The Key Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Duties for a Maintenance Planner Role

Hi Mike.

Firstly I would like to thank you for giving us an opportunity to share maintenance information. I have just been appointed as a Maintenance Planner responsible for planning and scheduling of all maintenance activities in a Hydro Electric Power Station. In your opinion, what is a Maintenance Planner expected to do? What is a Work Order Backlog and how do you manage it? What sort of reports is a Maintenance Planner expected to present at the Weekly Planning and Scheduling meetings?

NOTE: You can now do our online 10 module Maintenance Planning and Scheduling training course with certificate once completed. Read more at Online Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Training Course.

Hello Friend,

In answer to your questions:

What is a Maintenance Planner expected to do?

Maintenance planning has two connotations. The first is of a strategic nature involving the selection of maintenance strategies from among alternative courses of action, for the enterprise as a whole. It is, in effect, deciding in advance what maintenance types to use to manage the various operating risks of the organisation. Planning at this level assumes that rational processes can be used to nominate resources and define appropriate future action which will produce the desired outcomes (www.unisa.edu.au/pas/qap/planning/glossary.asp). To me this is what the Maintenance Manager is responsible to do.

The second view of maintenance planning is tactical in nature. It is takes a project management perspective and is the process of establishing the sequence and relationship of a series of actions and requirements prior to maintenance work commencing, along with procuring and providing the parts and resources needed to deliver the work plan. This is the meaning of maintenance planning that I use when I talk about a maintenance planner’s duties.

This definition ties-in very well with the primary purpose of maintenance planning, which is to maximise ‘tool time’ of the maintenance crew. (Keep the maintenance guys on the move straight from one job to the next.) This tactical work connects to the strategic work of the first definition by ensuring that the maintenance work performed delivers the organisation’s desired outcomes. Hence the secondary purpose of maintenance planning is to ensure the trades do quality work by providing all the parts, tools, information, procedures and check testing needed to deliver a quality job.

Scheduling is not planning. It is the setting of order and time for planned events. Scheduling involves taking decisions regarding the allocation of available capacity or resources (equipment, labour and space) to jobs, activities and tasks over time. Scheduling thus results in a time-phased plan, or schedule of activities. The schedule indicates what is to be done, when, by whom and with what equipment. Scheduling seeks to achieve several conflicting objectives: high efficiency, low inventories and good customer service (scrc.ncsu.edu/public/DEFINITIONS/S.html).

What is a Work Order Backlog and how do you manage it?

A ‘backlog’ is a build-up of work to be completed. Hence a Work Order Backlog is a list of all maintenance work orders not yet complete. Some work orders will be resourced and in progress, some will be scheduled to start on a future date, some will be planned waiting scheduling, others will be unplanned.

A maintenance backlog is a slippery beast to tame because production priorities are always changing. To successfully manage the backlog requires Operations and Maintenance to work as a team so that equipment, parts and resources are made available at the same time to do the maintenance work. This can only be accomplished by people from each group and operations process affected sitting down in a well-structured meeting and deciding what work to do, when to do it, and committing to its accomplishment. Once everyone at the meeting is agreed the job is then classified as ‘scheduled’. Until agreement is reached at the meeting the job is classified as ‘planned’ or ‘unplanned’. These meetings must be DAILY and people attending must act as professionals working to a well structured and timed agenda. The scheduling meeting should be over and done in 30 minutes (don’t do planning during this meeting, the planning for a work order is done separate to this meeting). Weekly meetings never work because too much will have changed during the week and there is not enough time in a weekly meeting to discuss all that must be discussed.

To aid in decision making each work order has a means to indicate its importance or priority to the operation. Usually this is based on the equipment criticality, which depends on the size of risk to the operation if an item of equipment fails or

suffers downtime. To ensure the low priority jobs are not left sitting on the backlog for years due to the higher priority jobs always taking precedence, their priority is gradually increased as time goes by so they rise to the top of the backlog and must be done.

A great article to read on maintenance backlog management is this one here Maintenance Backlog Management in a Nutshell

What a sort of reports is a Maintenance Planner expected to present at the Weekly Planning and Scheduling meetings?

Typically you will report various performances related to planning and doing quality maintenance work.

Since the Maintenance Planner is responsible for planning work orders this is one of the details reported – ‘Number and/or proportion of work orders fully planned in the total backlog’ (This reflects how well the Planner’s prime duty is being achieved), ‘Work Orders Completed as Planned’ (this indicates effectiveness of preparation work), ‘Work Orders Right First Time’ (indicates workmanship and skills quality for further development). A variation on the last one could be ‘Frequency of Repeating Work Orders’ (indicates work quality or parts reliability problems).

