Reliable Maintenance Planning, Estimating, and Scheduling

Ralph Peters

• Publisher: Gulf Professional Publishing
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780123970428
• eBook ISBN: 9780123982919
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Industrial Management
• Index: Business

Written specifically for the oil and gas industry, Reliable Maintenance Planning, Estimating, and Scheduling provides maintenance managers and engineers with the tools and techniques to create a manageable maintenance program that will save money and prevent costly facility shutdowns. The ABCs of work identification, planning, prioritization, scheduling, and execution are explained. The objective is to provide the capacity to identify, select and apply maintenance interventions that assure an effective maintenance management, while maximizing equipment performance, value creation and opportune and effective decision making. The book provides a pre- and post- self-assessment that will allow for measure competency improvement. Maintenance Managers and Engineers receive an expert guide for developing detailed actions including repairs, alterations, and preventative maintenance.- The nuts and bolts of the planning, estimating, and scheduling process for oil and gas facilities- Step-by-step maintenance guide will provide long-term, results-based operational services- Case studies based on the oil and gas industry

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Profit and Customer-Centered Benefits of Planning and Scheduling

Abstract

This chapter sounds the alarm for top leaders to understand the importance of maintenance as key to total operations success. If your current maintenance strategy, leadership philosophies, and planning and scheduling processes do not allow you to manage maintenance like a profitable internal business, you could be in trouble or heading toward serious trouble. Top leaders that still view maintenance as a “traditional cost center” and then continuously “squeeze blood from the maintenance turnip” are on the road to major problems with physical asset management. This chapter summarizes that investments in reliable maintenance planning, estimating, and scheduling along with other best practices can have many measurable benefits.

Keywords

Chief maintenance officer, CMO; Contract maintenance; Cost center; Customer-centered; Maintenance; Maintenance leader; Maintenance manager; P–F interval; Physical asset management; Planner/scheduler; Profit ability; Profit optimization; Profit-centered; Value-adding investments

Effective and reliable maintenance planning and scheduling that we will discuss later is an essential element for physical asset management operation. But does your view of maintenance and physical asset management process see it as a profitable in-house business within your organization? Would your current maintenance operation sustain itself as a contract maintenance organization and make a profit? These might seem to be two strange questions. But, if your current maintenance strategy, leadership philosophy, and planning and scheduling processes do not allow you to manage maintenance like a profitable internal business, you could be in trouble or heading toward serious trouble.

Top leaders that still view maintenance as a “traditional cost center” and then continuously “squeeze blood from the maintenance turnip” are on the road to major problems with physical asset management. This attitude has resulted in catastrophic failures within airlines, refineries, ships at sea, and many other operations. Maintenance requirements are everywhere and the need for effective maintenance is continuous because… Maintenance is forever! Maintenance of our body, soul, mind, spirit, house, car, physical assets, and infrastructures all around us will be with us forever.

Are top leaders gambling with maintenance? There can be a very high cost of gambling with maintenance, and most operations lose when they gamble with their maintenance chips. There is an extremely high cost to bad maintenance within oil and gas operations, on the plant shop floor, in combat, and everywhere the maintenance process fails in the proper care of physical assets. Look at Figure 1.1 below to gain an understanding of the P–F interval. What chances are you willing to take when you know that a failure is occurring”?

Point P above is like the saying, “You can’t be a little bit pregnant.” Point P can be confirmed by numerous possible means, but the P–F Interval is basically the unknown time between seeing a certain failure start and at what time the failure actually occurs. If you have not invested wisely in predictive maintenance or continuous monitoring, you may be at the point where you can manage and lead forward as a profitable internal business.

You may also be a potential takeover target for contract maintenance. Many operations have lost heavily by gambling with indiscriminate cuts to a core requirement: the resources necessary for effective physical asset management and maintenance. Quantum leaps backward will occur for the top leader that fails to view maintenance as a core business requirement. I feel strongly that indiscriminate downsizing and “dumb sizing” of maintenance is finally being recognized as a failed business practice. Where are your maintenance chips being stacked? Do not view maintenance as a cost center and not worthy of effective planning and scheduling. View it with a profit and customer-centered mentality and with an attitude that promotes initiative, customer service, profit optimization, and ownership. Invest in reliable maintenance planning, estimating, and scheduling, and the other best practices we will discuss later to ensure success.

