Lost Time Is Never Found Again!
This is Issue #19 for this Bi-weekly Newsletter and this week we are featuring Progressive Plan Inc Founder Chris Postill, with a few thoughts on Lost Time.
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As a society, I believe it is safe to say we have a pretty good handle on Lost Time due to injury, accidents, or illness.
What about unproductive lost time??
How do we reduce the costs associated with unproductive lost time?
It is important first to define what unproductive lost time is, and to understand the impact it has on the project or work scope, and ultimately the costs associated with it.
With this submission, I’ll help define Unproductive lost time.
We’ll address the thought process to approach a solution later.
At a high level, unproductive lost time is time that is being billed for, and paid for, but that is not driving work or activities in support of the agreed upon KPIs.
When looking at individuals working inside a team, taking a break or stepping away for 15 minutes shouldn’t really be much of an impact on the project, right??
15 Minutes could be a few smoke breaks, using the bathroom, a micro break, stepping away for phone calls, etc.?
It could be anything really, and let’s be honest, it’s only 15 minutes, right?
Really not a huge deal out of a 10-hour shift, right?
Maybe 15 minutes lost for one person doesn’t move the accounting needle far on the balance sheet, but what happens when it is 50 people?
Or 200?
When considering efficiencies of scale, 15 minutes for 1 person seems quite negligible with nothing to bother anyone over.
Many projects have well over 200 people working consistently, 200 x 15=3000.?
3000 Minutes!
50 Hours!!
Consider the largest project or organization you have been a part of.
Without even considering personal patterns or habits, think about the daily organizational process that was implemented.
Safety meetings, Announcements, break-times, the walk periods to and from the break rooms.
Remember, these are systemic procedural wastes, we’re not even looking at individual habits of micro breaks, smoke breaks, bathroom breaks.
How often do we schedule work to 100% available capacity, knowing that we haven’t provided the framework to work to 100% capacity?
Never mind the average unproductive lost time for personal reasons and individual habits.
Then we spend hours analyzing where we went wrong, how are we going to improve, without ever addressing the actual problem.
We’re inefficient and we refuse to accept it.
When viewing the lost time with such granularity to show individuals, or individual work scopes, it is easy to miss the larger impact on the project.
A holistic view of the overall labor will aid in providing a much clearer line of sight to the financial impacts of the unproductive time.
One can apply industry averages, or benchmarks, to planning and setting their KPIs.
How many hours of unproductive lost time are acceptable?
It’s completely unrealistic to assume that an individual can and will be 100% efficient and 100% productive.
Even robots need maintenance and servicing.
But this question bears repeating, how many hours of unproductive lost time are acceptable?
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There is no definitive answer or a one-size-fits-all acceptable number.
Part of the answer will derive from the industry averages.
Part of the answer will be the financial comfort level of each individual organization.
Part of the answer will be found within the culture of the organization.
Taking a hard, honest look within our own organizations, questions may be:
·????????Are we maximizing and optimizing our leaders, and our teams, time and capabilities?
·????????Have we set appropriate KPIs?
·????????Have we effectively planned our work? (For other industries, say, Restaurant and Service. Is our staff appropriately equipped, trained and do we have the right team for the expected work-load / rushes).
·????????Are we controlling and monitoring our overall output (Earned vs. Burned comes into play here) and performance, through effective scheduling.
The information below, extracted from the PMPT Technical Manual, showcases acceptable lost time on a 10 Hour shift within a Turnaround scenario.
Performance Efficiency
Productivity can be defined as the hours estimated compared to the hours earned.
Efficiency is the variance between the estimated man-hours allotted and the actual man-hours used to complete the activities.
As a result of the planning detail, it is possible to analyze activity by activity, but generally efficiency is calculated as a percentage of the total hours available during a shift to the total hours earned.
Not all of the time that a person is on shift is “wrench” time.
Execution Phase
Manpower Efficiency (dayshift, good weather, work at grade)
Maximum # of minutes per working 10 hour shift 600 min.
Acceptable Lost Time
¨ Toolbox talk 15 min.
¨ Pick up tools 15 min.
¨ 2 – Coffee breaks 30 min.
¨ Drop off tools 15 min.
¨ End-of-day clean up 15 min.
¨ Meetings (orientation, safety, coordination, etc.) 45 min.
Inherent Lost Time
¨ Walking time (8 trips x 10 min) 80 min.
¨ Work explanation (4 x 10 min) 40 min.
Lost time is 255 minutes or 43 percent, leaving 345 minutes or 57 percent available for actual work. This is the base line for “wrench” time efficiency.
Anticipated lost time
¨ Personal (4x15 min) 60 min.
Total lost time is 315 minutes or 53 percent, leaving 285 minutes or 47 percent available for actual work. This is the realistic base line for “wrench” time efficiency.
The maximum “wrench” time to be expected per shift is: 285 minutes or 47%
We know, by this simple analysis that we can only expect 50% Performance Efficiency on our best days.
So the question becomes, when the cost of Turnaround Time costs as much as $27.00 per second -- (That's right, per second, 24 hours per day, from Feed out to Feed in, calculated from Budget = $100MM, Schedule = 42 days) -- and our "Best Case Scenario" is a mere 50% PF; how much effort are we willing to invest to hold the line on Lost Time?
Our answer to this question matters a great deal, because...
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Systems Integrator | Technologist | Author | Educator
2 年There's certainly no 'one-size-fits-all' here. It really depends on the work being produced. There are times when I've been in meetings, had hallway conversations, sat outside and smoked with co-workers, and literally stood and stared at the wall...I did nothing that would appear to move the needle on the output. Except my brain kept moving. And because my brain kept moving, I came up with solutions and insights that resolved problems that had plagued teams for over 10 years, implemented them with half the effort, and realized improvement quickly. So how was 'doing nothing' more efficient than anything done prior?
Helping multinationals navigate the ever-changing international landscape of regulations & risk management in cross-border Trade.
2 年Well now that you add it all up...
Chaos Calmer ||| Virtual Assistant/OBM ||| Problem Solver ||| B2B Collaborator
2 年Peter Reier and Progressive Plan Inc. we all know that saying "time is money". It's so true!
Overcome sales objections, ghosting and prospecting challenges. Personalised 1:1 Sales & LinkedIn coaching. Interactive Group Training. Influencer marketing deals with Salesforce, BRITA and Hubspot
2 年This is something I’ve never actually spent time thinking about Peter Reier yet it’s so important. Thank you.
Senior Advisor @ Advando Americas | Building High-Performance Teams
2 年At 62 years old, it's a good bet that I've Lost, Wasted, and otherwise mis-placed enough Time to complete a Doctorate degree. It doesn't need to be as big as Facility Turnaround for Lost Time to matter. #justsayin ??