Other information in reports could include: ‘Size of backlog’ (is it growing, reducing, steady?), ‘Uncompleted Work Orders by Required Date’ (is the work getting done in good time?), ‘Work Orders Overdue from Scheduled Date’ (are Operations providing access? are resources available on-time?), ‘Operating Risk Level Represented by Work Orders’ (are we living with high risk problems or are we controlling our risks?), ‘Work Orders Complete by Trade Type’ ( are there problems in the maintenance workforce?). There will be other information appropriate to your operation that you want to report.

You should also ask Operations what they want to know and present that information to them at the meetings.

Another useful article for you is Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Secrets

Best regards,

Mike Sondaliniwww.lifetime-reliability.com

The Secret Art Of Successful Maintenance Planning and Maintenance Scheduling

How to be extraordinary at Maintenance Planning and Maintenance Scheduling so you can become masterly and deliver great planning results.

Abstract

The Secret Art Of Maintenance Planning and Maintenance Scheduling.  There is vastly more to maintenance planning that using project management software to schedule tasks.  The truly superior Maintenance Planners use methods that deliver fast, efficient and accurate work through people, not software.  In this article you will learn how to think about and organise planned maintenance work and then how to do maintenance scheduling to get the job done on time.  Isn’t that what it’s all about anyway!

Keywords: maintenance planning, maintenance scheduling, planned maintenance,

The Purpose of Maintenance Planning

Do you know why it’s important to plan your maintenance?

Because you want to get the job done right first time!  Because you want to get the job done right first time, in the shortest possible downtime!  Because you want to get the job done right first time, in the shortest possible downtime, so you can get your equipment back working properly to produce quality product for as long as possible before the next repair!

If you want maximum plant availability and maximum mean time between equipment failures, at the least cost to achieve them, then maintenance planning will help to do that.

But if it doesn’t matter how much money, time and production you waste, then don’t worry about maintenance planning.  Just go right ahead as you are!

However, if being efficient and effective with your people, time, equipment and money is important to you, then you really need to master maintenance planning and maintenance scheduling.  Read on about what makes a top class maintenance planner.

Is Maintenance Planning a Science or an Art?

Maintenance planning is mostly a science – you can get books about it and follow it step by step and do all the necessary actions perfectly. The books will tell you about developing task lists, estimating times, setting up job procedures, gathering materials together, creating bar charts and ‘S’ charts, and so on.  All very scientific and seemingly so simple! And you will need all of that for your maintenance jobs to go well!   But you need more than a scientific approach to do planning superbly.

It’s the extra bits that take you from being a regular maintenance planner to a master maintenance planner that you can’t learn from books. The extra bit comes from ‘the heart’ – it’s the artistic, creative part of you that you now need to use if you want to become great at planning and scheduling maintenance.

The person doing the maintenance planning and scheduling role needs to be accomplished in a broad range of technical skills, maintenance and operating competencies, and engineering knowledge. You can follow this link to read about the skills, competencies and knowledge set of a Maintenance Planner and Scheduler.

Look Ahead!

Planning is all about making sure the future happens exactly as you want it. In a nut shell, a maintenance planner works at guiding the future actions of the maintenance crew so things are done right on purpose and not by accident.

Read that again, “so things are done right on purpose and not by accident”. It is making sure that ‘things are done right’ which is important!  A good maintenance planner will make an average maintenance technician shine, because he will give the technician all the right tools, information, parts and advice needed to do the job right in the shortest time possible.

The top maintenance planners look at the maintenance crew as an extension of themselves. They consider that they are personally doing the job through their people.  They plan and prepare as if they will be using their own hands to make the repair.

That means they are looking ahead for all the fast, simple, accurate ways to do the job. And they give that knowledge to the maintainer through the information they pass to them to do the work.

It’s here that the ‘art of maintenance planning’ becomes impossible to explain with science. The little things that streamline and simplify a job, which causes the work to be done smoothly and quickly, … that is what makes a great maintenance planner!

Building a Library of Information and Systemise It

To do the job right requires the right information.  The first role of the maintenance planner is to collect all the relevant information about a job together into a library of their own making. This library will become the storehouse of all knowledge about the equipment on your plant.

