Creating Reliability in FM with Andy Gaily

Quotes:

“They always used to talk about downtime, downtime, downtime, and I always used to try and turn a conversation around, that we should be accentuating the positive and be talking about the uptime.” (7:48) – Andy Gailey

“I think if you talk to a lot of people in maintenance reliability, we all fall into it. There’s not many people actually set out to become a reliability and a maintenance leader.” (13:01) – Andy Gailey

“You’ve got to make sure that the things that drive your plant and drive your machinery are probably one of the highest and highly critical areas.” (17:55) – Andy Gailey

“So when we look at time, when you’ve lost time in a production department or a facilities department, it’s gone forever. So, what do you do? You have to spend more time… making up for what you miss.” (34:00) – Andy Gailey

Creating Reliability in FM with Andy Gailey

“Without a plan, everything’s just a wish.” (19:22) – Andy Gailey

We are always looking at different facets of FM to relearn and jump into topics in more detail. We hopped across the pond for this episode, and you won’t want to miss a second of it!

Host Shawn Black was joined by Andy Gailey, who has a heart for helping people create reliability in the facility maintenance community. Andy is the founding director of UPTIME Consultant Ltd, an independent productivity company based in Coventry, West Midlands. By using proven productivity strategies, their goal is to assist in increasing the UPTIME of their clients. UPTIME consultants use a holistic and strategic approach to create maximum benefits, such as proven cost benefits and experience in productivity and reliability engineering.

In this episode, they were able to break down the importance of creating a sustainable strategy around the reliability and uptime in facility maintenance. Through strategic and intentional consultations, Andy has seen improvement. This gets us hopeful and excited about the evolving nature of FM that will hopefully impact FM across the world!

With over four decades of experience in aerospace, automotive, utilities, and food sectors Andy had a wealth of knowledge. Andy’s skills in connecting with people and processing the best strategies to sustain reliability helped him to transition from his trade of mechanical production engineering into the consultant strategist role within UPTIME.

Going back in time, what started as a mechanical engineering apprenticeship at 16 took Andy to PepsiCo’s first Dorito plant in the UK. Andy’s desire to understand why specific machines and parts would or would not break kept his mind up at night. One day the operations manager decided that the plant needed to become less reactive to each broken down appliance; therefore a condition monitoring and lubrication strategy would be the best fix. They gave Andy the reins on that new strategy, and he did just that for the next nine years. Thus began the desire to create a reliability consultancy.

While UPTIME does focus on capital, Andy has found the secret to be combining that with the people and the specific processes that benefit them most. Giving long-term goals, complex solutions, and personalized feedback, UPTIME has been able to see success left and right. Honesty is policy, and any quick fix is not in the cards for their consultations. They will go on the journey with you, but setbacks and failures and innovations will happen along the way, claims Andy.

Predictive maintenance departments and planned preventative strategies will take maximum effort and time on the front end with minimal results at first. Then, the benefit will be tenfold; their clients just must commit to the process and believe it will have a long-term positive outcome.

The three resource constraints, time, money, and labor, also greatly affect UPTIME’s successful consultant model. Realizing that the three are finite and are of utmost importance is the first step. Then delving into how each is used, misused, or forgotten helps create a plan for team members and companies that can help turn those big picture goals into everyday choices.

“It’s a bitter pill I have to serve to some people. I’ll say, ‘Guess what, [you] need to do less planned maintenance, do more proactive, predictive, do more on your lubrication front that will drive down your unplanned downtime and drive your time against costs down.” (36:56) – Andy Gailey

As we all know, people in the FM industry can become hyper-focused. Without being able to step back and see the bigger picture, the minutiae of the day will take importance. Some have coined this as the tyranny of the urgent. Consultants with UPTIME not only look at the positive but help you step back and make those big-picture goals to implement in the daily choices.

“That’s going on day-to-day, they never have the opportunity to stand back and take in what the big picture is, and where they want to be in 12 months, three years, or five years…” (21:01) – Andy Gailey

Let’s Keep The Conversation Going!

FM Evolution is proud to present professionals like Andy, who help grow us in knowledge and insight! Creating a system of reliability and trust is of utmost importance, and we are excited to see what UPTIME Consultant Ltd is up to next!