According to David Reed, director of Eastman Chemical's plant services division, there are many different dynamics at play in transforming work execution, especially as it applies to maintenance and reliability.
"We're focused on the partnership between operations and maintenance," Reed said. "We recognized early on that if you're pushing from just the maintenance side to improve in these areas, you can only go so far.
"In particular, when we think about work execution, it's just one part of maintenance and reliability. We wanted to install some new disciplines and capabilities that included employing new technologies that help us manage, plan and schedule the work each and every day. Some are due to turnarounds and shutdowns, but our focus was on the routine day's work."
According to Reed, Eastman installed new KPIs to be shared with operations partners.
"Ultimately, [sharing accountability] helped strengthen our partnerships," he said. "We wanted to candidly share with each organization across the fence where we have gaps and opportunities for improvement to really drive out variants in those KPIs."
To best tackle each component of execution, Reed explained how the maintenance process was broken down into six parts.
First, work needed to be identified, prioritized, standardized and managed to ensure proper communication of scope to maintenance execution forces. This action required supporting "robust equipment monitoring auctioning by a shared strategy between operations and maintenance," Reed said. It also provided a centralized location for work requests.
Second, planning how the work will be executed and ordering materials and longlead equipment ensured that all jobs have an adequate plan to support quality and efficient work execution. It also ensured that materials were not marked "ready to schedule" until plans were complete, and all parts and materials were kitted and staged for execution.
Third, materials receipt, kitting, staging, and the management of tool and consumables inventory eliminated waste due to inaccurate parts or parts not being available at the time of execution.
Next, managing the schedule, including all planned maintenance work "as well as key operations and project information," Reed said, optimized work execution resources across the enterprise, while ensuring the operations team was informed and equipment was ready for maintenance.
Then, execution of work started with a pre-job walk down and ended in a closeout and debrief, which ensured maintenance execution forces performed efficient quality work on each and every task.
Finally, according to Reed, processes that drove sustained performance across the execution process were implemented.
Recognition and transparency count
Cory Callegan, maintenance superintendent for Shintech, stressed the importance of empowering personnel who are "closest to the work" to identify improvement opportunities for transforming maintenance and reliability.
Not only should a "simple means of capturing and documenting data" be provided, he said, but that data must also be shared and made part of day-to-day business. Utilizing data to justify that change is advantageous, but "be cautious," Callegan warned.
"Prioritize, plan and accomplish, and schedule appropriately, but don't over-promise," he said.
Furthermore, Callegan pointed out that ownership among technicians is promoted when they are encouraged to "participate, develop and lead improvement suggestions."
"Most importantly, recognize [their] success," Callegan said. "The recognition aspect enables continued momentum and buy-in from your technicians on the work they have achieved."
According to Callegan, it is also imperative to keep maintenance technicians engaged in the process.
"It's key with this process that you be transparent upfront with your technicians and what you're trying to achieve. They start to see the improvements in their daily lives of executing maintenance tasks. Their interest in it being a success will grow and continue to grow," Callegan concluded. "It's about being transparent, showing results and making it happen."
BIC Magazine's industry roundtable, "Transforming Maintenance & Reliability - Are You Ready?," can be viewed on demand at BICMagazine.com.