Maintenance Management 101: Part 2

Maintenance Management 101: Part 2

• Preventive and predictive maintenance is the most important work you can do.
  There is a big difference between “urgent” and “important”. PM/PdM activities are not urgent, but they are important. If you defer these tasks because some urgent activity is allowed to take precedence, the consequence will be a failure at some point in the future. The future failure will very likely cause more PM/PdM to be deferred, resulting in another failure, etc., etc. It’s a vicious cycle that has no end!
  
  Keeping up with scheduled proactive activities is the only way to break the cycle. You must make PM/PdM work a high priority and make sure the tasks get done according to the schedule. A good way to do this is to populate the weekly work schedule with some portion of low priority work on equipment that does not require a process outage to execute. This is the work you can defer if an emergency occurs. If your schedule contains only high priority work, you will be forced to make a decision to defer something of equal importance. And, if you defer PM/PdM work, your organization will quickly come to the conclusion that you’re not serious about the proactive maintenance environment.
  
  Another way to show the importance of PM/PdM is to audit the program periodically. Since the routine can get somewhat boring, there is a tendency for crafts people to be “less than diligent” in their execution. However, if the manager spot-checks after a PM has been done and provides prompt feedback if something is amiss, the expectations become very clear. Also, an equipment failure is a great time to audit the PM/PdM activity. One of the first questions that should be asked after an equipment failure is “Why didn’t our PM/PdM program prevent this?”



• Proper planning of maintenance work will provide you with free labor.
  Statistical work sampling studies show that the BEST productivity (hands-on-tools-time) you can expect without planning is around 35%. Most reactive organizations are lower than that. The remaining 65% of the craftsperson’s day is spent trying to find parts, looking for technical information, talking to Operations to see what’s wrong with the equipment, and other nonproductive activities. If you have 20 people in your crew, they are doing the equivalent work of 7 people at 100% productivity. In essence, you’re paying for 13 people who aren’t adding value to your organization.
  
  Some productivity loss is unavoidable; planning the work in advance will eliminate the avoidable delays. With good planning, you can expect a workforce productivity of 55% or better. That’s a 57% improvement in the amount of work your crew can do in a day. Do the math; your 20-person workforce can now do the work of 11 people at 100% productivity. You just added the equivalent of four people to your workforce - at no additional cost! In addition, your workforce is less frustrated because they have what they need to do a quality job.
  
  Planning also provides other benefits. Since the planning function is so integrated into the work management process, it provides the “glue” that holds it together and ensures that it functions properly. Planners also provide a “quality assurance” function to make sure that the data in your system is accurate and meaningful. Considering these benefits, a good planner can be one of the most valuable members of your organization!



• You have to build a partnership with Operations.
  One of the easiest traps to fall into is to create an adversarial relationship with the Operations organization. After all, if they wouldn’t break it, you wouldn’t have to fix it, right? Bet if you asked them, they’d say that if you’d fix it correctly, it wouldn’t break. You spend a lot of time and effort trying to decide who gets the “blame” for an equipment failure, and it usually winds up in your lap. This is a counterproductive situation and one that is guaranteed to cause your maintenance process to be reactive.
  
  Face it; your functions are interdependent. The plant cannot exist without Operations, nor can it exist without Maintenance. Neither function can be successful without the other. A proactive Maintenance function is dependent on operators being the “first line of defense” and taking responsibility for equipment care. It is also dependent on getting necessary downtime for correcting problems discovered on predictive inspections. Your weekly work schedule is worthless if Operations is not involved in its creation because they have to commit to the equipment being available at the appointed time.
  
  A great way to build a partnership is to sit down with your Operations counterpart and have a frank discussion about what each needs from the other in order to be successful. Draft a “partnership agreement” that spells out, in writing, your responsibilities to each other. Commit to it, sign it, and review it periodically to make sure you are both complying with it.