If you, as leader in your
company, feel that your True Risk/Reward Ratio for Deferred Maintenance is
excessive and want to defeat your backlogged maintenance there are some very
good tools to accomplish this.
One of the most effective
is what I call Vertical Maintenance (VM). This is a form of
vertically integrated maintenance that puts as many maintenance disciplines
as possible into one asset group at one time for a two day period to create
a surge effort to write off as many open work orders (WOs) as possible. This
offers several distinct advantages.
Planning
– In my program, we try to schedule two major assets a week until all the assets
have had the benefit of the surge effort, and then start over again. This is not
a vaccination; it is a maintenance therapy that is scheduled indefinitely into
the future. Every effort is made to create a scheduled date for each asset. One
month before the VM event, we inspect the asset with several people that
includes the VM Maintenance Leader, a Repair Maintenance Leader, operator
representative, a management representative and any supporting suppliers deemed
necessary.
This team has a list of
all outstanding WOs and examines each. During this inspection the team records
any new and unreported maintenance needs and creates new WOs. It is not unusual
for the team to double the WOs for the asset. This is not a bad thing because it
is known that it takes 15-times more man/hours to fix something after it breaks
than before. So, fifteen newly discovered things that have not broken down can
be fixed in the time it take to fix one thing that does operate to failure.
Parts
– Awaiting Parts is the biggest problem in maintenance; however, since vendors
are encouraged to participate in the inspection, their eyes are actually on the
assets that need repair and can provide a superior service to have all the
needed parts ordered and in place when the VM event starts.
Worker Efficiency
– Planning a month ahead, the VM Team can assure and schedule the technical
people necessary to accomplish the tasks by segregating the WOs by specialty
needs such as preventive maintenance, mechanical, electrical, welding, plumbing,
HVAC, and carpentry personnel. Since each worker will have multiple jobs
assigned during the surge, they will remain at the asset working off as many WOs
as possible. If they do go Awaiting Parts, they notify the VM Leader and the
parts are ordered and the worker selects another WO. When the parts arrive, the
worker uses the parts to finish the first job. This efficiency dramatically
reduces “windshield time” and allows the worker to stay at the asset and work
off two or three times the number of WOs possible if working alone and chasing
parts.
Worker Support
– In operations with a large number of assets, the worker often works
unsupported. In a VM Event, there are workers from other disciplines to help
them with specialty knowledge or direct testing or wrench turning. This has
proven to be invaluable at the interface between electrical and mechanical
machines where the problem cascades from one need to another. Having them at the
same asset for a couple of days generates significant efficiencies in the
quality of the work and training on the job.
Building User Confidence in the Maintenance Effort – During the
planning and execution phases of a VM Event the machine operator is kept in the
loop as to what is happening. It is not possible to correct everything every
time, so the VM Team has to reassure operators that the outstanding WOs will be
handled in a specific order. First, they will make the asset safe. Second, they
will make the asset reliable. Then third, they will make the asset pretty again.
As long as the operator is involved and is kept up to date as to the progress
they will have confidence in the quality of the maintenance. This may require
several VM cycles to accomplish but it will be done.
Operator Involvement Concerning Maintenance – During this VM
relationship, the operator will become much more competent in the management of
the asset. After a few VM cycles, the user will become aware of the maintenance
WOs that are being caused by other users interacting with the asset. We classify
these as Operationally Induced Events (OIEs). These are events that are not
maintenance issues but damage created by the way the asset is used. Tracking
OIEs offers a great opportunity. When the source of the OIE can be identified
the Maintenance Department can provide one-on-one training to the user to train
the problem out of the process. When intentional and unintentional damage is
stopped within a process by putting a dollar value on the behavior of
individuals, the operational readiness of the asset improves tremendously and
maintenance costs drop.
The effectiveness of the
Vertical Maintenance surge effort is dramatic in the number of WOs that can be
worked off in a very short time before the machines fail. There are management
techniques that can be integrated to manage emergency and priority WOs
simultaneously with the VM Program.
A VM Program cannot be
accomplished without the direct leadership and support at vice presidential
level and above in the scheduling of access, funding, participation by the
departments, and the designation of an operating user representative to be a
permanent part of the VM Team. Once the leadership declares that a Vertical
Maintenance Program will be a permanent part of the plan to work off deferred
maintenance, the recaptured 40:1 dollars once spent on breakdown events and the
15:1 in recovered maintenance man/hours can be plowed back into the process to
create a self-financing solution to improved maintenance cost at their
organization.
Vertical Maintenance Newsletter
David Geaslin,
Principal
Houston Mobile: (832)
524-8214
david@geaslin.com
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