Maintenance is the backbone of any asset-intensive organization. Without it, the chances of keeping the operation running for a long period of time are slim at best. For maintenance to be effective, there needs to be a minimum level of traceability, cost control and structure. Work order management (WOM) is that structured framework used to execute maintenance work efficiently and effectively. Not keeping the WOM system under control presents significant dangers. This article gives examples of those dangers and the possible consequences of work order management neglect.
- Execution delays: Poor or inaccurate prioritization will result in the wrong work being done. Work prioritization systems are designed to assess a risk-based urgency in order for work to be planned, scheduled and executed accordingly. Without accurate prioritization, emergency work can quickly get out of control.
- Schedule noncompliance: From a good-practice point of view, schedule breakers should make up less than 10 percent of all maintenance work, and schedule compliance should be maintained at greater than 85 percent. Schedule compliance can be directly correlated to the volume of emergency work orders. Once schedule compliance is impacted, the work backlog grows. If work keeps getting completed outside the schedule, the operations team will abuse the prioritization system and further exacerbate the problem.
- Reduced reliability: Preventive maintenance (PM) should constitute 70 percent or more of the overall maintenance workload and a similar percentage of scheduled work. Considering the fact that schedule noncompliance can become the norm, PM compliance will invariably suffer. Reliability is heavily dependent on the PM program, and without timely PM execution, asset failure is inevitable.
- Increased opex and capex: Asset failure results in unplanned downtime, reduces mechanical availability and increases operating costs. Justifiable or not, emergency work bypasses both planning and scheduling on the critical path to work execution. Statistically, unplanned work is three to nine times more expensive than correctly planned and scheduled maintenance work. This will impact any budgets in place and upset the balance of operations to maintenance cost shares.
- Volatile materials management: Maintaining parts inventory for a reactive environment without stable reliability is unpredictable. The cost of keeping a spare for every single item that can fail would be atrocious, and the space required to store these spares would be enormous. Retaining competitive contracts for parts, specialized labor and support services for a site that requires levels of service that are not forecastable usually results in high expediting costs and excessive overtime.
- Unachievable service agreements: Maintenance is traditionally treated as a service to the operations team, who expects a certain response time, reliability and plant availability from the maintenance group. However, the operations team has its own responsibilities, which are often overlooked, such as accurate work request prioritization and the timely release of assets when corrective or preventive maintenance work is required. As part of a comprehensive WOM system, the duty to engage the maintenance group lies with the operations team. In order for maintenance to meet the service criteria, it must be included when assets are added or replaced and consulted when design and performance are evaluated from a maintainability perspective.
Work order management, planning and scheduling not only provide cost control and structure for executing work; they are also in place to maintain proper technical records of all work performed on plant assets. These records are important to provide evidence to insurers and regulatory bodies, and data for reliability teams to improve maintenance strategies, create defect-elimination programs and forecast long-term capital requirements. To avoid the collective impact of lax work order management, it is vital to monitor these symptoms, conduct routine audits on process compliance, and reinforce positive behaviors through regular training and coaching.
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