Figure 1.1 The P–F interval.

Profit and customer-centered contract maintenance. You might say that profit and customer-centered maintenance is not possible for an in-house maintenance operation. But a profit-centered strategy does exist in the thousands of successful businesses that provide contract maintenance services everywhere we look, especially within many oil and gas operations. Maybe we invest our maintenance chips (or even real U.S. dollars) heavily in profit-centered contract maintenance providers who are truly in the maintenance for profit as business to truly serve their customers. They will expand even further if organizations continue to give up on in-house maintenance operations.

Third-party maintenance will continue to be a common practice in organizations that have continually gambled with maintenance costs and have lost. For some of the maintenance operations that I have seen as a result of hundreds of maintenance benchmarking assessments, the best answer for survival is a partnership with a contract maintenance provider. It is often a hard choice, especially when it is tempered with all the relentless pressure from unions. For some operations, quality service from qualified maintenance service providers is unfortunately the best choice available. However, we should not give up on in-house maintenance when contract maintenance could be just as bad if they operate within our current organization without effective planning and scheduling.

This is not a scare tactic that advocates third-party maintenance in total for an organization. It positively and unequivocally does not support the dumb-sizing of in-house maintenance to provide lean maintenance, which in turn fails to meet the total maintenance requirement needs. Dumb-sizing of maintenance and reengineering without true engineering has failed. Third-party maintenance in specialty areas or areas where current maintenance skills or competencies are lacking will be needed and be a growing practice. It provides real profit to the maintenance provider and savings to the customer.

Greater third-party maintenance of all types is occurring around the world, especially in the Middle East, and will continue to occur in United States’ operations where maintenance is not treated as an internal business opportunity. It will obviously occur where the maintenance operations have deteriorated to the point that a third-party service is more effective and less costly than in-house maintenance staff.

Where is your chief maintenance officer? We now have more “C-positions” than we know the terms for: CEO (Chief Executive Officer), COO (Chief Operating Officer), CFO (Chief Financial Officer), CIO (Chief Information Officer), CPO (Chief Purchasing Officer). An important position that is missing is the chief maintenance officer (CMO). The evolution of the CMO position must occur to provide leadership to physical asset management within large manufacturing operations. I sincerely believe that the real maintenance leaders will begin to emerge as CMOs in the business world. This new staff addition of a CMO is desperately needed, and smart organizations will have someone near the top that is officially designated to ensure that physical assets are properly cared for. I believe that the CMO will join the ranks of the CEO, COO, CFO, and CIO in large multisite manufacturing operations to manage physical assets. This can be a real technical asset for large oil companies, for example, using the same business system and associated computerized maintenance management system such as SAP. These CMOs will manage and most importantly lead maintenance forward as a “profit center.” A good CMO with “profit ability” will be in place to lead maintenance forward to profitability. A good CMO will help the CFO take the “right” fork in road as it relates to physical asset management and profitability providing consistent application of let’s say SAP. Regardless of the size of the operation, every manufacturing operation needs a CMO. For smaller operations, it might be a CMO equivalent, a true maintenance leader or a maintenance leader supervisor that can really manage maintenance as a business and as an internal profit center.

Profit ability. Leadership ability is an important personal attribute, but being in the “maintenance-for-profit business” also requires an important new type of ability that we call “profit ability.” To lead maintenance forward, we must learn from the leaders within the third-party maintenance business. There are many good ones out there, but one that I personally know about is a company in Oman that manages their pipeline maintenance like they own the contractor. Of course not literally, but this was a great example of true “profit ability” on both sides. This attendee who was responsible for all of Oman’s pipeline maintenance was at my “Maximizing the Value of Contracted Services” course in Dubai. He could have taught the course. One of the key things that stood out was that the contractor was required to employ a planner/scheduler that worked closely with the pipeline company planner/scheduler. Direct measurement of contractor work, schedule compliance, plus other key metrics were at the heart of their profit-centered relationship.

