First and foremost maintenance departments must be governed by “business objectives” that are aligned with those of the company. These may include profitability, productivity, competitive position and employee development.

 

Short term goals provide specific detailed target results and can generally be accomplished within one year. Examples might include reducing overtime by 2% of implementing a training program.

 

An important starting point is for an organization to know how much a maintenance department costs. Best practice maintenance costs are 1.8% to 2% of the replacement value of the plant while the worst are more than 5% of asset replacement value per year.

 

A study conducted by General Motors Advanced Engineering Group found more than half of all maintenance performed was reactive; preventive maintenance activities account for one third of the effort with world class at just under 50% of all activities; predictive maintenance averaged only 13% of maintenance activities.

 

Basic principles that can be applied within any company include:

- Pre-planning and scheduling of work

- Improving parts and material availability

- Implementing self directed dispatching based upon a meaningful priority system

- Identifying and establishing a meaningful backlog comprised of corrective, routine preventive, and predictive work

- Identifying, managing, and deploying spare parts and materials

 

REACTIVE REGIMES

 

When maintenance is reactive it is often characterised by a range of factors. Low equipment reliability can often be masked by high equipment availabilities. Closer analysis can show that equipment with high availabilities is also breaking down frequently.

 

Low mean time to repair can often be very misleading as to the performance of the plant equipment as a whole. In a reactive state, it is often very low. This is because the workforce is accustomed to having to repair equipment quickly. Although a positive, in terms of workforce abilities, it often indicates a situation in which the plant itself is often failing.

 

One of the lead on effects of low equipment reliability is the inability of the maintenance store to accurately control the level of inventory required. When they cannot be sure what will be required tomorrow, it is impossible to construct anything like a long-range plan for managing the inventory levels in a satisfactory manner.

 

The flow on from poor inventory planning is the number of uncontrolled stores that maintenance departments are inclined to keep. This is due to the fact that maintenance has no confidence in the store department to adequately maintain the levels of stock required and stems from the poor equipment reliability.

 

With the effects of all of the factors above, the workforce in this situation is generally extremely reactive in nature. When trying to change the corporate culture of an organization, this can often be one of the most difficult areas to change. The workforce takes a great deal of pride in its abilities to keep the plant running, and rightly so. There is a tendency to want to run off and “save the day.”

 

PLANNED MAINTENANCE

 

In contrast, a planned state of maintenance includes the following factors:

 

Control over the maintenance resources

When correct maintenance planning and scheduling procedures are introduced, there is often a vast and rapid change in the understanding of what is required of the maintenance resources from week to week. This can easily extend to monthly planning periods.

 

Increased inventory control

The twin effects of increased equipment reliability and better planning and scheduling lead directly to increased control over the through puts of the maintenance stores.

 

Elimination of much of the “waste” of the business processes

With accurate planning and scheduling processes, much of the waste in the processes will cease to exist. Waste appears generally in the form of waiting times for materials, equipment availability and in the provision of inaccurate information.

 

Increased accuracy in maintenance budgeting

With the increases in equipment reliability, large gains in budget accuracy are immediately possible. The ability to forecast maintenance requirements, either by equipment or activity, is vastly enhanced when a company reaches the planned stage of maintenance.

 

Reduced maintenance costs

In conservative terms, a task that has been planned and scheduled is at least 50% more efficient in terms of both costs and time to complete. Using this as a standard and applying it to the amount of tasks that are now executed in an unplanned fashion we can easily see the range of savings that are possible.

 

Moving an organization from “Reactive Status” to “Planned Status” involves six steps (covered in detail in Daryl Mather’s book, Maintenance Management The Planned State).

 

- Establish Business Rules and Guidelines

- CMMS System

- Work Process Definition

- Equipment Strategies

- Exception and Functional Reports

- KPI Reports (Key performance Indicator)

 

The desire to become as successful as the best in the world is a heady goal but one that is achievable with an intense effort.

 

* Adapted with permission from a report written by Randy Fizer of US coal mining company, Arch Coal.