How to increase your maintenance crew’s productivity?

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.