Having a good CMO adds the missing link to achieving total operations success and profit = optimization. Maintenance has rapidly evolved into an internal business opportunity and can almost now stated financially correct as a true “profit center.” The change from a “run-to-failure” strategy into a proactive, planned process for asset management requires a CMO with demonstrated technical and personal leadership. Plan on becoming the CMO in your operation regardless of your organization’s size or current level in your organization. Ensure that an effective planning and scheduling process is in place.

No matter how bad something is, it can always be used as an illustrative bad example. We all learn lessons either the hard way or the easy way. Therefore, bad examples are not wasted. I think we can learn important good lessons about maintenance the easy way by having an effective CMO. I think that a new breed of corporate officer will evolve. An effective CMO will be a firm requirement for organizational success. CMOs will take their place near the top with the CEO, COO, CFO, CIO, and the corporate quality gurus. I think we will start to li...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• About the Author
• Introduction
• 1. Profit and Customer-Centered Benefits of Planning and Scheduling
• 2. Defining Results to Top Leaders and Operations Leaders
• 3. Leadership: Creating Maintenance Leaders, Not Just Maintenance Managers
• 4. How to Create PRIDE in Maintenance within Craft Leaders and the Technical Workforce
• 5. Define Your Physical Asset Management Strategy with The Scoreboard for Maintenance Excellence and Go Beyond ISO 55000
• 6. Planners Must Understand Productivity and How Reliable Maintenance Planning, Estimating and Scheduling (RMPES) Enhances Total Operations Excellence
• 7. What to Look for When Hiring a Reliable Planner/Scheduler
• 8. Planner Review of the Maintenance Business System—Your CMMS-EAM System
• 9. Defining Maintenance Strategies for Critical Equipment With Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM)
• 10. Defining Total Maintenance Requirements and Backlog
• 11. Overview of a Reliable Planning-Estimating-Scheduling-Monitoring-Controlling Process
• 12. Why the Work Order Is a Prime Source for Reliability Information
• 13. Detailed Planning with a Reliable Scope of Work and a Complete Job Package
• 14. Understanding Risk-Based Maintenance by Using Risked-Based Planning with Risk-Based Inspections
• 15. Developing Improved Repair Methods and Reliable Maintenance Planning Times with the ACE Team Process
• 16. Successful Scheduling by Keeping the Promise and Completing the Schedule
• 17. Maintenance, Repair, and Operations (MRO) Material Management: The Missing Link in Reliability
• 18. How to Measure Total Operations Success with the Reliable Maintenance Excellence Index
• 19. How This Book Can Apply to the Very Small Work Unit in Oil and Gas or to Any Type of Maintenance Operation
• 20. A Model for Success: Developing Your Next Steps for Sustainable and Reliable Maintenance Planning—Estimating and Scheduling
• Appendix A. The Scoreboard for Maintenance Excellence—Version 2015
• Appendix B. Acronyms and Glossary of Maintenance, Maintenance Repair Operations Stores/Inventory, and Oil and Gas Terms
• Appendix C. Maintenance Planner/Scheduler or Maintenance Coordinator: Position Description, Job Evaluation Form
• Appendix D. Charter: Format for a Leadership Driven-Self-Managed Team at GRIDCo Ghana
• Appendix E. Case Study–Process Mapping for a Refinery
• Appendix F. The CMMS Benchmarking System
• Appendix G. The ACE Team Benchmarking Process Team Charter Example
• Appendix H. Shop Load Plan, Master Schedule and Shop Schedules: Example Forms and Steps on How to Use
• Appendix L. Routine Planner Training Checklist
• Index
• Appendix I. Management of Change (MOC) Procedures Example
• Appendix J. Risk Management
• Appendix K. Measuring the True Value of Maintenance Activities
• Appendix M. Planner Viewpoints on the Question; “Is it Required to Have a Trades Background to be a Planner?”