From my experience it is best to have a central library used by all, in which is kept every piece of available information about your equipment in equipment number order.  Information on each item of plant equipment should cover all trades and disciplines and include:

the original service duty specification,

technical information of how the equipment works,

model number with all suffixes, serial number, item description,

purchasing information,

maintenance manual,

operating manual,

a copy of the most current computer control program if the equipment is automated,

set point parameters and units of measure,

mechanical, electrical and control equipment parts manual including parts material specifications list and drawings,

both the original historical applicable engineering specifications and the most current,

foundation, mounting and structural support details,

details of any changes done to the equipment since new,

parts supplier information and contact details,

drawings of the site location,

general assembly drawings,

drawings of the equipment assemblies,

individual parts drawings and materials used in construction,

electrical drawings of power supply and distribution,

control logic diagrams and tables,

history of work performed in the past and how it was done and what was found and learnt,

completed test sheets and check sheets,

statutory information if the equipment is a registered item of plant,

photographs of the equipment,

copies of investigative and engineering reports conducted on the equipment,

the most current of operator work procedures,

the most current of maintenance procedures,

the most current originals of test sheets and check sheets,

tips and advice learnt about using and maintaining the equipment,

references to any useful information on the equipment or its construction and operation,

an index of what is listed in the library for that piece of equipment.

The aim is to have all the necessary information at hand when it is needed. Information is most useful when you can trust its accuracy and you can get it quickly.  This means you need a way to know what is recorded in your library for each item of equipment, hence the need for a comprehensive index of information correctly identified, numbered and catalogued.

You also need to find that information quickly, hence why you have to develop a system to store and extract correct details fast.  A central library out performs individual filing systems every time!

Ideally you want all the information both in hard copy form and electronically. With a recent back-up of the electronic copy kept in a safe place.  In electronic form it can be sent to any location where it can be received. At the least it should be in electronic form for ease of access by all persons as needed.

The Work Pack

The maintenance planner’s style, knowledge and efforts are reflected in the ‘work pack’ they develop for the job to be done.  The work pack is a folder handed over to the repairer containing all the information and details to complete the job accurately, in the shortest possible time.

In the work pack are the following details necessary to do the job right first time, in the shortest time possible:

an index of what the folder contains,

a job safety analysis and risk assessment,

a list of all tools needed to do the job,

a list of all parts needed for the job,

drawings of how the item needing repair works and goes together,

descriptions and photos of what they should find as they do the job,

a step by step procedure including photos and descriptions of what to do, with clear indication and advice for the critical parts of the work,

a test and check sheet to confirm accuracy of the work and to be a record of the job,

a report back sheet for the repairer to advise the Planner what they found to be different to what was planned and expected,

the planner’s personal advice to the repairer on the best ways to do the job.

In addition to the folder, the repairer is given all the necessary parts and special tools to do the work.  If necessary the Planner sits down with the Repairer, or visits the job site, and discusses the work required in detail so that the repair understands clearly what needs to be done.

The transfer of clear work instructions is even more important than usual when the maintainer is new to the job.   The Maintenance Planner must make special effort with persons new to a task to maximise the chance of success.

Leave Nothing To Chance

A well planned maintenance job is a beautiful thing to behold. Equipment and task information is complete and plentiful. Replacement parts are at-hand, and of the right size, specification and quantity.  All external resources like cranes, elevated work platforms and specialist sub-contractors are there on time and are fully prepared for the job. The job procedure promotes accuracy and has been well thought through, explaining what need to be done in the excellent detail, clarity and accuracy.

The work progresses through checks and tests to insure proper, precise assembly that matches, or betters, the manufacturer’s specifications. Factors that influence the accuracy, quality and reliability of the work are also checked and recorded. The work only proceeds when the previous step is proven correct. A complete history of the job is made in the records of the tests and checks performed.

The repairer must know the work quality and tolerances to be achieved in order to deliver the reliability needed from the equipment.  They must know how to do the work safely and in good time. If necessary they should be given a chance to practice the task as often as they need so that they have developed their skills and abilities to do the real job brilliantly!   They should be able to monitor their own successful accomplishment of the job and be sure they have done it to the best quality and accuracy.

Plan the Backlog of Work Based On Equipment Criticality

Maintenance jobs in the backlog should all be planned and be ready for doing once scheduled. Work in the backlog is work that has the time to be planned well.  The job priority is used to dictate which backlog jobs are done first, and hence planned first.  The priority is based on equipment criticality.

The equipment criticality is also a good measure of the planning effort and work pack content requirements to be provided in preparing for the work. It is the critical equipment, and those that pose great danger, that must be worked on with great accuracy, quality and certainty of job outcome.  This is best guaranteed by doing thorough and careful planning!

