Auditing Maintenance Operations, Part 2

In the June 2006 issue, this column examined the auditing of a computerized maintenance management system in a maintenance department that had its CMMS in place for 18 months. In that column (available for reference online at www.mromagazine.com), we concentrated on the first five areas of the audit: Safety, Vision and Goals, Spare Part Management, Equipment Review and Work Order Flow.

In this issue, we’ll focus on the remaining five key areas and the resulting analysis report that accompanies the audit.

The remaining ingredients in a successful CMMS and equipment maintenance program include Work Order Planning, Work Order Scheduling, Planned Shutdown, Training and Education, and Audit Results.

Element 6: Work Order Planning. Here we look at the planning process in depth. By far, this is the most important area of your work order system. In this stage we want to see a process that deals with every type of work order and determine if the needs related to the work orders are being meet.

The parts, services, drawings, permits, etc., are part of the planner’s job and there should be a complete work package created for the craftspeople. The planner also generates the weekly preventive maintenance activities (PMs) from the CMMS and prepares them for execution. The CMMS will reveal if this is being done.

When work orders are planned and staged, they are flagged as such in the CMMS and it should indicate they are ready for scheduling. We’ll check the CMMS for this status change. We’ll also ask the craftspeople for their opinions about how the work order planning is going. Do they have the necessary parts, materials, permits, etc., in the work packages prepared by the planner? The CMMS will tell us if the parts and other components have been issued for the work orders.

Element 7: Work Order Scheduling. Scheduling is the process of assigning the who and the when for the work order.

We look for the utilization of available craft hours. Effective utilization of man-hours is commonly overlooked. Often, scheduling is done haphazardly or not at all. This is not acceptable for effective use of a CMMS.

We look to see how far in advance work orders are scheduled. Two to three weeks is best as it allows the parts and materials to be ordered.

We also critique the information recorded on the completed work orders. Work orders are all about collecting and recording work order data, thus building a valuable equipment history. History also provides the data to report Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) and other valuable equipment trends. We look for evidence that these reports are being generated and displayed.

As an overall evaluation of the planning and scheduling process, we’ll check the CMMS work order backlog. It a clear indicator of how well the planning and scheduling is being done. A key audit point is how the scheduler is managing past-due work orders.

Planning and scheduling are often poorly done activities at many organizations. In many cases supervisors must plan and schedule the work orders as well as perform their supervision duties.

Recent maintenance philosophy, however, has changed how things are getting done. Management is now realizing the huge increase in craft productivity and equipment uptime that can be realized when effective planning and scheduling become a priority. We are seeing a big increase in the number of planners, schedulers and storekeepers being hired to do these specific tasks.

Keep in mind that in smaller facilities, a single person often does the work order planning and scheduling. It’s not until we move into medium and large organizations that these roles become separate.

Element 8: Planned Shutdown. Many facilities have weekly, monthly or yearly planned shutdowns. The lead-up and the follow-through for planned outages require hours of preparation. There are always multiple jobs happening everywhere — PMs, repairs and overhauls, projects, etc.

We examine the overall planning for the outage. Is there co-ordination between production and maintenance? What planning meetings have taken place? How was the meeting structured and what were the results? Were there pre- and post-outage meetings with the craftspeople? Pre-meetings to discuss the work schedule and work packages? Post-meetings to discuss how the outage went? Every completed job should be reviewed to see if there are lessons to be learned for the next time.

Element 9: Training and Education. As effective maintenance processes are developed, there will be opportunities for improvement in your maintenance department. We look to see how the craft skills have been reviewed and what training programs have been set in place to improve these skills.

One of the things that we look for is the ability of the craftspeople to effectively use the CMMS. Can they create and record information on the work orders, find the equipment history and locate parts in stores?

Continuous training and support is necessary for overall maintenance performance improvement.

Element 10: Results. Here we basically do a SWOT analysis. We review the overall audit and maintenance department, including all of the nine audit areas, and identify strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats (SWOT).

In the Strengths area, we look for clear, tangible improvements in maintenance activities that are due to the implementation of work order planning and scheduling, stockroom organization and the CMMS.

If the organization has been using a CMMS for work order planning and scheduling, we measure the increase in maintenance productivity, Reactive Maintenance Hours vs. PM Hours and other key indicators.

Weaknesses prohibit the maintenance department from doing its job effectively. We identify the weaknesses and require a plan for improvement. These weaknesses can be craft skills, manpower issues, PM routines, tooling or other maintenance-related problems.

Opportunities are often overlooked by maintenance departments. These include looking at the things you currently do to see if, when they are nurtured, they could make a positive impact on your maintenance department. Taking better advantage of equipment downtime during product changeovers to perform maintenance would be an example of such an opportunity.

Threats are typically conditions that if not addressed immediately will severely impact equipment reliability or the ability of the maintenance department to fulfill its responsibilities. Not having an effective PM plan would be an example of a threat. Action plans need to be developed quickly to address possible threats.

So there we have it — another tedious audit completed. Audits are seen by many as a waste of valuable time and effort — a lot of work for little benefit. This is sometimes true if the audit is poorly designed and executed. Audits can be overly subjective and may not be supported by hard facts. Bias and compromise also play important roles if the audit is done internally. Inside audits are often poorly done and the auditors don’t want to judge fellow workers.

I favour audits by outside consultants, and that’s not just to promote my own activities. Consultants have a cold set of eyes to assess your maintenance activities. The audits we perform normally take two to four days and are carried out for customers that seek to improve their maintenance programs. We build strong relationships and this bond is important in the auditing process. It helps companies move towards a world-class maintenance status.

Next issue, we’ll investigate hiring planners, schedulers and storekeepers, and explain how to justify all these people and activities.

Peter Phillips of Trailwalk Holdings, a CMMS consulting and training company based in Nova Scotia, can be reached at 902-798-3601 or by e-mail at peter@trailwalk.ca. Previous c
olumns can be viewed at www.mromagazine.com.