Measuring productivity

Productivity is probably one of the top 5 measures when looking to establish tight control over the operational processes involved in managing maintenance. And there are a few measures that can be used in this space.

Mean time to repair is pretty much the standard productivity measure, and generally speaking, it is s good one. The key issue here, however, is to ensure that quick turnaround times are not followed by early life failures or rework. Measuring one without the other is a suref fire way to get it wrong!

Other measures include direct measures of productivity itself. Before contemplating this measure you will need to have a good data base of work estimates that cover most, if not all, the regularly executed tasks that you perform, as well as a high level of accuracy in these estimates.

That way a task that takes 10 labor hours, can accurately be said to take 10 labor hours.

Once you are at this point them you can record and track the time taken to do tasks against the estimated time. This will allow you to have an indication of the productivity of the workers on a particular task. For example:

A 10 hour task executed in 12 hours gives a productivity rating of 1.2.

So what?

If you multiply 1.2 by the hourly cost to the company of executing the task it becomes a bit more relevant. E.g 1.2 x (say) $30 = $36
So your lack of productivity could be said to be costing you an additional $6 for executing this particular task.

This is just a brief introduction, there are a range of variables that come into play once you consider that noeverybodydy is dong tasks at every hour during the day, and not everybody is available all the time and so on. However, when all these factors are tied in it can become a pretty powerful method for managing the productivity of internal resources, and of external service providers.

Cheers,

Daryl...