Maintenance Management and Asset Management

4.1      Great benefits of a CMMS^?

1.       A Diary and Personal Organizer Tool.

The CMMS becomes your diary.  In it you record the future maintenance requirements of your assets.  You use the CMMS to organize your day, your week and even the coming year.  You can organize all your future jobs in detail – from the 1-hour preventative maintenance routine to the 4-week bi or tri-annual shutdown.  Just be sure to review the work when it comes around to insure it is still well founded.  In most businesses a year is a long time and things can change and make the old plan invalid.

Into the CMMS you enter all your resource requirements such as cranes, scaffolding, lighting towers, etc.  You enter all your manpower requirements so you can organize enough people with the right skills.  You enter all the parts and materials you will need for each job.  You can also record the interactions that need to be taken between departments and across departments so that the jobs run ‘smooth as silk’ and no one forgets something important.

2.       A Smart, Time-saving Buying Tool

A CMMS loaded up with the Bills of Materials (or the Application Parts Lists) of the equipment in the plant and the material supplier catalogues is a huge money and time saver.  It’s a money saver because you can compare costs across suppliers for the same part and get the right part at the best price.  It’s a time saver because you only need one or two keystrokes and all the purchase description typing is done for you in correctly described ‘supplier speak’ with all the right part numbers.  This makes receiving the right parts on time so much simpler and more certain.

On top of that there are dozens of phone calls to suppliers saved daily.  These benefits translate to hours of effort saved each week for years to come.

3.       A Cost Monitoring Tool

A CMMS will let you see where your maintenance money is going.  Most maintenance budgets are also spent on plant improvements, safety improvements, environmental improvements, small capital jobs and site security.  This is great to know when the budget is overspent.  With this information all you need to do is point out how much extra, unbudgeted work is forced onto maintenance by the demands of the business.

The other important cost monitoring benefit of a CMMS is when jobs go bad.  It’s useful to pull out the cost of labor, parts, contractors, etc for review and discussion.  No one likes being reminder of a poor showing but if something good can be pulled out of the mess then everyone learns and moves forward to a better result next time.

4.       Equipment Failure Analysis Tool

When at least a year’s worth of history is in a CMMS it becomes a powerful tool to spot problems.  Make sure your CMMS can download its records into a spreadsheet package.  Once the job or history descriptions for each asset are in the spreadsheet you can sort by keyword and spot reoccurring problems.  For example, I know that in one of my plants I have 44 problems that have reoccurred consistently in the last 3 years.  I can describe them exactly to you and I can point out what they are.

Now that is a powerful bit of knowledge to know - isn’t it!  You can bet that as soon as I can get the time and resources available, we will start working on those problems one-by-one, from the most expensive to the least expensive, till they are gone.  But I would never have known where to put my efforts without the CMMS.

5.       A Trending Tool

A CMMS will let you look at the maintenance side of your business by permitting you to trend any data you want.  You can trend by cost, hours, equipment type, specific asset, etc.  A lot of CMMS are poor at providing trending tools themselves (they were not designed for that job).  In that case make sure your CMMS can drop the data into a spreadsheet package in a format that can be read and interrogated and do the trending in the spreadsheet.  It is absolutely amazing what you can learn and better understand when you can display numbers as a graph.

6.       A Teaching, Training, Instruction-giving Tool

The CMMS lets you ‘talk’ directly to the operators and maintainers.  You can tell them anything you want about the asset that they have to work on and the way in which you want the job done.  You can add in pictures, drawings, cross-section details, material specifications, step-by-step job instructions, etc.  You can turn the CMMS into a tool for getting the job done right first time!  This will make everyone’s day better and happier.

7.       A Safer Work Place

You get big safety benefits with a CMMS.  You can automatically provide MSDS^? for your people, you can advise them on safe work practices, they can be warned of how to handle dangers in the plant, all the necessary permits can be printed out at the one time, etc.

Personal safety is a strong selling point to operators and maintainers, and it is a good idea to include safety benefits when trying to convince people to use a CMMS.  One idea that works is to print out the Permit to Start Work with the Work Order for a job.  No job starts without both the Permit to Start Work and the Work Order being signed on by operations.  This forces everyone to use the CMMS for their own safety.

