Ultimately we must be interested in profit and helping customers, but cost is a close second and intimately tied with both interests. We do not plan and schedule maintenance work for the exercise. A couple of interesting cost concepts are tied to planning and scheduling. When first implementing a planning and scheduling system, maintenance costs might go up or down. Costs might go down because we might be able to reduce overtime and reduce use of contractors. Yet they might go up because we use more inventory. We use more inventory because we complete much more maintenance work. So depending on your use of overtime and contractors, immediate maintenance costs could go either way, up or down. Many compaies are surprised to see the costs go up with increased inventory consumption and the disruption of normal monthly maintenance budgets. Some companies frustrate the increased productivity by limiting the increased spending on parts not understanding what is happening. With the increased productivity, additional faulty management reasoning might include reduction in labor personnel with layoffs. My experience has been that the true backlog (whether already reported in the form or work orders or not) includes low priority work that could head off equipment problems if completed in time. These low priority work opportunities need maintenance attention now possible with the increased productivity. The industry wisdom rule of thumb maintains that every $1 invested in extra maintenance yield $10 on the bottom line for profit. Thus, we do planning and scheduling to reduce cost of unnecessary overtime and contractors, but also to increase the completion of low priority workorders that keeps assets performing and increases bottom line profits and customer satisfaction.

Doc Palmer

Think having proper procedures to accomplish maintenance activities isn’t important? Read this… from the USA Today January 16, 2008…..

Blast kills 1, inures 9 at New Jersey plant

An explosion at a New Jersey metal casting plant killed one worker and injured nine others. The accident occurred when Maintenance workers were performing maintenance on an air pressure vat used to cast molten metals into machine parts when the vat exploded.

Although unknown whether having a lack of detail procedures was a contributing factor in this tragedy it makes me wonder. Evaluate the on-going maintenance activities in your organization; look for some key behaviors displayed:

·         Detailed step by step procedures are provided for maintenance activities.

·         These detailed step by step procedures are utilized by the workforce (maintenance or operations).

·         Supervisors and managers are monitoring to ensure these procedures are available and utilized.

·         These procedures are in a state of constant improvement based on utilization and the changing equipment environment.

For the sake of your company’s and employee’s future do not leave this critical element out of your maintenance program. Make the utilization of the proper procedures a normal part of your employee’s culture.