADEM, many companies are currently looking for ways to increase the reliability of their process and product, increase the availability of their manufacturing plants to improve the bottom line and of course, cut costs. The market place is demanding more reliable products, less operating surprises and in many cases, longer life of the products they buy. These changes in customer expectations have increased the implementation of the British PAS 55 scheme and led to the current effort to develop an International Standard on Asset Management (ISO 55000 series). Adopting these standards requires an organization, to discard or at least modify some of their fundamental concepts. These cultural changes will affect all levels and areas of the organization but this paper will primarily address the required culture change in three functional areas; engineering, operations (including maintenance), and purchasing.