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.

An enterprise that wants to implement a standard reliability strategy across multiple sites must confront the implication of this statement.

Most mining enterprises do not have cookie-cutter plants or facilities. The locations will vary in age of equipment and workers. The quality [...]]]> Have you ever heard the expression “Life’s how it is, not how it ought to be?”

An enterprise that wants to implement a standard reliability strategy across multiple sites must confront the implication of this statement.

Most mining enterprises do not have cookie-cutter plants or facilities. The locations will vary in age of equipment and workers. The quality of regional raw materials may be different. Plants near metropolitan centers may have high turnover while those in small towns may be staffed with “lifers.” Cultures can be different. Some plants are union free and historically have had good relations between hourly and management. Others have histories filled with mistrust and arbitrary rule enforcement.

Non-standard plant circumstances force the enterprise to find the right balance between centralization and decentralization. When do you standardize in the name of the enterprise and when must decision-making be left to local management?

Before some of these balances can be discovered, an enterprise must face the truth of “how it is.” Confronting the brutal facts of reality can be more difficult than it sounds.

If a company has spent millions of dollars on a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), it may not be pleasant to find out that most of the collected data is jumbled. If hundreds of thousands of dollars has been spent on vibration equipment & training, it may be painful to learn that the well-intentioned but part-time vibration specialist did not develop sophisticated time waveform analysis capabilities. If a loyal, friendly, experienced worker has been functioning as a planner for years, it’s hard to confront the fact his actual contribution is clerical in nature – and clerical contributions do not yield the productivity gains of planners who actually plan.

So – how does an enterprise face these brutal facts?

(1) Differentiate process from people. Remember that workers – especially long-time employees – are usually well intentioned. Organizations must consciously create work processes that focus on productivity & proactivity; these things do not naturally emerge without guidance and direction. A planner who focuses on non-productive behaviors is not necessarily a bad employee. The proper routines, tasks, and rules may not have been properly defined for him. When you view your organization through a process lens rather than a people lens, it is easier communicate without your employees feeling defensive or attacked.

(2) Hire a consulting firm. The reality is – the objective, third party gaze can often see things more clearly. Consultants aren’t smarter. They aren’t more knowledgeable about the operation of the plant. But if they are experienced, they are able to quickly zoom in on things that are indicative of a healthy reliability system. (Can the plant easily print a sorted list of Ready to Schedule work? Are the Preventive Maintenance tasks specifically defined?) As outsiders, consultants also have the luxury of remaining emotionally detached from existing relationship & histories between people & departments. This clinical disposition means they won’t be as easily swayed by charisma, earnestness, anger, or old wounds that won’t heal. Good consultants know they cannot add value to an enterprise if they are simply telling their clients what they may want to hear – or if they are ignoring the white elephant in the room. They know that a reliability initiative has to be built on a foundation of transparency and a clear assessment of current conditions.

(3) Establish norms around honest and respectful communication. Respect is important, as snippy exhortations about “ugly babies” and “garbage-in, garbage-out” data will get old real fast if the feedback has a tattle-tale quality. Stick to observations, not judgments about personalities. Accumulate multiple observations before drawing firm conclusions. Don’t just ask about problems that have occurred – ask about the frequency of those problems. Are parts/materials really never available when jobs are assigned, or did this only happen one time, three years ago? And never, ever retaliate against someone after you have given them permission to speak freely. If you do, you will never hear another honest observation again.

Reliability is a data driven field. It is a science. It has objective metrics. Although it may fail in the short-term (a vibration test may fail to identify a loose bolt) – over time, consistent application of reliability concepts produce huge dollar savings. Sycophantic relationships will destroy reliability. Transparent, data-driven decision making must be the norm; otherwise, reliability is just a meaningless label to smack onto old habits. But before an enterprise can begin its reliability journey, it must have an honest assessment of where it is at.

What are other ways an organization can get a good assessment of its current reliability situation?