Always have work available to give the maintenance crew. There may be quite times, but there should never be times without work planned to do.

There are plenty of visual inspections to be done around the plant, there is always lubrication to be checked, there is always condition monitoring with the human senses to be undertaken.  There is always a plant improvement project to be designed and installed. There is always working to pass to others for them to plan in great detail, procure parts and prepare procedures. There is always training opportunities to be taken.

A wise maintenance planner keeps a file of jobs handy that can be quickly passed to tradespeople at any time.

Schedule Planned Work With The Operating Group Into the Operating Plan

Once work is planned thoroughly it needs to be scheduled and done. The people that control access to the plant and equipment are the operations group.  You cannot get planned work done unless they make time for it to be done. This requires them to commit to stopping the equipment and stopping production.  For the operations group production is how they measure success and to stop it gives them great discomfort.

None-the-less, if equipment is not maintained well it will fail too often and production will suffer.  The best way to schedule access to plant and equipment is by letting Operations decide the date and time and getting them to put it into their production schedule. This way it becomes part of their plan and almost guarantees that it will be done, excepting catastrophe!

Tell Everyone What Is Planned – Make a Picture of the Plan

The next important step is to let the operators on the shopfloor and their immediate supervisors know when the maintenance is due to be done and what is affected by it. If one cannot count on the Operations people in the scheduling meeting to tell their operators what is planned for their plant and equipment, the Planner or Scheduler must do it

themself. They may need to separately advise the operators what is being planned so that they can prepare for it ahead of time.

One of the best ways to ‘paint a picture’ is to publish a bar chart, also called a Gantt chart, of the coming month’s planned work and, in greater detail, the work being done in the coming week.  Put the bar chart up on a notice board in an area frequented by both the operators and the maintainers.  Get the ‘picture’ out for viewing a few days before the actual work starts.

Another option is to send the bar chart electronically to the control room operators for them to print-off and publish.

You can never do too much to give advice to operators and maintainers about what work is coming-up for them.

If Things Go Wrong

Even the best planned jobs can go astray.  By planning them well the chance of such things happening are massively reduced.  But if problems do occur they must be confronted quickly and solved as well as possible in the circumstances.

The lessons learned must be recorded for future reference so that next time the job is done it will run much more smoothly.

It is best if the Planner goes and looks themself what has happened to cause the work to not go to plan.   They will understand the problem better.  Collect feedback from those doing the work after the job is complete. A good idea is to have a close-out meeting where problems are aired and ideas put forward to improve the future execution of the job.

Hope the above helps you.

Best regards,

Maintenance Work Backlog Management: A Start in Managing Maintenance

This article, by guest writer David Finch, is on maintenance backlog management and how to control your maintenance backlog

Abstract

Maintenance Work Backlog Management: a Start in Managing Maintenance!  A maintenance manager can commence a maintenance improvement programme by simply creating opportunities for individuals and groups to make high performance contributions. One way to do this is to manage the Maintenance Backlog.

Keywords: Maintenance backlog, backlog management

NOTE: You can now do our online 10 module Maintenance Planning and Scheduling training course with certificate once completed. Read more at Online Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Training Course.

There are numerous definitions of Backlog. The definition I use is "planned maintenance work waiting to be scheduled". Note: We only schedule 1 week at a time, therefore it's the bucket of future work. However, if there is a high load of preventive maintenance about to occur then it is important to know about this work for planning purposes.

Others refer to Backlog as the work not completed by the due date. Personally, I use priorities, but not 'due dates' for corrective work. I believe that people raising work requests can rarely understand the planning processes required to be implemented to turn a request into an order.

It is important that whatever the definition used, be sure that everyone in the organisation knows the meaning. The caveat is, it is incumbent on the Planner to ensure that once work requests are authorised planning goes ahead to convert the work request to a work order. It has been known for planners to delay their planning activities so that performance indicators on Backlog look good.

Deferred Maintenance is usually high-cost work that must be postponed as a result of inadequate planning, lack of opportunity and/or funding. Examples include roof replacement, HVAC system replacement and window replacement. Deferred maintenance adds to the backlog of maintenance and repairs, but is not included in the backlog calculations. It tends to be specific to the public sector.

The key aspects of successful backlog management are:

Setting objectives

Setting/agreeing priorities

Establishing the organisation's responsibilities and relationships

Implementing the processes to met the objectives

Measuring the performance

Reviewing the performance, and

Auditing the process

This framework for managerial action will produce a formal management system for the control of maintenance backlog, and is an essential component in managing maintenance.