8.       Accounting Benefits

There are many accounting benefits that also accrue to CMMS users.  Faster invoice matching, fewer invoices, better cash flow projecting, more accurate budgeting, tighter cost control, etc can all be achieved.

9.       Production and Operations Benefits

A CMMS is not just for maintainers.  The production people can use it as a tool to help them run their plant better.  You can use a CMMS to pop-out reminders for operators to clean strainers, to perform monitoring duties, to clean out tanks before the sediment gets too thick, etc.

A CMMS is a smart tool for smart people.

Guarantee Successful CMMS Implementations.

Most CMMS implementations fail.  The users, i.e., the operators and maintainers and their direct supervision, will not support outsider’s efforts.  It’s human nature!  They often think 'What can office-based, university-educated people possibly know of shop floor and production plant life?'

If you want a successful implementation every time, then don’t let the Information Technology Department implement the CMMS (What do they know about maintenance and operations? )  Don’t let the engineers do it alone either (Unless an engineer has great ‘people skills’ or has worked for years with trades people and ‘shop-floor’ people they cannot relate to their views and requirements!  They will be considered outsiders too!).

If you want success every time, then do get the production and maintenance supervision and lead maintenance technician to do it under expert supervision from maintenance management.  Once the end users (the supervisors and planners in maintenance and operations) buy into the change process you will see them drive it right through the organization and make sure that all their people use it properly.  (Aha – now I’ve told you the secret of how to deal with production and maintenance people!  Work through the supervisors and lead maintenance technicians!  Keep it to yourself and don’t tell anyone!)

Let them sort out the lot - the naming conventions, the asset numbering, work order coding, chart of accounts, stores cataloguing and numbering, the management reports, and so on – the lot!

But give them guidance.  There is a reason that assets are given numbers in certain arrangements, there is a reason that store’s catalogues are done to a particular format, there is a reason to use job codes that people can understand, there is a reason to produce particular reports for managers.  The supervisors are bright people.  Once they understand why things are done certain ways, and with a few questions that will need answering, they can work out the best way for the organization and for themselves to set-up the CMMS.

A CMMS can be good for an organization, it will save money, resources, time, and effort.  But you must sell it and do it the right way so that the people that must use it and enter the data will support it!

4.2      Equipment criticality

How do you decide what level and type of maintenance to use on an individual item of plant and its sub-assemblies?  Not all equipment is equally important to your business.  Some are critical to production and without them the process stops.  Others are important and will eventually affect production if they cannot be returned to service in time.  While other items of plant are not important at all and can fail and not affect production for a very long time.

As a maintainer and operator, you want to know which equipment in your plant falls into each of those categories so you can determine your response.  Furthermore, you want to know which sub-assemblies in each item of equipment are critical to the operation of the machine.

From this information you can decide which spares to hold on-site and which to leave as outside purchases.  The equipment criticality also determines what level of preventative maintenance to use, what type and amount of condition monitoring to use and what type and amount of observation is required from the operators.  You can also use it to justify on-line monitoring systems to protect against catastrophic failure.

The two approaches often used to determine criticality is either Reliability Centered Maintenance or Risk Based Maintenance.  Both methods determine the consequences of failure and then address the appropriate response to prevent the failure.  One other way of determining equipment criticality is to consider knock-on effect of a failure and the severity of the consequences.  It is the same intention as the previously mentioned methods, but it arrives at the rating and the response in a quick four-step process.

 People from operations and maintenance work through it together, equipment by equipment, using the simple flow chart below.  Those failures that cause safety and environmental risks were not allowed to happen and either the parts were carried as spares and changed out before failure, or the plant item is put on a condition monitoring program.  Those failures that caused production loss or affect quality is also not allowed to happen or put into a condition-monitoring program.  And those failures that didn’t matter are treated as a breakdown.

