I recently posted 8 Attributes of Successful Reliability Projects on my column at Plant Services. I hope you get time to check it out. Basically I wanted to try to put in one place some of the principles that I have seen around the place.
There's more of course. In fact I am thinking of more things to write even now. Maybe in a follow up piece...
Don't cut costs, cut waste
we often focus, incorrectly, on costs when our main drive should be on waste. I have posted here and elsewhere on the differences between costs and cost effectiveness,and it is a view that has served me and my clients well over the past twenty years.
At a high level productivity without waste is seen principally in the cost effectiveness of the organization. Costs per product of maintenance, when applied correctly, gives us a drive to maximize and sustain output levels - not just to take a razor to the direct costs of running things.
One of the most powerful processes to do this is through a meticulous focus on what is called "tool time". Tool time is the amount of time that your people actually spend doing the work. Not preparing for the work, not getting parts for it or doing the paperwork - but in actually doing the work.
The first step is to ensure that you can record this in some fashion. Time and motion studies during turnarounds, large overhauls and routine replacement tasks can reveal an incredible level of waste that is able to be cut. In one particular case I recall a locomotives company in Mexico was able to reduce their turnaround time from 4 days to less than two.
How? Relocation of tools, delivering parts "to the elbow", reducing the walking and roaming time of workers and through being innovative in the way that they arranged the work schedule. Particularly with respect to fully utilizing resources prior to their role on the job - and once their role had been carried out.
So T&M studies still have their benefits, even at the start of the 21st century. But by far the best way of measuring tool time and tracking the impact of initiatives is through recording delays to work.
Delay coding exists on most CMMS programs, particularly (from memory) the Mincom, MRO and SAP modules.
The basic idea is that each person records the delays they encountered dutring each task. Codes are organized to match the real world with things like waiting for parts, waiting for permits and waiting for equipment being commonly used.
Not a solution in itself, but the start of a solution. Work delay reports then become part of the maintenance planners regularly reviewed reports, and they are able to initiate action to start to uncover root causes and put fixes in place.
Delay coding, when coupled with capacity scheduling, provide a very powerful one-two punch for you to start the job of driving inefficiency out of your organization.
What has been your experiences with doing this?
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At a high level productivity without waste is seen principally in the cost effectiveness of the organization. Costs per product of maintenance, when applied correctly, gives us a drive to maximize and sustain output levels - not just to take a razor to the direct costs of running things.
One of the most powerful processes to do this is through a meticulous focus on what is called "tool time". Tool time is the amount of time that your people actually spend doing the work. Not preparing for the work, not getting parts for it or doing the paperwork - but in actually doing the work.
The first step is to ensure that you can record this in some fashion. Time and motion studies during turnarounds, large overhauls and routine replacement tasks can reveal an incredible level of waste that is able to be cut. In one particular case I recall a locomotives company in Mexico was able to reduce their turnaround time from 4 days to less than two.
How? Relocation of tools, delivering parts "to the elbow", reducing the walking and roaming time of workers and through being innovative in the way that they arranged the work schedule. Particularly with respect to fully utilizing resources prior to their role on the job - and once their role had been carried out.
So T&M studies still have their benefits, even at the start of the 21st century. But by far the best way of measuring tool time and tracking the impact of initiatives is through recording delays to work.
Delay coding exists on most CMMS programs, particularly (from memory) the Mincom, MRO and SAP modules.
The basic idea is that each person records the delays they encountered dutring each task. Codes are organized to match the real world with things like waiting for parts, waiting for permits and waiting for equipment being commonly used.
Not a solution in itself, but the start of a solution. Work delay reports then become part of the maintenance planners regularly reviewed reports, and they are able to initiate action to start to uncover root causes and put fixes in place.
Delay coding, when coupled with capacity scheduling, provide a very powerful one-two punch for you to start the job of driving inefficiency out of your organization.
What has been your experiences with doing this?
If you enjoyed this post you can subscribe to our feed here, or if you prefer you can receive it in your email here. We don't like spam either and we won't send you any!
Easy Money
Don't panic! When the crunch comes it is very easy to go for the big stuff. Cut numbers, cut inventory, make do with what we have, cut CAPEX... But what we are actually doing is cutting our throats.
Cutting in an uncontrolled fashion may save today, but it dooms tomorrow.
There are numerous easy to implement techniques and tactics that can cut a lot out of the budget, without risking the reliability of the asset base. In fact, to the contrary, they improve the overall reliability of our physical assets.
A really quick one is Capacity Scheduling. And its a really quick one because it doesn't need software particularly, nor does it need any very difficult training.
