BridgeGap Engineering Blog » Work Management

Quote of the Day (2/18/2010)

Lehigh Ben — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:18:17 +0000

“You are a leader if your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more.” – John Quincy Adams

This is the maxim that the leaders of BGE feel encompasses the atmosphere and culture they are trying to live and work by. For more information on this and other leadership topics, see the following article in PE Magazine http://www.nspe.org/PEmagazine/Archives/index.html

How to increase your maintenance crew’s productivity?

GEARS2 — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:54:35 +0000

Today, more than ever, there is pressure to produce more with less. Increasing productivity at multiple plants can improve profit margins for an entire enterprise – but achieving this can be difficult. There are several ways in which a qualified planner can help maximize the productivity of your plant.

First of all, planners should not be counted on for emergency or unscheduled work. This can be a very difficult issue to resolve – after all, who better to help in an emergency than someone who knows the equipment, the parts, the tools, and can quickly throw together a repair plan? But enterprises will never get out of the vicious cycle of emergency work if reactive situations are the primary focus of the planner. Yes, there will always be emergency work. Successful enterprises have a well defined and implemented process on how to handle this type of work that does not involve the planner. Typically, emergencies are handled by the first line supervisor with the assistance of maintenance coordinators and the crafts. Remove the planners from “fire-fighting” and have them spend their time planning work to build a backlog of “ready to schedule” jobs. This future work can then be completed in a more effective and efficient manner.

Secondly, planners must plan work orders to ensure that crafts have enough information to do the job without having to stop for additional information or track down parts, materials, special tools or prints. What’s “enough” information? Planners should not be expected to articulate how many times the mechanic needs to turn the wrench, but they should provide enough detail so that a new-hire has the same chance of successfully performing the work as a mechanic with years of experience. Job stepping is crucial and a huge component to productivity

Third, planning should focus on removing all obstacles that prevent a job from being completed in a safe, efficient, & effective manner. There is nothing more frustrating for crafts than sitting around waiting for a crane or trying to locate parts and materials or a print. Parts, materials, and tools should be identified by the planner and should be available through the warehouse. Prints and drawings should also be provided, proper Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) should be identified and time must be allowed for proper documentation upon completion of the job. In addition, planners must identify multi-craft needs. How many times have you seen mechanics standing around waiting for someone else to finish a task before they can start their assigned tasks? With the assistance of your planner(s), your crews will be doing the right work, at the right time with the right materials and tools.

Finally, planners need to develop, update and maintain a library of standard job plans (SJP’s). In many plants, 50-60% of all maintenance repair work is repetitive. Why reinvent the wheel every time a motor or pump fails? After a job plan has been completed, ask for feedback and input from the craft(s) that performed the repair work. The planner updates the job plans with the information provided and saves it in an easily retrievable format. Once that pump or motor fails again, the planner can retrieve that updated best practice.

Understandably, we are in hard times and everyone is wearing multiple hats and tasked with additional job responsibilities. If your planner is spending more time coordinating emergency work than planning routine work orders, you need to redirect them to their core planning responsibilities. Your planner is crucial to making the work management process effective and efficient, and increasing the productivity of the maintenance crews.

To Centralize or Not to Centralize . . .

GEARS — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:15:18 +0000

Lately, national politics seems dominated by discussions about the expansion of the federal government. Congressional proponents & opponents of such growth probably have a mix of benevolent and malevolent intentions – but evaluating their intent is misguided (as we all know what the road to hell is paved with!) When a new topic gets on the radar screen of congress, the first question that should be asked is: can the federal government realistically manage Idea X effectively? Or is this better handled by state & local communities (if not individuals)?

Similar ‘decision-rights’ questions should be asked inside our companies, especially in the field of RAM (Reliability & Maintenance). A corporate office is well-suited to address some topics; other times, it is just getting in the way. Where should the line be drawn?

One legitimate area for centralization is equipment naming conventions. Standardizing this across multiple plants can seem tedious and frustrating in the short-term – every plant already has a language for referring to equipment that is known and understood by the workers. But the enterprise also has a need to understand & address systemic problems. Doing so requires a common language. Without that consistency, every equipment name has to be time-consumingly re-translated into a common language, which is an extremely error-prone exercise. The result can be bad data, confused communication, and poor decisions that impact the entire enterprise.

However, there are other times when a corporate entity inappropriately exerts its influence. For example, it may be tempting to have a reliability engineer write preventive maintenance (PM) inspections for plant equipment and then upload that inspection into each plant’s Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS). But even if this is well-intended, it rarely works.

