Easy Money

Don't panic! When the crunch comes it is very easy to go for the big stuff. Cut numbers, cut inventory, make do with what we have, cut CAPEX... But what we are actually doing is cutting our throats.

Cutting in an uncontrolled fashion may save today, but it dooms tomorrow.

There are numerous easy to implement techniques and tactics that can cut a lot out of the budget, without risking the reliability of the asset base. In fact, to the contrary, they improve the overall reliability of our physical assets.

A really quick one is Capacity Scheduling. And its a really quick one because it doesn't need software particularly, nor does it need any very difficult training.

The principle is simple. You have a finite amount of time to use on maintaining the plant. So use it to your best advantage.

How much time can you schedule?

How much do you have in total? At first this is best done for a single discipline team. If you have team members who work in several disciplines then you can work it together.

Take away the time for lunches, breaks, wash up time allotments, toolbox meetings and so on.

Take a percentage away to correspond with your leave policies.

Then take 5 - 10 percent for breakdowns, and 5 - 10 percent for work with other teams. This part is crucial and so often overlooked.

If you don't factor in a percentage for breakdowns then, right now, your plan is probably not going to be achievable. If you don't factor in time working with other teams, ditto.

Then you are looking at the actual time you have left to schedule for work. Not much is it? And this isn't the tool time either, working out delays and maximizing efficiency is a whole other area.

What can you schedule?

With the available time now showing, we can start to slot in the work orders that need to be done.

First, the routine work. Always the routine work first! Why? Because if we miss it then you are missing a detective, predictive or preventive task - meaning that your plant is now in danger of an undetected or unplanned failure.

Sort of makes the point for getting your maintenance regimes in order doesn't it? Anyway...
With the routine work scheduled, then we can start to slot in the corrective work. Don't over do it, don't go past the limits. Schedule right up to what you have available and don't go past it.

So why start here?

With a little bit of smarts this can be done in a spreadsheet. I have built several at different times to do this. You don't need a CMMS or anything else. (Although if you have one all the better)

The reason why capacity scheduling is such as powerful improvement initiative is because it shines the light on other important areas of maintenance planning and scheduling. To do this right you need:
Planned routine work orders. Complete with hours, resources, times and parts.

Planned corrective work orders. Everything that isn't urgent is corrective.

This means that you also need some form of work order prioritization approach. (Later...)

This is also a very good time to introduce delay coding and accurate time reporting, but we will deal with that in a separate post.

And that is about it. The very first time you do this you will find that you either have very little work that is truly planned, or you have too many people. One or the other. It rarely works out perfectly once you get smart about it.

Work through week 1, I really suggest that you do this in weekly intervals at first. Check your schedule compliance.

Did you get everything done that you wanted to get done? Easily? Have you recorded the times for each task? How did they go? Are they accurate? No - then change them.

Capacity scheduling is an iterative methodology. You get better as you get more informed, and it has an impact through many of the fundamental areas of planning and scheduling.

Remember - efficiency = productive without waste. It doesn't mean running on the bones, that is a sure-fire way to decrease reliability.

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