Establishing Planning Norms: Key Elements for Maximizing Maintenance Efficiency
Maintenance planning norms are essential for both routine and shutdown/turnaround maintenance operations, providing standardized guidelines for resource allocation across regular or standard maintenance activities. These norms optimize resource utilization, streamline contracting and costing processes, and maximize productivity by ensuring efficient scheduling and allocation of resources. By adhering to these norms, organizations mitigate the risks of resource misallocation and enhance cost-effectiveness in maintenance operations, ultimately improving overall efficiency and reducing operational costs.
Central to the concept of planning norms is the notion of standardization. By standardizing activities based on various maintenance scenarios, organizations can accurately estimate the required resources, skill sets, and duration for each activity under ideal conditions. This standardized approach not only fosters consistency but also facilitates efficient resource allocation, enabling teams to deliver flawless maintenance outcomes within stipulated timeframes.
Modern digital planning and execution monitoring tools significantly contribute to the development and standardization of planning norms across the organization, enhancing the organizational knowledge base and reducing reliance on tacit knowledge. This enables planners to consistently deliver high-quality planning regardless of their competency level.
Planning norms are dynamic and improve over time alongside technological advancements and shifting industry landscapes, encompassing the latest best practices, organizational knowledge base, expert insights, and global engineering standards. This continuous refinement ensures the relevance and effectiveness of planning norms in addressing the specific requirements of each maintenance scenario.
Planning norms consist of two main components: firstly, estimating the duration and resources ideally required for executing a standard activity, particularly focusing on tool time effort; and secondly, integrating a lost time factor. The lost time factor typically refers to the time lost due to various factors, nonproductive time, such as site preparation, logistics, and other non-wrench time during activity execution. This may be influenced by factors including location accessibility, process criticality, organizational policies and procedures, applicable local laws, job complexity, and asset age, etc.. By considering these variables, organizations can achieve more precise estimations, thereby reducing the risk of delays and inefficiencies.
Example of Planning Norms:
Consider the task of opening a 24”x150lb manway on a pressure vessel positioned one meter above the ground level. To estimate the labour hours needed, for instance, opening the manway may require 1.3 hours of work by two labourers – one Fitter and one Semiskilled worker – totalling 2.6 man-hours. However, it's essential to incorporate a lost time factor to account for additional time spent on site preparation, obtaining permits, and mobilization. Assuming a 40% extra time requirement, the lost time factor becomes 1.4.
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Thus, the final estimate for opening the manway is obtained by multiplying the labour hours by the lost time factor, resulting in 3.64 man-hours. Alternatively, it could be expressed as the requirement for two labourers to work for 1.7 hours each to accomplish the task.
It's important to note that this estimation may vary based on factors such as changes in flange size or flange rating, leading to a change in the number of bolts associated. For instance, if the flange rating changes to 300lb for the 24” manway, the effort needed by two labourers may increase to 1.6 hours instead of 1.3 hours.
This process enables us to calculate the direct labour hours for activities. The allocation of team lead and supervisory resources can be estimated by applying a standard ratio to the direct labour hours. For example, a team lead is typically required for every 7 to 10 direct labourers, and a supervisor is required for every 5 to 7 team leads. The same supervisor ratio can also be applied to estimate other supporting personnel, such as safety, quality control, etc.
The resources baseline established through this process serve as the basis for fairly evaluating the contract proposals, ensuring that contractors are committed to deploying the minimum required resources with appropriate skills and supervision within the defined scope and cost.
In essence, planning norms play a pivotal role in achieving organizational maturity in maintenance and turnaround planning and preparation processes, providing a standardized framework for estimating activity durations and allocating resources. Adhering to these norms enhances maintenance efficiency, minimizes downtime, and ultimately leads to superior maintenance outcomes.
As maintenance practices evolve, the importance of robust planning norms in driving efficiency and productivity remains undisputed. They are an indispensable tool for modern organizations striving for excellence in maintenance and turnaround management.
Article has been authored by Anil Sasi , PMP ( Head Turnaround Excellence @ Maximl )
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