The details of managing backlog involves:

1. Managing work requests.

2. Developing work orders, job preparation and repair procedures.

3. Work scheduling.

4. Job execution and follow up of work in progress

1. The first step in managing the backlog requires that the work be properly identified and prioritised by maintenance and operations together.

A rigorous examination of the work requested needs to be carried out. This will remove duplicate work, finished work, unwanted work and modifications (modifications need to go through the 'management of change' process, modifications need engineering and fiscal approval, a modification is not maintenance work) out of the list.

2. Planning maintenance, including, looking at resources, estimates and parts (how to do the job!). It is the development of a detailed programme to achieve an end.

It is the advanced preparation of a specific job

It ensures the task is performed in an efficient and effective manner

It ensures that all necessary logistics have been coordinated for the job execution phase to take place at a future date

It is the process of detailed analysis that determines and describes the work to be performed, the sequence of associated tasks, methods to be used for their performance, and the required resources, including:

o skills,

o crew size,

o man hours,

o parts,

o materials,

o special tools and equipment

An estimate of the total cost

identification of safety precautions

required permits

communication requirements

reference documents - vendor manuals, drawings, wiring diagrams etc

Co-ordination

Encompasses the logistical efforts of assembling all necessary resources so that the job is ready to be scheduled.

Interfaces with:

o Purchasing

o Stores

o Operations

o Engineering

o Maintenance

Reviewing all jobs ready to be executed and decides on priority.

Planners need to know how to estimate the work. A good planner is a good estimator!

Repair procedures save time when executing corrective work. Do you have any?

3. Scheduling (when to do the job!)

Is the process whereby the labour, resources and support equipment are allocated / appointed to specific jobs at a fixed time (often when operations can make any associated equipment / system available).

The schedule represents when the organisation expects the task to be carried out, and when the resources are available.

4. Job execution and follow up of work in progress.

Is the right maintenance work being completed at the right time with the right resources?

Managing Backlog involves getting the planning and scheduling right.

To help the planning process it is normal to run with approximately 2 man weeks of Backlog per technician. If you are constantly below that figure then you could be over-manned. If the Backlog climbs to 4 man weeks then consider overtime working or bringing on additional resources.

Trending the Backlog aids management decision making. There are several different ways to measure Backlog. These are:

Measuring Total Backlog

Discipline Backlog (Backlog be mechanical, electrical, instrument discipline etc.)

PM Backlog (the PM not completed in the month it was due), and

Safety-critical Backlog

All are excellent performance indicators and give you an overall picture where work is building up, scarce, or critical, allowing you to manage maintenance operations.

Best regards,

David Finch, MSc, MIEAust, CEng, FSOE, AIMM

Constructing an Effective Maintenance Plan

Dave Porrill 

Tags: maintenance and reliability, planning and scheduling, reliability-centered maintenance, preventive maintenance, CMMS and EAM

Introduction

Creating a maintenance plan is generally not difficult to do. But creating a comprehensive maintenance program that is effective poses some interesting challenges. It would be difficult to appreciate the

subtleties of what makes a maintenance plan effective without understanding how the plan forms part of the total maintenance environment.

This article explains what makes the difference between an ordinary maintenance plan and a good, effective maintenance program.

Defining the terms

Maintenance practitioners across industry use many maintenance terms to mean different things. So to level the playing field, it is necessary to explain the way in which a few of these terms have been utilized throughout this document to ensure common understanding by all who read it. It must be emphasized, however, that this is the author’s preferred interpretation of these terms, and should not necessarily be taken as gospel truth.

In sporting parlance, the maintenance policy defines the “rules of the game”, whereas the maintenance strategy defines the “game plan” for that game or season.

Maintenance policy – Highest-level document, typically applies to the entire site. Maintenance strategy – Next level down, typically reviewed and updated every 1 to 2 years. Maintenance program – Applies to an equipment system or work center, describes the total

package of all maintenance requirements to care for that system. Maintenance checklist – List of maintenance tasks (preventive or predictive) typically derived

through some form of analysis, generated automatically as work orders at a predetermined frequency.

Short-term maintenance plan (sometimes called a “schedule of work”) – Selection of checklists

and other ad-hoc work orders grouped together to be issued to a workshop team for completion during a defined maintenance period, typically spanning one week or one shift.

The Maintenance Information Loop

Figure 1 below describes the flow of maintenance information and how the various aspects fit together.

Figure 1 – Maintenance Information Loop

The large square block indicates the steps that take place within the computerized maintenance management system, or CMMS.