First of all, the most effective inspections are ones where the plant feels a sense of ownership. If the PM is dictated from afar, it may be greeted by the plant with irritation & passive/aggressive compliance. Secondly, PM frequencies will change over time, depending on equipment age. Unless the plants are exactly the same, the one-size-fits-all approach won’t always make sense. Third, inspections need to be logically clumped into common routes so they become schedulable events. This is very difficult to do from afar and may legitimately vary from plant to plant. Finally, if the plant cannot refine a PM without going through a maze of red tape, the inspection will be ignored or pencil-whipped. PM tweaks should be commonplace and easy to accomplish.

Here are some other examples of this dynamic:

Advantageous Centralization	Problematic Centralization
Requiring all plants to keep good refractory records. (Advantage: This will ensure that good data is available for continuous improvement)	Telling plants what kind of refractory they are required to use in each section of the kiln. (Problem: Kilns are different. Proper refractory choices only come from accurate, site-specific record-keeping)
Taking advantage of a corporation’s economy of scale by establishing global purchasing arrangements for commodity goods (Advantage: Increased profit margins through cost savings for the plant)	Enterprise-wide agreements for non-commodity services like machining, welding, or engineering. (Problem: Service quality may vary widely from community to community, even if those local service providers are owned by the same company)
Creating an expectation that all plants produce daily maintenance schedules. (Advantage: Resources are productively allocated when scheduled)	Creating the daily work schedule for the plant from the corporate level. (Problem: There is too much complexity at a plant for an individual to do this effectively from afar)
Building corporate support in specialized skills such as software programming, advanced failure analysis, or vibration spectrum analysis. (Advantage: Plants may not have those skill sets available locally. There may not be enough daily demand to warrant a full time employee with that expertise)	Failing to fully engage the plant in an evaluation of the skilled support that is provided. (Problem: The advanced skill set won’t add value if the plant has no buy-in for the recommendation)

The corporate office needs to strategically choose its battles and only push for centralizing the things that it can realistically manage effectively. If the wrong battles are chosen – or if too many battles are in progress – then the corporate office may lose the ability to manage the things it is obviously well-suited to address.

What do you think? When is centralization justified? When should decision-making be squarely in the hands of the plant?

Maintenance Planning Fundamentals

GEARS2 — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:49:06 +0000

Why do so many manufacturing industries struggle to achieve success in the fundamentals of Maintenance Planning?

A few weeks ago, I conducted a maintenance planning seminar at a tradeshow in Chicago. The attendees represented various manufacturing industries from all over the United States and, a cross section of roles associated with the maintenance planning function. To my surprise, there were as many Plant Managers as there was maintenance Craft Planners in attendance. Understanding the current state of the economy, it was evident that many manufacturing companies have become experts in reactive, emergency and just-in-time maintenance.

As I watched the attendees take notes on the maintenance planning information, I was repeatedly asked, “How can my plant become less reactive?” One of the Plant Managers confessed of being overwhelmed with the increasing costs of rework, overtime, contractor usage and parts expediting. Having a full agenda to accomplish in a short time, I stopped to ask my audience, “What do you really want to take away from this seminar?” There were several comments – “What are the roles of a planner? Should planners be ordering parts and materials? What makes a good planner? Can a planner plan part- time?”

I took a deep breath and decided to take this group “back to the basics” of planning work. Moving from a reactive maintenance organization to a manageable, profitable and competitive manufacturing enterprise is not an easy task, but the climb is worth the view. World class organizations have realized that they could not succeed without implementing an efficient and effect planning process. Planning is the WHAT and HOW of accomplishing work. One of the most important fundamental of planning work is assuring that qualified planners are assigned to the planning role.

In my 10 years of maintenance management consulting and implementation, I’ve seen this reoccurring problem in many enterprises. Typically, what I experience in the field is that planners are accomplishing and doing everything but planning work. They are expediting parts and materials, involved in the coordination and oversight of emergency work, used as relief personnel, coordinating contractors and running reports for management. I’ve met several planners who were unable to write work requests and they were expected to plan work for large mechanical crews. The planner position is one of the most critical roles in the entire maintenance organization. This is not a position that should be given too someone that is on “light duty,” or retiring soon. It is paramount that these individuals have proficient Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) skills. They need to know how to move work requests through the work order system. The best planners are well organized and can multi-task. Also, they should have specific trade and plant knowledge. Plant management cannot expect a pipefitter to plan work for instrumentation and electrical trades.

Lastly, planners cannot plan from their desks. They need to get out into the plant and walk jobs to identify potential hazards, access requirements, special equipment or tool requirements, proper PPE and resource requirements. Everyday, conditions in the plant change. The most successful planners spend the necessary time in the plant and ask for input from crafts, production and engineering when needed.

Are you planners qualified to transform your maintenance organization into “World Class?”