Healthy Equipment Under Autonomous Maintenance

Autonomous maintenance as part of the TPM program, guarantees reliability in our machinery. It provides the confidence needed in order to meet the high production standards that Casa Sauza has; avoids stopping production line and  unnecessary costs and, eliminates reprocessing. In my 8 years of experience as a Maintenance Engineer at Casa Sauza, I have come to understand that the Health in Machinery is successfully achieved when direct users (operators) implement a good Autonomous Maintenance.

Do you want to know how Casa Sauza does it?

Health. This concept in the Spanish language is so broad that it allows us to use it even when talking about industrial production machinery. The concept of healthy makes reference to what is being done in order to preserve or restore health. It can be as concrete as carrying out an activity or as abstract a keeping a habit.

Healthy is everything that contributes to increase, restore and preserve well-being.

At Casa Sauza, production equipment operators look forward to keeping their machines healthy, the same way that a parent looks after the health of his children. This analogy helps us understand the importance of the role that a production operator has in this area, as well as the relationship that he must establish with the machinery that we works with. This is how operators achieve a high level of sensitivity and understanding towards the signs and symptoms that the machine shows, operators become some sort of human sensors. At a home, a parent develops such an advanced sensibility towards his children that whenever there is a change in his child, no matter how subtle it is, he has a chance to act accordingly and on time. Acting in a timely manner allows us to add an additional variable to our formula: Prevention.

Prevention is what we call to the series of measurement and dispositions held in advance, as to avoid any negative situations that may happen during our processes.

What does Autonomous Maintenance Seek to Achieve?

In Autonomous Maintenance, prevention is what is sought for the most, so that any situation that may adversely affect our process is restrained by means of the activities and natural daily habits of the operator. This behavior indirectly leads us to keep our machines healthy.

The operator and his relationship with the machinery under the Autonomous Maintenance program

When this fusion between the machines and their "parents"/operators is achieved, a sense of belonging is generated: the sense of belonging in Casa Sauza operators is perceived naturally, since they are the triggers that make the support areas respond in a timely manner.

In the same way that a father has the habit of taking his children to the doctor, either for a routine check-up or whenever they show a not-so-normal condition, the operator keeps close communication with Planned Maintenance. Planned maintenance is the specialized "medical department" that controls all the check-ups that have been made and has the adequate technical preparation needed to give an answer to the anomalies reported by the operator, the "father".

Habits that a good operator has facing Autonomous Maintenance

• Cleanliness

For starters, a good basic cleanliness.
Keeping the equipments clean is key to their whole usefulness and health, which is why, Casa Sauza keep this habit on an everyday basis, as part of its culture.

• Elimination

Cut all sources of contamination and hard-access areas from the bottom. A clean person is not the one that cleans the most but the one that keeps things clean. Therefore, everything that makes it difficult to keep the equipment clean and healthy, must be eliminated.

• Basic Standards

Preparation of provisional standards

The standards help operators not get distracted with daily demands and keep focused on the fundamental, which is to keep the equipment healthy.

• Staff training for Autonomous Maintenance.

General inspection

At this point, the operator has such sensitivity and intimate relationship towards his equipment, that this indirectly "forces" him to get some training in the basic knowledge of the equipment. This will allow him to understand its behavior and thus, give it a healthy quality of life.

• Specialized Standards

Autonomous inspection

Once the operator reaches a level of perfect understanding of the functioning of his equipment, cleanness and care acquire a sense of cause, which will not only keep machinery healthy but will also help achieve an exemplary production.

• General Standard

Daily management system

Just as the equipments keep a healthy quality of life, Casa Sauza's main objective is to guarantee healthy processes that, in addition, will reflect its culture of high quality standards in their product.

Guiding and caring for the staff that carries out the Autonomous Maintenance program is crucial to achieving a successful program, one that will lead us to Continuous Improvement and consequently, to achieve the 4 zeros:

1. zero breakdowns
2. zero stopping production processes
3. zero accidents
4. zero reprocessing

All of which will guarantee the efficiency and quality that is expected from our processes.

Come and visit Casa Sauza so you can learn how the modernization of our production processes deliver the purest tequila that you will find in the market.