The flowchart below lets one arrive at a rating and a corrective action for each piece of equipment and component.  If an equipment or component loss produces dangerous situations, or if the failure stops production or affects quality, it is either changed out before the end of its working life or put on a monitoring program.

In the equipment criticality flowchart above ...

TBM = Time Based Maintenance

CBM = Condition Based Maintenance

BM = Breakdown Maintenance

Want to dive a little deeper into Equipment Criticality? See our 61 page eBook "Production Risk Management using Equipment Criticality Analysis eBook - 2nd edition". The risk management - criticality analysis eBook will allow you to proactively act and put in place effective strategies to manage and control risk. (Risk control by criticality analysis, FMEA^?, QRA^? and RACM^?.)

4.3      Work planning and scheduling

The efficient use of men, materials and external resources requires coordination and preparation.  When a job starts everything needed to do the job must be at hand and must be right to use.  The maintenance planner does the preparation required prior to the start of a job.  The planner’s focus is to prepare everything needed to execute a job through to its successful completion and have it ready and on-hand before the job starts.  How well the planning job is done directly affects how efficiently the personnel do the work and how long it takes for it to be done.

Why plan?  Planning maintenance work maximizes the benefits from the time, money and effort that go into a job.  Maintenance planning and scheduling will improve dramatically the productivity of maintenance crews.  There is verified productivity improvements of 50% above the results achieved when not using planning.

Planning is different and separate to scheduling.  The planner is located separate to the maintenance department so they cannot be diverted from the job of planning by sudden problems.

The planner is not the scheduler.  The maintenance supervisor schedules.  The planner provides a complete work package – purchased materials, tool list, procedures, drawings, past equipment history, job times, manning requirements, and external resource requirements such as cranes – and then walks away to prepare the next work order.

Breakdown jobs cannot be planned, and breakdowns go directly to the maintenance supervisor to run with.  The planner does not become involved in breakdowns or in any job once started.  The planner is there to get ahead of the day-to-day work so that fresh work is always prepared for the crew before they finish their current jobs.

If the crew find a problem once a planned job is started the crew solves the problem themselves without involving the planner.  The planner is advised of the problem in the report when the work order is returned.  The planner makes a note in the plant records so he can plan and prepare for it next time.

Productivity is maximized because all the planning, parts and information is provided, and the tradesmen can be immediately put onto the tools to do the job.

A good planner has particular attributes that are critical for success.  A planner is well organized with paperwork, knows the plant and equipment well, writes and reads well, understands drawings and records of equipment history, is very able on computers and the necessary planning, purchasing, and accounting software he will need to use.  They needs to be out-going, comfortable talking with all sorts of people and be prepared to ask questions of others.

Scheduling is the time tabling of the job to be done.  It is the process of deciding who will do the job, what at-the-job resources they need, and setting and confirming the date and time to get assess to the plant and equipment.

Planning can be done months ahead of time, but scheduling can only happen close to the time that the job is to be done.

The key concept behind planning.

The Chinese philosopher Confucius said - “In all things success depends on previous preparation and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.”

Confucius was right.  If you want things to be done successfully, they must be prepared, and made ready, before doing them.  The job of a maintenance planner is to prepare for the work of doing maintenance.  The job of a maintenance scheduler is to prepare for the people to do the maintenance.  The planner first organizes everything in readiness for a job to be scheduled.  But the planner cannot schedule the job!  The persons responsible for providing the people, and the access to the equipment, must do the scheduling.

When the planner hands over a complete work pack their job is done.  They are successful at the point of hand-over.  The planner has compiled and assembled the parts, tools, resources, and information needed to successfully do the work.  The planner has done their job!  They can then go back and start preparing for the next lot of maintenance work.

The Planner’s time scale is 5 days away and longer.  Planners cannot help with breakdowns and rush jobs.  It is already too late to plan!  In a breakdown you can only react to what you find during the repair.  The maintenance crew leading hand looks after breakdowns and those ‘must-be-done-today’ jobs.

Don’t bother your planner if it’s a breakdown or if the job must be done within the next 5 days.  The planner's role is to get ahead of today’s problems and prepare for next week’s successes.  If you stop them from doing that you will stop having future successes.  The planner’s success today is everyone’s success tomorrow!

