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M A I N T E N A N C E
S C H E D U L I N G
Machinery and Equipment MRO
September 2020
WEEKLY SCHEDULE COMPLIANCE IS AN EASY TOOL BUT A BIT TRICKY
Weekly schedule compliance is an easy key performance indicator (KPI), but a lot of people mess it up. We can use it to lock-in mediocre performance. However, when used properly, KPI can help boost our maintenance productivity.
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et’s talk about KPIs first. What we ultimately want is a greatly profitable company (that operates in a legally, safe, and environmentally conscious manner). We all understand this basic measure of company success, the reason for its existence. However, if asked if you would rather have great schedule compliance? You should respond “only if it leads to great profits in a legal, safe, environmentally conscious way.” Perfect. You see that our primary objective is not schedule compliance itself. From a maintenance perspective, what contributes to a company’s success? Well, we work on stuff, manage to fix most things that break, and do a good amount of preventive maintenance. As well as keeping the lines running that produce products that the company sells. Without any weekly scheduling at all, maintenance supervisors are good at keeping their crews busy doing this work. Nevertheless, plants starting their crews with fully loaded schedules actually have more productive crews. If a crew is more productive, it can do more proactive work, keeping things from breaking. It can replace a bearing reported from
the vibration route. It can repair an air leak reported from the ultrasound route. It can tighten an electrical connection reported from the thermography route. Such extra proactive work can be scheduled at more convenient times to minimize line down time, and increased uptime increases profit. Having more productive crews contributes to greater company success though an increased completion of proactive work. The phenomena of fully loaded schedules driving higher productivity has a bit to do with goal se ing. Think of it as the power of a list. If waking up in the morning with a list of five things that can be done, you’ll be more productive than if waking up with an intent to be busy. With the list of five, and completing three or four things, but without a list only two or three things, would be done. Do you see how the list helps focus and is more productive? A good question here would be “how big should the list be?” With goal se ing, if a goal is too high, it seems unachievable and doesn’t encourage extra effort. However, if a goal is too low, it doesn’t need extra ef-
fort. Matching the list with what could be done in a perfect world (with no reactive work) helps drive extra productivity, but only if it is okay not to get it all done. Applying this to a weekly maintenance schedule, we would start with a crew of 10 people (each with 40 hours available) with 400 hours worth of work. Their resulting productivity would be higher than another 10-person crew starting with only 300 hours’ worth of work, a schedule that allows for 100 hours of break-ins. Both crews will take care of break-ins, but here is the key: the crew that starts with a fully loaded schedule will probably complete more work overall but with lower schedule compliance than the other crew. The fully loaded crew might have a schedule compliance of only about 60 per cent, but might complete 210 work orders. The less loaded crew might have 95 per cent schedule compliance, but might complete only 140 work orders. Both crews probably completed all the visible breakdown work and critical PMs. However, by sheer numbers, the more productive crew completed more proactive work, the key to be er company performance.
Photo: Tatomm / iStock / Getty Images Plus
BY DOC PALMER
