The ''Maintenance Insanity'' Cure: Practical Solutions to Improve Maintenance Work. Roger D. Lee
alt="img"/> Desired start. This is the date and time that the equipment will be available and ready for maintenance.
Specify the consequences of not meeting this end date. Planning is required to ensure that resources and materials can be available to meet the specified deadline.
Step 2: Select a priority. The maintenance coordinator/production assistant in conjunction with maintenance will select a priority from the choices provided based on the input from Step 1.
Priority 1: Emergency.* An emergency work notification form must be completed and handled according to the defined process. A management review will be conducted for each form to ensure accountability.
1. Imminent risk of safety incident that cannot be mitigated by other means. Mitigation might involve the use of caution tape, signs, or barricades to prevent access to a safety hazard. It also might involve moving a portable eyewash station to an area where the permanent eyewash station is damaged.
2. Environmental impact that cannot be mitigated by other means. For some applications, a bucket or pan placed under a drip will mitigate an environmental problem until a repair can be planned and executed.
3. Shutdown of operating equipment that must run today to meet the business plan or to meet regulatory requirements. This does not apply to process equipment that can be safely bypassed and operated until a planned repair can be made.
* An emergency is when a real and immediate threat exists to life, health, or property. Substantial production losses will occur if immediate action is not taken. By definition, emergency work is performed without formal planning. Work is to start immediately and to be carried through until the malfunction is corrected. Overtime is authorized. For all other priorities, overtime is to be scheduled by authorization only.
Priority A: One to three days (moderate safety risk or potential production loss). A malfunction exists that will generate a Priority E (emergency) if not addressed within 72 hours of notification.
Conditions include
Priority B: One week (redundant equipment and some predictive and PM work). This is a request that can be handled in the regular course of maintenance performance and services as populated on the schedule, but it has been identified as needing completion within a set time frame due to miscellaneous reasons.
Priority C: Two to three weeks (low-risk safety-related work, most predictive and PM work and improvements). This is a request that can be scheduled for the regular course of maintenance performance; services and preventive maintenance tasks that populate the schedule as resources are available: calibrations, ISO, MI, SIS, etc. Maintenance specifies the timing and need for overtime.
Priority D: Fill-in (one week to three months) and capital work. Fill-in jobs require little or no preparation by operations or maintenance to perform. Only a safe work permit is typically required. These jobs can normally be started and stopped with little loss in effectiveness. The planner will estimate the labor-hours required to complete. Capital jobs have to be scoped out to allow the maintenance crew to be pulled off as required.
Priority S: Shutdown. This work can only be performed during a plant turnaround or equipment outage. Plant turnaround refers to the time during the year when processes are shut down to allow for preventive maintenance, modifications to installed equipment, and new equipment or building installations.
Safety and regulatory note: Work that has to be completed to address a law or regulatory or safety concern needs to be worked into the schedule ASAP but not on an emergency basis. True safety and regulatory concerns must have adequate detail provided to be evaluated for immediate threat of life, health, and property.
Step 3: Set and communicate priorities. The production assistant/maintenance coordinator will review the work notification listing on a weekday basis for setting priorities with maintenance and will communicate these priorities to the maintenance planner and scheduler.
Step 4: Review backlogs to ensure priorities. The maintenance planner, scheduler, and supervisors will review the work order list on a weekday basis and review the backlog on a (minimum) weekly basis to ensure priorities are managed. The work order backlog review is to be part of the week-ahead scheduling meeting for customer input and concerns. Backlog searches can be made for different date ranges.
Once you have everyone participating, the last step to continual improvement is to periodically check and see if you have really changed.
For the vision of the planning and scheduling processes to have optimum positive impact, the following changes must occur:
1. A true partnership among operations, maintenance, and stores exists with improved communication that results in more efficient work being performed.
2. The maintenance coordinator (MC) filters all notifications and feeds more complete information to all maintenance forces with as much lead time as possible. Lead operators support the MC in permit and equipment preparations especially during outages.
3. Planners minimize today’s activities to only quick value-adding contributions and focus on tomorrow and beyond to make job packages for all planned jobs.
4. The maintenance team manager works in the field supporting and building mechanic capabilities and resolving execution concerns.
5. The scheduler (not the planner) focuses on coordination and communication with all resources to create and execute the daily schedule.
6. The material coordinator (relief planner) is the first point of contact for hustling parts and materials for emergency and planned jobs. Mechanics continue working on assigned jobs while the materials are being obtained and brought to them to expedite completion.
7. Backup relief is in place for all key players in the P&S processes. Relieving each other or covering two jobs does not allow progress to be made.
8. Mechanics provide feedback for continual improvement to BOMs and job plans.
9. We schedule 100% of available resources daily with fill-in jobs available as a contingency.
10. We are getting better at saying today what we are going to do tomorrow and sticking to it.
11. Maintenance knows who is coming to work in its area tomorrow and communicates it to operations for night shift preparations.
12. The focus on daily schedules based on labor-hour job estimates is resulting in more work being performed.
13. Flexing within areas is allowing requested work to be done with less overtime. Designated resources are freed up in advance to prepare for shutdown work.
In the next chapter, we will add more structure to create a true planning and scheduling process to ensure we stop doing the same things over and over by fixing small issues before they become the big problems that keep us trapped in the maintenance insanity cycle.