Three questions:

What exactly is maintenance planning?

To satisfy Confucius’ advice, maintenance planning is about preparing to achieve success.  Do what ever is necessary to guarantee successful outcomes.

What exactly should a maintenance planner do?

To maximize the benefit from time, money, and effort the planner must do all the thinking, reading, procedures, investigation and procuring so that the maintainers spend more tool-time on the plant and equipment.  Good planning means high tool-time, it means machines are fixed quickly, they are fixed well and with less people and supervision.

Where exactly is the maintenance planner located so that his job can be done properly?

The planner’s time focus is 5 days and longer.  They cannot sit where the maintenance time focus is today and tomorrow.  The planner must sit in an area where they are not disturbed by day-to-day issues.  They also needs to be in contact with Production so he can get a feel for their priorities and production schedule.  The planner sits in the Production office.

The planner must report to people whose time focus is longer than 5 days.  They cannot report to workshop supervision whose time focus is today and tomorrow as the planner will then become the ‘gofer’ for rushed work and never find the time to be ahead of the workload.  The planner reports to the Maintenance Manager and not to ‘shop floor’ supervision.

Let me say it one more time, because it is so important to your success –

“The Planner’s job is to get ahead of today’s problems and prepare for next week’s successes.  If you stop him or her from doing that you will stop having future successes.  The planner’s success today is everyone’s success tomorrow!”

The world class players are great planners.  They have a minimum 5-year plan that is cascaded down to 1-year plans then to monthly plans of major events and finally daily plans.  The planning is done in detail for all activities.  They check their own performance and review it weekly using Key Performance Indicators to learn what can be done better so that they continuously improve their results.  They plan widely and deeply to maximize the ‘wrench time’ of their trades people and get great work force efficiencies.

You may also want to study "The Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Training" course PowerPoint, it is a little different than many others. These 229 slides in 3 Management PowerPoint's have a storyline that hopefully will entertain you as this PowerPoint teaches you. The author wanted to make training fun for you to do, and for him to write. So he made the PowerPoint into a story of how Ted (he’s imaginary) learned to become a 'Top-Gun' Maintenance Planner and Scheduler.

4.4      Preventative Maintenance (PM)

Preventative Maintenance requires people to regularly walk around looking, feeling, listening, smelling (sometimes even tasting) and thinking about their equipment’s operating condition.  The three foundations of classical Preventative Maintenance are regular lubrication checks, drive train monitoring and equipment mounting inspections.

Preventative maintenance work orders are easily generated by a Computerized Maintenance Management System, and you should take advantage of this.  By establishing PM^? work orders in just the three classical inspection areas there will be a noticeable drop in breakdowns within two months.

Lubrication PMs should be raised to cover greasing and oil level checks.  List the machine(s) to be greased and oiled and the gearbox oil levels to be checked.  Tick check boxes as each machine is done.  Use check boxes to tick if shaft seals are leaking.  Don’t let seal leaks drain a gearbox of oil.

Make it clear where the grease nipples are by coloring the area around them with paint, so none are missed.  Train the person doing the lube in basic lubrication theory.  Tell them how vitally important it is to do the job well and to be continually on the lookout for lubrication and roller bearing problems.

Drive train monitoring involves inspecting v-belts, pulleys, drive chains, sprockets, and couplings for wear and over stress.  V-belts are to have no cracks and a full profile without signs of wear.  Pulley alignment is checked with a straight edge between pulleys.  Pulleys should have no signs of slippage.  Sprockets and chain links are checked for wear and alignment.  Visually check the condition of coupling members transferring torque for signs of distortion and perishing.  Where the same machine regularly shows up as defective investigate the cause and do an improvement project.

Equipment mounting inspections involve checking for loose mounting bolts and broken foundations, observing signs of flexing base plates during operation, making sure pipe supports are taking the stress off connection points and feeling for unusual vibrations in the body of the machine.

