MAINTENANCE The worker’s life

Maintenance workers are among mining’s most talented employees. They are highly adaptable and can improvise quickly. They ply their trade everywhere there is a plant and equipment — from the smallest sump pump at the bottom of the concentrator to the biggest scoop-tram in a development heading. In an average-sized mine they maintain and repair from 400 to 500 pieces of equipment. Maintenance workers are expected to perform in difficult and sometimes dangerous environments, and in all kinds of weather. They may work in sub-zero temperatures one day and next day find themselves confined in a poorly ventilated humid hole where sweat can make it difficult to wield a wrench.

There are 15,000 of these workers in the Canadian mining industry. Their annual take-home pay is around $430 million. With added costs of $290 million for company fringe benefits and for supervision and administrative support, the total expenditure for maintenance workers is some $720 million annually.

Maintenance labor costs are high and are increasing. Although attempts have been made to help make labor more effective, a belief still seems to prevail that maintenance costs are relatively cheap. There also is a belief that in emergencies maintenance workers can handle things more expeditiously if left alone and not burdened by detailed methods and procedures.

The cost of the maintenance worker is around $48,000 per year, with fringes and overhead. Frequently the effective time per shift is four hours, each hour costing $55. With better planning and scheduling, this could be a constant five hours and $43. Yearly earned savings for the whole mining industry would be in the $100-million range. With more activities of the worker directed to productive hands- on work, rather than job preparation, productivity would be increased almost 25%. The cost for this would be added staff for planning and scheduling, which would increase overhead only about 10%.

The workday of a maintenance worker can be apportioned to 1) non- productive times such as lunch, coffee- breaks, toilet visits, conversation, etc., and 2) productive time such as job preparation, travel time and hands-on work. (Travel time is that time used in getting to and from the job sites. This, combined with hands-on work, forms the only part of the shift which is effective in reducing the workload.)

Under optimum conditions the worker will use his time effectively as much as 75% or six hours of the 8-hr workshift. Sometimes, only as little as 40% of his time (3.2 hours) or less results in effective work.

Most of the time wasted is due to: poor job preparation; late arrival of parts; unavailability of tools; inadequate trouble-shooting; debris at the worksite; failure to shut down equipment as scheduled; correcting unsafe conditions before work can begin; etc. Effective time can also be lost because of lateness — an inevitable result of inadequate supervision.

When responsibility for any portion of job preparation is given to workers, the time they spend on this reduces their productivity. When a key area of job preparation is overlooked, job efficiency suffers. The chart on page 10 illustrates the changing patterns as productivity improves and the influence on the hourly cost of effective time. Plant-wide jobs individually follow varying patterns coming up with an aggregate for the group.

For emergency running repairs, it is expected that there will be lots of immediate action. And rightly so. An accident or production loss could be at stake. A problem arises when a number of emergencies, and almost equally urgent running repairs, are reported at the same time. Traditionally the maintenance foreman handles the planning of this work himself. The planner is concerned only with jobs requiring longer-range attention. The natural result from these circumstances is a lot of wasted and misdirected effort because the job preparation is delegated to the workers.

Planning is needed for all jobs. Control of the flow of work is least complicated when it starts from one source — the planner. The first step, as each job becomes part of the workload, is to confirm its priority. After the m aterial resources are organized, labor can be assigned to the most important work.

The time taken to complete a job is less when it proceeds smoothly, step by step, without interruption. Crew productivity is also improved because the foreman has more time for direct supervision, which can reduce confusion on complex jobs which cannot, at outset, be fully defined.

There must be a minimum of disruption in job instructions to the worker. His workload is planned two workdays ahead. There is evidence of this — a place with his name, reserved for work orders allotted to him, and replenished so that he is always aware of what is ahead for today and tomorrow. Because the work order is there, he knows planning has already taken place, and generally the instructions are sufficient for him to proceed on his own. Sometimes there are brief discussions with the foreman, when clarification is needed.

The worker fills in the hours, material and parts used for each work order, noting by request, when he completes the job, any additional future action he recommends. The foreman highlights points of particular interest for the benefit of the planner, who initiates new work instruction before filing selected work orders for future reference.

On his timecard the worker provides details necessary for payroll and for maintaining control over the scheduling and status of the work. For payroll he notes the total hours of his shift, regular and overtime; for productivity he notes the effective time he has spent on each job with the full realization of the target for the shift. He participates in the constant review and establishment of the target. If there has been an unusual delay which is the cause for not meeting the target, he notes the details on the back of the timecard. The foreman is the first to know, and he decides whatever corrective action is necessary. Keith Bowley is a Toronto-based maintenance management consultant.