To a new maintenance manager arriving at a large facility, there is a danger of being overwhelmed by the maze of regulations, ISO requirements, asset management models and other seemingly urgent tasks. Other issues include juggling competing priorities like reporting to upper management, HR systems and evaluating new technologies. So where should the new manager start?
Your first task as a new maintenance manager is to ensure you have a fully functioning Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS). Every asset in your facility must be identified and then assigned an equipment number, and this data needs to be entered into the CMMS. Having data on all assets entered into the CMMS ensures you can track your equipment location and history and, if needed, associate a work order with the equipment. This "master data" enables work requests and the tracking of labor hours and costs to form a complete work order system.
After a CMMS, the other three critical areas to focus on are:
- Reliability management.
- Work management.
- Materials management.
Reliability management means ensuring for every asset in the facility you have a clear maintenance strategy. Some tools used to develop a maintenance strategy include reliability-centered maintenance, preventative maintenance optimization, condition-based maintenance, time-based (scheduled) maintenance, fix on failure, front-line maintenance, and root cause analysis.
More specifically, root cause analysis is understanding chronic equipment failures and finding a solution. Front-line maintenance enlists the personnel who are actually operating the equipment on a daily basis to report any changes or issues they find as a "front line of defense." The key output from reliability management is a maintenance strategy for every piece of equipment and having this strategy stored in the CMMS.
Work management is the efficient organization of resources to accomplish work and includes work identification, work prioritization, planning and scheduling and work execution.
As repairs are identified and corrective maintenance is scheduled, deploy resources to accomplish work efficiently. Work management makes labor as efficient as possible, leveraging the CMMS populated with accurate data, including all labor hours and cost of materials. For effective work management, you need good planners, schedulers and front-line managers. The key output from work management is an efficient schedule of work, including a properly planned job, with all information required and all materials ordered.
Materials management involves ensuring the physical supplies needed to make repairs and perform maintenance are on hand to ensure uninterrupted operation of the facility and includes storeroom optimization, obtaining critical spares, procurement, kitting and staging.
A critical component of materials management is having a fully optimized storeroom stocked with commonly used replacement parts at quantities that meet expected usage, avoiding both understocked and overstocked quantities, since there is a penalty for having too many parts (in carrying costs), as well as a penalty for having too few parts (in not having parts available when needed).
An optimized storeroom includes having critical spares and consumables readily accessible, as well as a kitting and staging area that minimizes the time technicians have to spend waiting for materials. Key output of materials management is readying all materials needed for maintenance.
Of course, it is important for the new maintenance manager to realize all three of these critical areas have to interact. For example, in work management, you have to use reliability management to know which preventative maintenance orders are coming due. Similarly, if scheduling preventative maintenance orders and corrective maintenance, materials management ensures supplies from the storeroom are reserved and staged.
In summary, new maintenance managers must guard against losing focus on nonessential areas. Instead, get your CMMS up and running, and then turn your attention to reliability management, work management and materials management for safe and economically- efficient operations.
For more information, visit www.Marshallinstitute.com or call (800) 637-0120.