Don't cut costs, cut waste

we often focus, incorrectly, on costs when our main drive should be on waste. I have posted here and elsewhere on the differences between costs and cost effectiveness,and it is a view that has served me and my clients well over the past twenty years.

At a high level productivity without waste is seen principally in the cost effectiveness of the organization. Costs per product of maintenance, when applied correctly, gives us a drive to maximize and sustain output levels - not just to take a razor to the direct costs of running things.

One of the most powerful processes to do this is through a meticulous focus on what is called "tool time". Tool time is the amount of time that your people actually spend doing the work. Not preparing for the work, not getting parts for it or doing the paperwork - but in actually doing the work.

The first step is to ensure that you can record this in some fashion. Time and motion studies during turnarounds, large overhauls and routine replacement tasks can reveal an incredible level of waste that is able to be cut. In one particular case I recall a locomotives company in Mexico was able to reduce their turnaround time from 4 days to less than two.

How? Relocation of tools, delivering parts "to the elbow", reducing the walking and roaming time of workers and through being innovative in the way that they arranged the work schedule. Particularly with respect to fully utilizing resources prior to their role on the job - and once their role had been carried out.

So T&M studies still have their benefits, even at the start of the 21st century. But by far the best way of measuring tool time and tracking the impact of initiatives is through recording delays to work.

Delay coding exists on most CMMS programs, particularly (from memory) the Mincom, MRO and SAP modules.

The basic idea is that each person records the delays they encountered dutring each task. Codes are organized to match the real world with things like waiting for parts, waiting for permits and waiting for equipment being commonly used.

Not a solution in itself, but the start of a solution. Work delay reports then become part of the maintenance planners regularly reviewed reports, and they are able to initiate action to start to uncover root causes and put fixes in place.

Delay coding, when coupled with capacity scheduling, provide a very powerful one-two punch for you to start the job of driving inefficiency out of your organization.

What has been your experiences with doing this?

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