Maintenance TIME-SAVER FOR WORKERS

The skills, experience and training of maintenance workers should, ideally, be used only for productive, hands-on work. They should move from job to job, knowing exactly what is to be done — with the necessary parts and special tools waiting for them; with the equipment clean, shut down and ready to be locked out; and with the worksite safe and lighted. Under these conditions the workers would record about 6 1/2 hours of hands-on work daily. In reality they record four hours or fewer. Most of the non-productive time is spent waiting for instructions, following misleading instructions and muddling through the preparatory work for each of the jobs. This poor use of the workers’ time and the lapse of maintenance control adds as much as 25% to the cost of maintenance. This is particularly evident during running repairs, the quick-fix jobs that crop up on any given day. If they are identified as an emergency, work is started immediately; otherwise they are completed in 2-5 days. No matter how efficient an operation is, running repairs will always constitute a large portion of the work load because of the diversity of the equipment.

Traditionally, the planning and scheduling of these repairs is the responsibility of the first-line foreman. The demands on his time force him to delegate some of the job preparation to the members of his crew who are performing the repairs. As a result he is not making full use of their expertise, but he has no option other than to do all the preparatory work himself.

For planning and scheduling work other than running repairs, the foreman can usually rely on the support of a maintenance planner. This is more of a staff function than a line function, and the maintenance planner often serves more than one first- line foreman. Usually the maintenance planner is confined to long-range planning and scheduling; he concentrates on the esoteric history and analysis aspects of maintenance control. For this, a technical background and practical trades experience are helpful.

A change in organization is necessary to get the best hands-on work from maintenance workers. Planning for all the work performed by each work crew under a first-line foreman should be controlled by one function, which would make redundant the position of maintenance planner. For history and analysis, there are computer programs that reduce manual input and give a history of repairs considered to be of historical value for each piece of equipment.

The first-line foreman needs an administrative assistant to handle planning for all the hands-on work for which he is responsible. He needs what might best be called a maintenance job planner. The job planner answers to the first-line foreman and is responsible for the forecast of work, for provision of the actual flow of work requests (in order of importance balanced to the available labor), for arranging material delivery and for co-ordination with production for equipment shutdown. The job planner assists the foreman in the control of the work by providing a daily progress assessment and recommendations.

For this function special interpersonal skills are needed. Technical background and experience are less important. The person must be able to establish harmonious working relationships with people of various temperaments, be able to work under stress, be methodical, make decisions with reasonable judgment and caution and communicate effectively both orally and in writing.

Job planning is concerned with organization and balancing the resources required for the work with the resources available. The tricky part is keeping labor balanced when half the problems are urgent and unpredictable. This requires the undivided attention of a person whose biggest task is to remove road blocks so that workers can get on with the job. The relative urgency of all jobs must be known in order to select those to be done next so that the best use is made of the available labor. Any vagueness in the content of the jobs must result in those jobs being excluded from consideration. Uncertainty in the availability of resources such as equipment and materials necessary to complete a job must also delay its inclusion until all the resources are at hand.

The ideal workflow is shown on the accompanying chart. There is a constant influx of new jobs, both short- and long-range. They become workable when everything they need is on site (1). They then progress in line, according to their priority, until they are due to be started (2). The day before, they are tallied with an allowance for emergency work based on the recent trend (3); and the total, with a 20% contingency, is compared with the manhours forecast for tomorrow (4). Adjustment is made for the deficiency or excess, and the non- emergency jobs are assigned to the crew members. The following day they are joined with the emergency jobs for that day (5) and are completed to the extent of the manpower available. All emergencies are done, on overtime if necessary. Incomplete non-emergency jobs are either returned to the backlog to take a new place in line (6) or, if they are partially complete, they remain in the active workload. At the end of each workweek a decision is made on any action necessary to maintain equilibrium between the workflow and the labor resources.

Job planning involves close liaison with production, warehousing, purchasing, accounting, safety, and personnel. When this has to be done by a supervisor and his group of craftsmen, often acting individually, the objective will only be achieved with much misguided and extra effort. It is poor use of their time and their expertise. It is better done by one individual specifically selected for the job. Keith Bowley is a Toronto-based maintenance consultant.