It is good practice to conduct some form of analysis to identify the appropriate maintenance tasks to care for your equipment. RCM2 is probably the most celebrated methodology, but there are many variations.

The analysis will result in a list of tasks that need to be sorted and grouped into sensible chunks, which each form the content of a checklist. Sometimes it may be necessary to do some smoothing and streamlining of these groups of tasks in an iterative manner.

The most obvious next step is to schedule the work orders generated by the system into a plan of work for the workshop teams.

Less common, however, is to use this checklist data to create a long-range plan of forecasted maintenance work. This plan serves two purposes:

The results can be used to determine future labour requirements, and

They feed into the production plan.

The schedule of planned jobs is issued to the workshop and the work is completed. Feedback from these work orders, together with details of any equipment failures, is captured in the CMMS for historical reporting purposes.

A logical response to this shop floor feedback is that the content of the checklists should be refined to improve the quality of the preventive maintenance, especially to prevent the recurrence of failures.

A common mistake however, is to jump straight from the work order feedback and immediately change the words on the checklists. When this happens, the integrity of the preventive maintenance programme is immediately compromised because the revised words on the checklist have no defendable scientific basis. This should be avoided wherever possible.

The far better approach to avoid this guessing game is to route all the checklist amendments through the same analysis as was used originally to create the initial checklists. This means that the integrity of the maintenance program is sustained over the long term. Implicit in this approach, however, is the need to have a robust system in which the content of the analysis can be captured and updated easily.

Finally, all the information that gets captured into the CMMS must be put to good use otherwise it is a waste of time. This is the value of management reports that can be created from maintenance information.

In the RCM analysis

Without describing the complete RCM analytical process, it is instructive at this stage to point out a few details that are important to the content of such an analysis because of the way they can impact the overall maintenance plan.

Table 1 – Information captured in the RCM-style analysis

  RCM Additional

Identify the: Functions

Functional failures

Failure modes

Failure effects

Equipment hierarchy down to component level

Root cause of failure

Analytical tool to select: Failure effect category  

Preventive/ corrective maintenance tasks (as appropriate)

  Task frequency

Crafts

Task duration

Running/stopped marker

The center column is what will be found in any typical RCM-style analysis.

In addition to that, there is value in constructing a hierarchy of the equipment system showing assemblies, subassemblies and individual components. This helps to keep track of which section of the system is being considered at any time, and the list of components also helps to identify the spare parts requirements for the system.

Of vital importance is the clear identification of the root cause of each failure, as this will affect the selection of a suitable maintenance task. To illustrate this point, consider for example, a seized gearbox. “Seized” is an effect. There could be several root causes of this failure mode that can be addressed in different ways through the maintenance program. There is usually no value in aiming maintenance at the effect of a failure.

Also important from a planning perspective is to identify the time it will take to carry out each task independently. The sum total of these task times gives a good indication of how long the total work order will take.

All of the above depends on the production process and the site’s operating context, so these comments should be taken simply as a guideline.

The following are a few points to consider when constructing a preventive maintenance program:

Preventive maintenance tasks must:

aim at the failure process be specific include specifications or tolerances

Wherever possible, aim for predictive rather than preventive tasks

measure or check for conditions against a standard report the results create a follow-on task to repair or replace at the next opportunity

“Check and replace, if necessary” tasks destroy planned times

Frequencies and estimated times for each task must be accurate and meaningful

Try wherever possible to only plan shutdown time for “non-running” tasks. Keep “running” tasks to be done during periods of normal production. Structure the maintenance program to allow for this.

Sorting and grouping of checklists

After analysing all the maintenance requirements for the equipment system, these individual tasks would be grouped together to create the checklists, based on common criteria for:

Craft Frequency Safety / Non-safety tasks Running / Non-running checks and sensible Timing, etc. …

Smoothing the PM workload

In order to smooth the PM workload, a robust approach is to base the spread of PM activities on the checklists arising from the RCM-style analysis. This assumes that the analysis has been conducted thoroughly and that it is in a format that can be amended easily.

The graph in Figure 2 below illustrates how it is possible to arrange the occurrence of the PM work orders in such a way to create the smoothest possible flow of regular preventive maintenance work, while still leaving enough time to carry out those “follow-on” corrective maintenance tasks that were identified from conducting the preventive/predictive checks during the last maintenance stop.

