“Maintenance planning is too hard in my workplace!”
I have heard this stated hundreds of times, and in some ways I agree with it. If maintenance planning was easy, everyone would be World Class and wrench time would be above 55% in all organizations and at the same time "Human Error" would be low. However, less than 2% of companies can honestly say they are World Class – that’s a small club, wouldn’t you say?
Identify where you are let’s begin with a few questions so you can measure the effectiveness of your current maintenance planning and scheduling function.
1. Do you measure Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) or Maintenance Rework?
2. Do you have a maintenance planner?
3. Does your planner get involved in emergency or urgent work?
4. Does your planner have repeatable and effective work procedures for all critical or repeatable work? Note: Repeatable and Effective Work Procedures have, at a minimum:
- Step by step repeatable instructions to ensure everyone conducts Preventive, Corrective, and Lubrication maintenance following the same process and procedures
- Parts are kitted or staged before the job is scheduled
- Coordination was defined in the work package
- Specifications and Standards are defined
5. Are the parts kitted or staged before the work can be moved to “Ready to Schedule” status?
6. Is the backlog estimated in labor hours?
7. Is the backlog broken down into categories by labor hours, “such as waiting on parts”, “waiting on approval”, and “Ready to Schedule”? There are other possible categories, but these examples should be enough to help you understand the concept. "Note: 4-6 weeks calculated in labor hours is a typical backlog of a World Class Organization. Example: 10 maintenance technicians x 40 hours/week = 400 labor hours"This is one week of backlog.
8. Do you know the actual wrench time of your maintenance crew? If so, is it above 55%?
9. Are your emergency/urgent labor hours under 2%? Moving Forward How did you score on the questions above? The answers to these questions will help an organization identify the start of the path towards World Class Planning. Why should you be motivated to move to World Class Planning: There is no rushing around to help everyone and save the day almost every day. Wow, what a relaxing job… and it is when accomplished correctly. The most serious issue one will face when developing a maintenance planning strategy is changing the culture of maintenance technicians, maintenance supervisors, maintenance management, production, engineering, etc.
If you try to improve planning, you must address the culture first or you will never succeed. This is done through education of what true planning really is.
Let’s take a look at what Albert Einstein had to say about change:
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
The bottom line is that everyone must understand the value of maintenance planning and agree with the process. Like a wise maintenance manager at a World Class Facility (Alcoa Mt Holly) told me, “this isn’t about commitment, it is all about compliance.”
Why Is Maintenance Planning Sometimes Not Effective? Most people, when not motivated or not led by a true leader, begin to stray like lost sheep. Leadership is the first place to begin the education of true maintenance planning and also the rest of a proactive process. All the pieces need to fit together in order to achieve success.
Training is Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Best Practices is critical to increasing wrench-time and the mitigation of Human Error.
If you have questions or like a copy of this article email me at [email protected]
Assistant Manager, Power & Utility Systems at Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc.
2 年Great writeup. Pointed out simple KPIs to monitor and improve to attain high maintenance planning level.
Chair Professor in Predictive Maintenance/PdM & Tribology EAFIT University in Predictive Maintenance & Tribology
2 年Ricky . Thanks a lot for the invitatión. I was in USA in January, May and June. So, I′m not going more again in 2022
Electrical Engineer, Senior Electrical Specialist at Therma Visayas Inc.
2 年Ricky Smith CMRP, CMRT, CRL what is the percentage for the time spent for securing safety permits and documents? I cannot clearly identify it in your pie chart. Please advice.
District Equipment Fleet Manager at VDOT
2 年Ricky, great article! I believe many folks miss the culture aspect which must be accomplished to be successful. I always was amazed at people both up and down the chain of command that didn't understand that and really didn't have a complete understanding of maintenance itself. As a maintenance leader we must identify the lack of education and more importantly why. Sadly many just throw money at the problem and for a short time that will generate some positive results but ultimately the bean counters will identify the waste. Which will result in the lack of credibility and ultimately failure of the maintenance program. I don't remember who said " a successful maintenance program will not be measured by how many failures that are fixed but rather how many never occur ". I believe that is attainable. Hope you are well! Carl
Director of Engineering Operations - Delivering reliability, maintenance, engineering, and operations excellence.
2 年Great article, I would cap it by stating “Choose your hard…” Maintenance planning and scheduling is hard.? Operating an ineffective, inefficient, reactionary maintenance program that is wrought with error, rework, and waste is hard. Choose your hard.