Christer Idhammar

Founder and Executive

Vice President

IDCON INC

USA

It is important to understand the difference between planning and scheduling. These two elements of maintenance management are essential and are very often confused. Most organizations, where scheduled shutdowns of the manufacturing process are common, plan and schedule work quite well; they have to, there will be consequences if they do not.

Planning and scheduling of weekly/daily On-The-Run work is often very poor. Perhaps this is because of more lax expectations on performance than during a shutdown? The short definitions used here are:

• Planning of work = deciding what, how and when work will be done.
• Scheduling of work = deciding when and by whom work will be done.

Planning of work is to prepare everything needed to do the work. E.g. Scope and description of work, any safety requirements, tools, parts and material, documentation, need for scaffolding, skills required, shut down required or whether the work can be done without interference to production etc.

Scheduling of work is to first decide when the job shall be done by date/time and by whom the work will be done.

A best practice is to plan work before it is scheduled for execution, then schedule the work that needs to be done and finally schedule the people requited to the work.

All work can be planned but all work cannot be scheduled!

Planning work is the easy part if you have dedicated people who are allowed to focus on the planning. Even correction of a break down can in theory be planned because you know it can, and most probably will happen, but you cannot schedule all work because you do not always know when the breakdown will occur.

Most breakdowns can be prevented but not all failures can be prevented. This is because all failures do not have long enough failure developing periods. The failure-developing period is the period of time that lapses from the point in time you discovered a failure until the time break down occurs. If this time is too short the failure will develop into a breakdown before the corrective action can be planned. This is common for electronic components. Before problems in systems with electronic equipment can be corrected troubleshooting has to be done. Breakdowns can still be prevented with redundant components. In general, most mechanical and electrical equipment demands less trouble-shooting time and more repair time, the opposite pertains to electronic equipment and control systems.

In general it takes much longer to troubleshoot than to correct the problem. This needs to be considered for example when setting goals for volume of work that can be planned before it is scheduled (Figure 8).

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Figure 8. Mechanical and electrical equipment demands less trouble-shooting time and more repair time.

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Figure 9. Example of the work that is requested and approved to be executed and where planning and scheduling can be done without any other steps.

Work Management Process

It is necessary to document and reinforce the process defining how work is managed. If this is not done, you will surely end up in the “Circle of Despair” (Figure 1 in Part 1, MaintWorld 4-2012). My intention in this article is to discuss the very basics and an overview, not a complete article about planning and scheduling. The essential steps in a work management process are described in the following example (Figure 9), the work that is requested and approved to be executed and where planning and scheduling can be done without any other steps. When work is planned it is common that the work has to be placed in hold codes such as:

• Waiting material
• Waiting approval
• Waiting opportunity, e.g. unscheduled shutdown. This work is planned but not scheduled.

These hold codes have to be cleared before the work shall be added to the planned backlog where all work that is planned and ready to be schedule is held.

Emergency work will go directly from work initiation to execution and planned as good as it can be in the given situation. Too much emergency work will trigger the “Circle of Despair”. The more work done as reactive, the less work will need to be done as managed work (planned and scheduled work.)

Rules for prioritization, approval levels etc. and the roles of people involved must be clearly defined.

Front Line Management

Execution of the work management process has to occur with the front line organization. It is at this level of the organization that results will, or will not be delivered. The front line organization consists of the following functions. In bigger organizations each of these functions are full time employees. In smaller organizations employees have to do all or some of these functions (Figure 10).

Planning of work is always carried out but often in the wrong order. Best practice is that planning of work is done before work is scheduled and executed. Most successful organizations have full-time planners and the planners use more than 70 % of their time to professionally plan work.

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Figure 10. Functions of the front line organization.

One Point of Contact Between Operations and Maintenance

A Maintenance and Operations Co-ordinator should co-ordinate work requests from operations. The co-ordinator will screen work and reject or validate work to be done. The coordinator should also set the requested priority based on an objective guideline. He/she is the person leading weekly and daily planning and scheduling meetings.

Scheduling of Work

Supervisors or team leaders in most successful organizations do scheduling of work. They are the best to assign people to work schedules, as they know the capabilities of the skilled workers they manage. They will also follow up on progress of work.

Execution of Work

Skilled workers and operators execute work and can do so much safer and more efficiently than if work were not planned and scheduled before the work were executed.

Justification for Planners

I have worked in many plants that have no planners because the maintenance organization said they were needed, but they were not able to justify planner(s) position(s). I would like to offer some ideas on how we successfully have helped maintenance organizations justify more efficient planning with planners.

With or without planners somebody always does planning of work otherwise the work could not be done. In an organization without planners the following is a typical situation:

(Working hours 07:00 – 15:30)

• 07:00 – 07:30 Crew arrives and meets with supervisor.
• 07:30 All have been assigned what to do today. E.g. “Pump 20-439 does not pump”
• 07:30 – 08:45 Two mechanics troubleshoot and find that bearing, seal and impeller unit must be changed.
• 8:45 – 09:00 get rigging tools.
• 09:00 – 09:15 Morning break.
• 09:15 – 10:30 Finding parts.
• 10:30 – 11:30 Arrange rigging.
• 11:30 – 12:00 Lunch break.
• 12:00 – 14:00 Disassemble bearing, seal and impeller unit.
• 14:00 – 15:30 Impeller too big. Machine down to right diameter.
• 15:30 – 17:00 Install, test and start pump.