The principle is simple. You have a finite amount of time to use on maintaining the plant. So use it to your best advantage.
Cutting in an uncontrolled fashion may save today, but it dooms tomorrow.
There are numerous easy to implement techniques and tactics that can cut a lot out of the budget, without risking the reliability of the asset base. In fact, to the contrary, they improve the overall reliability of our physical assets.
A really quick one is Capacity Scheduling. And its a really quick one because it doesn't need software particularly, nor does it need any very difficult training.
The principle is simple. You have a finite amount of time to use on maintaining the plant. So use it to your best advantage.
How much time can you schedule?
How much do you have in total? At first this is best done for a single discipline team. If you have team members who work in several disciplines then you can work it together.
Take away the time for lunches, breaks, wash up time allotments, toolbox meetings and so on.
Take a percentage away to correspond with your leave policies.
Then take 5 - 10 percent for breakdowns, and 5 - 10 percent for work with other teams. This part is crucial and so often overlooked.
If you don't factor in a percentage for breakdowns then, right now, your plan is probably not going to be achievable. If you don't factor in time working with other teams, ditto.
Then you are looking at the actual time you have left to schedule for work. Not much is it? And this isn't the tool time either, working out delays and maximizing efficiency is a whole other area.
What can you schedule?
With the available time now showing, we can start to slot in the work orders that need to be done.
First, the routine work. Always the routine work first! Why? Because if we miss it then you are missing a detective, predictive or preventive task - meaning that your plant is now in danger of an undetected or unplanned failure.
Sort of makes the point for getting your maintenance regimes in order doesn't it? Anyway...
With the routine work scheduled, then we can start to slot in the corrective work. Don't over do it, don't go past the limits. Schedule right up to what you have available and don't go past it.
So why start here?
With a little bit of smarts this can be done in a spreadsheet. I have built several at different times to do this. You don't need a CMMS or anything else. (Although if you have one all the better)
The reason why capacity scheduling is such as powerful improvement initiative is because it shines the light on other important areas of maintenance planning and scheduling. To do this right you need:
Planned routine work orders. Complete with hours, resources, times and parts.
Planned corrective work orders. Everything that isn't urgent is corrective.
This means that you also need some form of work order prioritization approach. (Later...)
This is also a very good time to introduce delay coding and accurate time reporting, but we will deal with that in a separate post.
And that is about it. The very first time you do this you will find that you either have very little work that is truly planned, or you have too many people. One or the other. It rarely works out perfectly once you get smart about it.
Work through week 1, I really suggest that you do this in weekly intervals at first. Check your schedule compliance.
Did you get everything done that you wanted to get done? Easily? Have you recorded the times for each task? How did they go? Are they accurate? No - then change them.
Capacity scheduling is an iterative methodology. You get better as you get more informed, and it has an impact through many of the fundamental areas of planning and scheduling.
Remember - efficiency = productive without waste. It doesn't mean running on the bones, that is a sure-fire way to decrease reliability.
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Not if you're ordinary please
I am about to move into a role where I will hire consultants. Part of my job will be to build a team of reliability consultants for asset intensive industries throughout the Asia Pacific.
I can't really tell you who I will be looking for, or what skills yet. But I can tell you what I won't be looking for.
I won't be looking for anybody who is ordinary. The problem with ordinary is that it is abundant. if you are going to be ordinary, then you had better be cheap. Because I can get ordinary anywhere.
I will be looking for those consultants who are above ordinary. The people who have been through the big jobs and survived. People with an enviable track record. Hopefully, people with a few holes in their CV where they took time to be a bit wierd.
Why? Because I like extra-ordinary people. My clients like extra-ordinary people. Clients will not pay for ordinary, and neither should they. Ordinary is everywhere.
If you enjoyed this post you can subscribe to our feed here, or if you prefer you can receive it in your email here. We don't like spam either and we won't send you any!
I can't really tell you who I will be looking for, or what skills yet. But I can tell you what I won't be looking for.
I won't be looking for anybody who is ordinary. The problem with ordinary is that it is abundant. if you are going to be ordinary, then you had better be cheap. Because I can get ordinary anywhere.
I will be looking for those consultants who are above ordinary. The people who have been through the big jobs and survived. People with an enviable track record. Hopefully, people with a few holes in their CV where they took time to be a bit wierd.
Why? Because I like extra-ordinary people. My clients like extra-ordinary people. Clients will not pay for ordinary, and neither should they. Ordinary is everywhere.
If you enjoyed this post you can subscribe to our feed here, or if you prefer you can receive it in your email here. We don't like spam either and we won't send you any!
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