It is important to notice that just because two checklists may have the same frequency, it is not necessary to schedule them to be done at the same time. Sometimes, of course, it does make practical sense to schedule PMs for the same day, but don’t assume that this is always true. As a general rule, in an automated or continuous process production environment, the total amount of work on one checklist or work planned for one maintenance period should not exceed 80 percent of the total time available.

Figure 2 – Smoothing the PM workload

In order to achieve this smoothed workload pattern, it may be necessary to return to the timings, frequencies, groupings, start dates, etc., that were specified in the original analysis and rework some of the data. This is the iterative approach that was mentioned earlier in the description of Figure 1.

Short-term scheduling of planned maintenance work

It is well-recognized in modern maintenance circles that there is great value in planning the maintenance workload at a macro level over a long-term horizon as well as at a detailed level over a short horizon. These two activities serve significantly different purposes.

Regular work orders are created automatically in Maximo every night from the work order templates in the PM Master table. These fresh work orders are generated typically 30 days prior to the Target Start date specified on the PM. Other work orders are also created manually by the system users, such as

craftsmen and engineers. All these work orders need to be prioritized according to the importance and urgency of the tasks, and they need to be planned into the weekly workload of the maintenance crews to ensure that a well-balanced selection of work is assigned to each crew without them becoming overloaded.

An example layout of the weekly maintenance work schedule is shown in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3 – Example of weekly maintenance work schedule

Most often, a CMMS will only produce report data in text or numerical format. Because engineers like to see things in a graphical or pictorial representation, however, it may be necessary to combine the use of the CMMS with another package that has graphics capability, such as a spreadsheet. The following descriptions rely on the ability of the CMMS to produce a “flat file” from a report, which can then be imported into a spreadsheet and manipulated further.

If possible, it would be preferable to retain all the raw data within the CMMS and simply produce all the graphs and reports from that environment. There are two obstacles to this approach, however:

Very few CMMS packages have graphical capability;

Very few CMMS packages will capture or provide the full spectrum of data that may be required to construct the desired selection of graphs.

The alternative solution, therefore, is to copy the required selection of data from the CMMS to the spreadsheet environment where it can be manipulated further.

Long-range maintenance planning

Some sites enjoy the luxury of having regular, fixed maintenance windows built into the production plans. For example, it could be agreed that every Tuesday morning Production Unit 1 will stop production and the equipment will be made available to the maintenance crew for six hours. During this six-hour window, the maintenance crew has the opportunity to assign as many people as required to complete all the

planned maintenance activities in that work center. Thereafter, the system is handed back to the production team until the next week.

In many cases however, there is no such regular routine in place. Opportunities for the maintenance teams to conduct planned maintenance need to be negotiated and agreed with the production teams on an “as-needed” basis. Unfortunately, this is very often reduced to the maintenance department begging for access to the equipment. Furthermore, this plea is often met with the unsympathetic response from the production teams that they have to run the equipment in order to meet their targets and they therefore cannot afford to release it for maintenance. This is a very short-sighted view in my opinion.

The generation of a long-range maintenance plan that shows the number of hours of preventive maintenance work to be done in each work center over an 18- to 24-month horizon is a valuable tool. It gives the production schedulers visibility of the amount of time that is required for this preventive maintenance so that they can proactively plan to release the equipment for those periods. This makes the job of planning the maintenance activities so much simpler.

The nature of the production environment at the author’s site makes it difficult to implement a regular, fixed pattern of maintenance windows as described above. For this reason a long-range maintenance plan is produced to give the production teams as much advance warning as possible of the anticipated maintenance requirements. This plan shows the forecasted maintenance hours for each operating unit, by craft type, in weekly chunks over a 24-month horizon.

Table 2 below illustrates what the structure of a long-range maintenance plan might look like. A flat file is created from the master data table in Maximo which contains details of all the maintenance tasks and checklists with their corresponding equipment details, duration, frequencies, crafts, next due dates, etc. This information is imported into a spreadsheet, which uses a series of filters and formulae to produce the long-range plan.

Table 2 – Example layout of long-range maintenance plan

Based on this report, the production planners make the necessary allowances in the production calendars so that the equipment will be made available for maintenance. This allowance is initially made at a macro level. The exact dates and times for maintenance will be agreed in the week or two before it is due.

This arrangement of the numbers can also be used to help smooth the workload across the weeks by adjusting the due dates of the maintenance tasks in the CMMS as described earlier.

Long-range labor plan

The above explanations describe how to identify the anticipated number of maintenance hours in a production area. This next section covers the approach to verifying that there is sufficient manpower available to carry out all the work.

