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.
Planning and Scheduling Guiding Principles
When everyone is in charge, the truth is that no one is really in charge. Insanity thrives without proper communication and cooperation. It is critical that the scheduling process be jointly owned and managed by both the production and maintenance departments with input from all parties that want work performed in the operating units. No single group has all the knowledge required to create the optimal schedule. Production must provide information on optimal timing to meet production requirements, and maintenance must provide information on optimal timing to meet worker (site and contractor) and material requirements. In order to schedule effectively, you must have enough lead time to arrange for all the required materials, preparations, and resources to be provided prior to the start of the job.
A weekly scheduling meeting is a method of achieving the required advance notice for requested work. This is to be a one-hour meeting held Wednesday afternoon. The planner’s backlog of planned jobs in the RSCH (ready to schedule) status and other backlog work requests are to be reviewed in this meeting along with any new activities from the engineering capital project timeline spreadsheet for next week. All interested parties with desired work for the next week are invited to attend to give their input. The result of this meeting will be the weekly schedule for the coming week, which will be published to the site on Thursday. The weekly schedule should contain enough work to allocate 80% of the available resources for the following week. The remaining work will be filled in on the daily schedule to handle Priority 2 work that can be expected to occur during the week.
These two communication tools will keep all parties informed of upcoming work. The weekly schedule shows all major jobs that are expected to be executed in the upcoming week, and the daily schedules that are given to operations in the afternoon prior to the next day’s work show the exact jobs that need to be prepared for execution in the morning.
All work identified and requested should be evaluated to answer the following questions:
1. Is the work necessary? (Is this a duplicate request? Does it add value? Is there another option?)
2. Can the original scope be reduced to achieve the same or better results? Can we combine jobs to prevent multiple work orders or contractor purchase orders (POs)?
3. What can be done to prevent this job from occurring in the future? (Is it possible to make changes in the design of the system or work method to prevent future failures? How can the defect be eliminated? This step has the most potential for real savings but is often ignored in the planning process.)
4. What is the true plant priority for this work? (Compare all jobs relative to site production demands and readiness to be performed.)
5. How much planning is needed? (Does the mechanic know how to do this job? How much value can be added to the efficiency of his or her wrench time? Does a job plan already exist?)
6. Are long delivery purchases involved?
The planning process will address parts to order and stage in advance, required special skills and equipment needed, extra resources or skills required, safety hazards that exist, permits required, and the most efficient work method. Planning provides all the known necessary materials, information, and resources to do the job correctly. Each job must be evaluated to determine the amount of planning that will add value to that specific job. No more or no less effort should be applied to plan that job than is justified by the end result of making the mechanics work more efficient and eliminating delays.
The daily planning and scheduling strategy has three goals: increase plant reliability, improve mechanic tool time productivity, and reduce maintenance cost. Efficiencies gained in planning and scheduling do not go to the bottom line unless the savings are actually removed from the maintenance cost structure by reducing external resources, performing more work with existing resources without working overtime, redeploying internal resources or work tasks, or reducing material purchases or overall cost. A true team effort involving operations, maintenance, engineering, stores/purchasing, and safety is required to make maintenance a “site issue.” Your Site Maintenance Leadership Team must develop flowcharts for the maintenance work processes that will provide the structure to make our strategy a success. These will be communicated to all site employees as soon as the flowcharts are completed and approved by site management.
The craft worker’s role for obtaining materials is evaluated for each job. Craft workers are expected to get their own materials for emergency needs if it is the most efficient option. If they have value-adding work that can be done while the materials are being obtained, contact the material coordinator to get them for you. Materials should be staged or kitted for planned jobs.
The following simple forms can be very beneficial in breaking the insanity loop by providing the right information to the mechanics to allow proper preparation before the work is started so that they can do what needs to be done instead of what they have always done. Insanity practices cause Band-Aids to be applied, but planning and scheduling leads to permanent solutions and process improvements. Several P&S flowcharts and useful tools are provided at www.maintenanceinsanity.com to give you ideas to consider.
