What is a pilot project?

Here is an excerpt from the U.S Department of Defense (DoD) “CBM+” manual describing the military philosophy on pilot projects, which is appropriate in industrial maintenance.

Despite the rigor applied in controlled testing, there is no substitute for process testing in an operational environment. Pilot tests are a staple of DoD’s approach to implementation of hardware, software, and functional capabilities. Pilot testing in the field permits the initiative to perform in a real-world setting, influenced by random influences and subject to conditions not included or even foreseen in the test environment.

A pilot test at an operational location also permits the intended users to participate in the new process under their own terms and in a familiar setting. However, the pilot test environment should still be a more controlled one than actual operations. The following are among the elements of control:

• A comprehensive test plan structure should be followed.
• Test activity and results should be tracked and fully documented, including operational user comments.
• Input and output test data should be screened, with out-of-tolerance data clearly identified.
• Human operators should be well trained with hands-on oversight by the implementation team.
• A specific pilot test time frame and ending date should be established.

Complete records of the activity and results of the pilot test must be maintained to ensure technical capabilities work as intended, and that cause-and-effect actions result in desired outcomes. This means, when CBM+ capabilities are put in place, desired results (such as reduced mean down time, reduction of maintenance hours, reduced costs) actually occur. Documentation of pilot test results also helps assess whether the maintenance actions determined through reliability analysis are the most appropriate for the tested equipment or component.

The DoD excerpt describes many of the characteristics of a Living RCM pilot project. In most maintenance environments engineers, technicians, planners, and supervisors struggle with fundamental questions related to information returned on the work order form, for example:

• “How to identify failure mode instances accurately and consistently so as to enable subsequent reliability analysis and decision modeling.”
• “How much detail is enough but not too much?” and
• “How should one record a failure mode instance as a preventive life renewal (called a suspension)?
• “How can one distinguish a suspension from a potential failure”, and
• “How to keep the EAM catalogs, the RCM knowledge base, and observed reality in sync.
• “How to record observations from PM checklists, outages, and turnarounds in the EAM so that they are analyzable.”

Resolving these issues within a pilot will bring to the maintenance organization its ultimate objective, that of achieving reliability from data in verifiable ways.

© 2011 – 2018, Murray Wiseman. All rights reserved.