The frequency of a PM is dependent on the industry, the site, and the equipment.  Lube PMs are done more frequently than drive train PM’s which in turn are done more frequently than looseness check PM’s.  However, the periods can be adjusted with experience.

The very best asset managers have maintenance under control.  Their entire organization's systems and methods are tuned to preventing unplanned stoppages.  They only do that which has first been thought through and prepared for.  But most importantly they understand the key factor to excellent asset care and work toward it continuously and energetically.

It is simply that breakdowns overwhelm, but preventative maintenance can be planned.  And planned work is the least expensive of maintenance strategies.  The world class asset management organizations get their preventative maintenance up to more than 80% of their workload.  This then is the clear and straight path to world class asset management – strive to turn your maintenance around so that the vast majority of it is preventative.

To get world-class asset management results you must get maintenance under control, which means that you need to have low equipment failure rates and so all your strategies and practices are targeted toward that outcome.

4.5      Work order instructions and history reporting

Use written work instructions to make it clear.

Job procedures or job instructions are written directions given to equipment maintainers.  They reduce the chance of making an error and reduce the time spent looking for information. Job instructions offer an opportunity to ensure a job is well planned, well documented, and well organized.  Once written they are reused forever more.

This document saves time and effort as is contains all the information a tradesman needs to know to do the work.  It is a ‘live’ document and is continually being up-dated as more is leant about the job and the equipment to which it applies.

Job instructions are normally compiled for routine work that regularly reoccurs.  They can also be used for hazardous work that must be done carefully.  They can be written to cover a half-hour job of a two-week outage.

The beauty of job instructions is the opportunity they provide to think through a job in great detail and plan it thoroughly for all future occasions.  It is clearly a great way to save time and to pass on knowledge.  This means the best person to write the procedure should be someone that knows the job well.  This is usually a tradesman, leading hand or supervisor who has performed the work several times.

Take the person writing the procedure out from normal daily work and devote them to compiling the instructions.  Though
 the writing is time consuming; this one document will save that time over and over again.

Procedures hasten training of new personnel, reduce breakdowns because equipment is rebuilt with full knowledge, save lost time on the job as all information is with the tradesman and provide confidence in the work being done.

Work order job history recording

The work order report is the maintainer’s opportunity to advise the engineer what problems exist with equipment out in the plant.  It can also provide an accurate record of what was found during the repair.  This makes it important that work order reports are completed in detail and are reviewed by managers and engineers.

Reporting back on a completed work order is vital.  This task is often seen by tradesmen as a time-consuming requirement of little worth.  That view is terribly wrong.

Each repair contains valuable information to improve the future performance of the repaired equipment.

But this information is only valuable if the people who can authorize money for plant improvements are alerted to a problem.  The work order report is a tradesman’s opportunity to tell maintenance management the equipment problems they have to live with and what to do to solve them.

A wise maintenance engineer will read all the work order reports for his section of plant.  It gives him additional insight into the plant through other’s eyes.  If the work order is not read by middle managers in maintenance, then improvements to plant and equipment will be slow.

A good work order report tells the reader what the maintenance man saw.  Such as “There were score marks around the shaft under the bearing inner race.” Indicates the inner race had probably spun and there may be too much clearance between the shaft and race, or the bearing is getting hot and expanding.  This could lead to changing tolerances on drawings or investigating lubrication requirements.  Another example is “The rubber in the shaft lip seal was hard and cracked.”  This may mean the temperature was too much for the seal or the wrong rubber was selected.

The tradesman’s comments are critical in the effort to continuously improve plant performance.

A good work order report also tells the reader what the tradesman did to fix the repair.  In the example of the shaft bearing “Polished bearing seat and fitted new bearing” tells the reader the problem has not been fixed and it will likely reoccur.  But - “Checked shaft tolerance and found it was undersize by 0.05 mm.  Machined the shaft and shrunk fit a sleeve.  Machined sleeve to within tolerance and installed new bearing.” – says at least one possible problem (an undersize shaft) has probably been eliminated.

If you would like to reference this guide offline, and/or print copies for your maintenance, operators, or students in your facility, you can purchase a PDF version of this guide below.