According to Al Cagle Jr., maintenance director for Olin’s Freeport, Texas site, improving maintenance planning and execution efficiency may be an ongoing struggle, not an insurmountable one.
Planning, pictures and personnel key to improving reliability
“It boils down to creating a template that forces the planner to go through a set of actions to make sure they’re looking at the whole job,” Cagle explained. “The template consists of specific pictured items they need to look at, and questions to spark the thought process to plan it correctly. Then, once a plan has been proven to work — archive that plan with some feedback.”
Scott Grand, reliability and maintenance manager for LyondellBasell’s Matagorda complex, said his site focuses on two concepts for job planning.
“Number one, we look at how well the work notification was written and how much detail was in it,” Grand said, adding he agreed with Cage’s emphasis on the advantage of using pictures.
“We’ve issued tablets to all of our operations and maintenance technicians. We instructed them to take a good picture to let us know exactly what piece of equipment, valve or piece of piping they’re having issues with,” Grand said. “And then we’re requiring them to detail any troubleshooting that they’ve done, like: ‘this is what I looked at and this is why I think there’s a problem.’ Or ‘this is why I think it’s not a process issue but an equipment issue.'"
Joining Cagle as a panelist at a seminar discussing next-level maintenance and reliability, presented online by BIC Magazine, Grand elaborated on the Matagorda complex’s planning process.
“Then we have two levels of review that those notifications go through before being sent to the planner,” he said. “In the middle of it, our company is also working on planning norms for some of the more common the jobs.”
Grand said his team has “really done a lot to close our feedback loop” on the back end of the process.
“Once a week, the craft supervisors meet with the planners to review the feedback forms the craftsmen submitted to see what went well and what didn’t go well on the job plan — and what we need to do differently for next time,” he said. “That feedback loop has proven to be one of the more beneficial things that we have done here.”
Acting as webinar moderator, Jason Lee, podcast host for Economic Alliance’s Gulf Coast Growth Show, asked the panel what each of their companies is doing to offset turnover and attrition to retain current maintenance employees.
Cagle response was succinct and to the point: “Pay them well and treat them well.”
Grand agreed and pointed out that hourly craftsmen are the heart of an organization. “Until you treat them and value them like that, they are going to look for other opportunities,” he said.
Creating a work environment where employees want to come to work, feel they have a purpose and their thoughts and concerns are heard “are some of the bigger things that you can do,” he said.
Christopher Daniels, maintenance, turnaround and construction manager with Shell Deer Park Chemicals, said that regardless of experience level, all team members deserve to be properly compensated and respected; “but there’s more to it than that.”
He recommended that leaders convey “the entire employee value proposition, not just base salary, but also the perks of employment — whether it’s flexible schedules or how well we take care of our people.”
“That’s absolutely a big deal, and anything outside of that simply won’t be tolerated,” he said.
For ongoing industry updates, visit BICMagazine.com.