In order to ensure that each team on site has adequate craftsman resources available to cover all the work that will arise in their areas, a long-range workload vs. manpower forecast can be produced. This amounts to a graph that compares the hours of work to be done each month with the corresponding man-hours of labor available. A graph is constructed for each craft group within each workshop team, spanning the next 18- to 24-month horizon.

If the long-term prediction shows that the level of maintenance activity is about to increase beyond the level that can be accomplished with the existing resources, this advance warning will ensure that there will be sufficient time to recruit and train additional resources before the situation goes out of control. Similarly, a decrease in the predicted level of maintenance activity will give sufficient advance visibility of the opportunity to reassign craftsman resources to other teams or activities. This proactive approach will lead to improved manpower utilization and less panic.

Listed below are some of the categories of data that are used to construct the graphs:

Workload (i.e. everything that will occupy the craftspeople’s time)

preventive maintenance hours from the CMMS breakdown allowance corrective / follow-on work / results-based tasks project work (ad-hoc hours for each forthcoming project activity independently) allowances for meetings / training, etc.

Manpower (i.e. net man-hours available)

gross man-hours available in the crew allowances for leave and sickness additional allowance for overtime

The sum of the workload hours for each month draws the workload line. The sum of the manpower hours draws the labor capacity line. Where the workload exceeds the labor capacity, the load must be smoothed, or additional resources may be required.

The preventive maintenance hours from the CMMS are obtained from the totals from the long-range maintenance plan described in the previous section. The allowances for breakdowns, corrective work, etc., are calculated as a rolling 12-month average of the demonstrated actual data from the CMMS. Data for other allowances may be sourced from elsewhere if not contained in the CMMS.

Manpower is basically the effective number of man-hours available for each craft in the crew.

Some example graphs are shown in Figure 4 below.

Figure 4 – Example workload vs. labor-capacity graphs

Where the manpower exceeds the workload, everything is in control. Where the workload exceeds the manpower, it will be necessary to reduce some of the non-essential activities at that time, or increase the people availability.

Feedback and reporting

Feedback information returning from the shop floor, either by way of the planned work order responses, or from equipment failures will be captured in the CMMS. This information can be summarized on a report such as shown in Figure 5 below. The key recipients of these reports are the reliability engineers who look after each equipment system.

Ideally, the engineer should look at every work order that was raised in his area, but this is not always feasible, so a summary report such as this is useful. The reliability engineer must then decide on the appropriate course of action in response to each failure or observation.

Figure 5 – Example weekly failures report

The algorithm shown in Figure 6 below describes the thought process that should be going through the minds of the reliability engineers every time they review the failure work orders as shown on the summary report in Figure 5 above.

It must be remembered, however, that every time the “Amend Checklists” option is selected, this amendment should be routed through the original RCM analysis to ensure the integrity of the maintenance program is not violated. Amending the checklists without running through the method and structure of the original analysis is a mistake. Regardless of the approach that has been used to record the original analysis, it is worth it in the long run to force the reliability engineers to route every amendment through the analysis and record the results for future reference.

If a spreadsheet has been identified as the most appropriate option, then it should be structured in a robust and user-friendly fashion. If it is clumsy to update, it will fall into disrepair, and the integrity of the program is lost. A database system is a far better option for this purpose, if a suitable one is available.

Figure 6 – “What broke” algorithm

The results

The purpose of maintenance measures should be to monitor the health of the maintenance organisation. Where everything is in control, the metrics will reflect the success that has been achieved. Conversely, they should also be used to highlight problem areas and irregularities in order to drive the desired behaviours or areas for improvement.

The graphs in Figure 7 below illustrate some of the benefits that have been realized on the author’s site as a result of having a well-functioning maintenance organisation. These graphs form just part of the regular reporting metrics by which the maintenance activities are managed.

The first graph shows the conformance to the weekly planned maintenance schedule. The target is set at 95 percent and is consistently being exceeding across all of the engineering teams.

Graphs 2 and 3 show how the number of failures has been decreasing month-on-month in one particular work center over the past 12 months, and correspondingly, the mean time between failures has been increasing over the same period.

The last 2 graphs show machine availability in two of the key work centers where a full re-analysis of all the maintenance requirements was recently conducted using an adapted RCM2 approach. It is clear to see how, in both cases, the equipment availability was far out of control and from the time the improvement activity was started, the availability stabilized and is now still tracking consistently above 90 percent. This has been the result of a few things:

one is improving the quality of the preventive maintenance routines, and

another is good maintenance planning

Figure 7 – S ample graphs showing the benefits of an effective maintenance program

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