In summary the scope of work had to be decided by the mechanics. Tools, parts, rigging etc. also had to be decided by mechanics, as was the adjustment of the impeller. All of this is PLANNING. The inefficiency in this example lies in that planning was done after scheduling and it must be done the other way around to enable people to be efficient.

The other scenario is that the problem with the pump was discovered during an established inspection route a couple of weeks before the problem had to be corrected. A planner could then plan the job efficiently. It would take the planner about two hours to prepare everything needed to carry out the work, arrange for pump impeller to be adjusted etc. The store would stage and deliver parts in advance. The mechanics would then do the work in a safe and organized way in about five maintenance hours instead of about 20 hours including overtime as in the example above.

We have done hundreds of evaluations of maintenance organizations all over the world and found that without organized inspections and planning followed by scheduling of work skilled workers spend 40–60 % of their time on “planning activities” as given in the example (table 1).

In this example the maintenance organization is very reactive and skilled workers are put in a situation where they have to “plan” to get the work done. The implementation of basic inspections will change the situation so that a planner can plan before work is scheduled by a supervisor and executed by skilled workers.

The target is to get down to about 10 % urgent work where the situation described in the scenario above would still be repeated. That would free up 190 hours/day from skilled workers’ time.

Table 1.

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To be efficient in work management, this organization would need about three to four planners (24–32 hours/day). This would enable skilled workers to free up 158–166 hours/day. The number of planners needed is very dependent on disciplined priorities of work, access to an updated and accurate bill of materials and close co-operation with operations.

Roles of Front Line Management

Some of the most common questions I get from organizations all over the world include:

• Do we need leaders on the frontline?
• Do we need planners?
• How many planners do we need?
• How many frontline leaders do we need?
• Do we need Maintenance- Operations Co-ordinators?
• How should we decide the roles of planners and frontline leaders?

These are the same questions I received when I started in industry many years ago and it is still today one of the first issues that
needs to be clarified when we help organizations improve reliability and maintenance performance.

Over all these years organizations have tried everything from combined roles, centralized planners, self-directed work teams, autonomous maintenance, no planners, no frontline leaders and so on. All these experimental attempts I have seen over all these years has reverted back to the fact that leaders and planning and scheduling are absolutely necessary to provide a safe working environment and efficient work execution.

In smaller organizations of up to about eight maintenance skilled workers the roles of planner and frontline leader is by necessity often combined, but someone still has to do these functions. In larger organizations I know you need all of the above roles as positions to be efficient.

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Figure 11. Leadership style and roles changes depending on Craft People’s Skill levels and Processes implemented and used.

How Many Planners and Frontline Leaders?

To decide how many planners and frontline leaders an organization needs is not a simple answer based on ratio of planners to skilled workers and frontline leader to skilled workers. There are a number of factors needed to give the right answer including:

• How the role of a planner is defined.
• How the role of a frontline leader is defined.
• Quality and access to support systems such as a complete Bill of Materials.
• Skill level and participation in planning by skilled workers.
• Implemented and disciplined use of processes for maintenance.

In Figure 11 the upper x-axis shows leadership style as it relates to skilled workers’ level of skills. The upper y-axis shows leadership style from instruction to support.

If the crew has low skill levels a frontline leader will be forced to use more time to instruct how to do a task. If the crew has a high level of skills the leadership style can, and should, change to more support and less instructions.

The x-axis in the lower graph shows how well the essential maintenance management processes are instituted and used in a disciplined manner in the organization. (Work Management Process, Preventive Maintenance, Bill of Materials and Store Room support).

In an organization with a low skilled worker skill level and very few and/or poor essential maintenance management processes instituted, the frontline leader has no choice but to use more time to instruct and follow up on execution of tasks. He/she can therefore not manage more than about six people.

If a planner has no access to a quality populated Bill of Materials and is bombarded with many “Do-It-Now” requests he/ she will not manage to plan for more than perhaps four people.

On the left side of the graph the situation is different. Skilled workers’ skill levels are very high and essential maintenance management processes are instituted and used in a disciplined manner. In this scenario a planner can plan for up to 20 people and a frontline leader can lead up to twelve skilled workers. You might even consider merging the roles of planner and frontline leader into one that can plan, schedule and lead teams of up to eight skilled workers.

There are other circumstances that impact crew sizes per planner and frontline leaders such as the size of the physical area they manage. One frontline leader managing a central workshop might handle 25 to 30 people. In a very spread out manufacturing area the frontline leader can handle much fewer skilled workers.

The function of Maintenance- Operations Co-ordinator will also enable the frontline roles to become more efficient.

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