I am looking for a fight. Maybe, an open discussion of why anyone should schedule an individual 8-hour shift, 8 hours of work orders, and during an operating shift within a CMMS (computerized maintenance management system). At first glance, the arguers say, we want to capture the entirety of the hours employees are working and apply those costs to the appropriate asset.” Baloney. For a routine shift, the goal is to safely produce a product at the highest margins, while not exceeding the customer's specifications.
Scheduling maintenance during an operating shift
For most operating shifts in a manufacturing environment, you will have daily shift checks for your maintenance team. These shift checks are typically in the form of routes around the operating unit when it is producing. This perimeter-like inspection is to inspect gauges, tank levels, contaminants, flows… the physics stuff... making sure things are working right. Those who do not have a CMMS sure do not schedule it, so what value would be attained to schedule it in a CMMS? Let's review.
Consider an example where you do not have a CMMS, and it is a running production shift. The maintainer would come in for the standard 8-hour scheduled work day. Whether you have a CMMS or not, the best practice would be to net the paid 8 hours with 8 hours of assigned scheduled work. You might expect 3 hours of CMs (corrective maintenance), 1 hour of PMs (preventive maintenance), 3 hours of routine checks, and another hour for lunch, breaks, and clean-up. Eight hours most of us can relate to.
Now, consider an organization with a mature CMMS or a recently installed one. With this type of fanfare, you have an itching to track these paid 8 hours of work. You remember taking a course highlighting the value of assigning specific work and capturing cost to an asset. You improve or want to design your CMMS so well that your PMs are all written to the right asset. You even spend the time developing work orders that generate routine checks written to a collection of assets, whereas, any CMMS would distribute these costs evenly. With all of these efforts, you sit back and reflect that your plan is set for success. Well, that is what you think.
Maintenance completing the work orders for a scheduled operating shift
Your maintainer completes the PMs, the CMs, and the routine checks via the electronic transaction in the CMMS. Physically, you see the evidence of PMs completed because fresh grease is on the tip of some grease fitting. You notice that your CMs are complete because the staged spare parts have been removed from your kitting area and replaced with components to be refurbished. Notice how the assigned PM and CMs are validated with evidence. But how do you know or validate the routine checks were completed versus the maintainer taking a nap or playing Candy Crush for 3 hours?
Capturing routine checks in the CMMS is practically worthless in the real world unless your CMMS captures route base inputs into your CMMS. These inputs could be corrective work orders assigned to the right asset as follow-ups to the parent routine route. Or maybe a follow-up service request was created and attached to the parent routine route work order, emphasizing that the point on a PF Curve is moving to the right on a specific motor. Yet, if you are electronically capturing these route-based work orders and receive zero follow-up work orders, your investment into tracking this information in a CMMS is worthless. Your evidence of completed work is the same, regardless of whether or not the route was conducted.
A piece of paper would be more evidence of a completed route. However, some organizations are obsessed with an electronic log of hours. Organizations should stop obsessing over capturing 8 hours of work in the CMMS and focus more on conducting the 8 hours of scheduled work.
How to schedule maintenance during an operating shift
I have seen targets between 50% and 60% on what you should assign to a maintainer on a routine shift. Doc Palmer has a classic article referencing scheduling 50% of available hours to work. Anything more becomes a diminishing return, and TIMWOODS starts becoming angrier.
To tackle this issue, I propose the following. If you have an individual that scheduled for an operating shift, scheduled for 8 hours, and assuming that their routine checks take 3 hours, schedule them 4 hours of work in the CMMS (same example above where 1 hour to breaks, 3 hours of CMs, 1 hour to PMs).
Next, make out your checklist with route-based inputs. Require inputs like recording the level, indicating the pressure, or documenting which pumps were are in operation. Next, hang this checklist on a board, one for every shift, and in a place for everyone to see. If you come in and do not see a checklist, at minimum, you should see 7 hours of work completed in the CMMS. If you see a checklist, at minimum, you should have 4 hours of work completed in the CMMS. The return on investment for the scheduled hours is the completed checklist validating the route's completion. Remember, the goal is to validate the work and not strictly the hours.
Image 1 - Example of how daily Inspections can be tracked within a CMMS
A - Departments that schedule Daily Inspections Work Orders typically get <1% follow-up work. In some cases, >1000 hours per year is used to schedule, transact, and compete the Daily inspection Work Orders electronically with zero value captured.
B - Scheduling should be at 60% or 4.5 hours of work per day. Replacing the Daily Inspection Work Order within the CMMS with a paper checklist or a mobile app that links calibrated records as "measurement" and disrupts the potential to falsify documentation electronically in a CMMS by simply transacting the Work Order
C - Having 7.5 hours of Emergency Work Orders (EMs), Corrective Maintenance Work Orders (CMs), or Preventive Maintenance Work Orders (PMs), in any quantity validates that a Daily Inspection was not complete.
This example is one of many where departments try to capture everything in their CMMS, failing to see the return on investment in capturing the cost versus obsessing over the perfection of the data. The goal at the end of the day is for the operating unit to produce a high-quality product safely and at a profitable margin. The goal is not to capture every labor hour within a CMMS.
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