In organization, who should to develop & optimisation PM programs?

1. Planner
2. Area maintenance
3. Operation
4. Engineering

The individual (or team) who has (have) technical knowledge in the equipment design, operation and failures modes, and maintenance needs. The one(s) that can evaluate the equipment manual, other technical documentation available, applicable standards or regulations that impact PM, past history with similar equipments to determine what its needed to be done and how often.
Maintenance Planner, Area Maintenance, and Engineering will probably fit in above description.
Operations? Well, I know how to operate a car, even I have a driving license that certifies me as a motor vehicle operator but; could I specify or improve the maintenance that should be done to my vehicle? Not in my case.
I see Operations taking part in PM development if they know something about the equipment that the mechanic does not know. Most of the cases they advise of a noise or something that ocurrs under certain conditions, this will be investigated by Maintenance and probably ends up with a new PM task; but rarely Operations have technical basis to debate with Maintenance if a certain PM task is valid or not, or a task needs to be executed every 3 or 6 months.
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In my organization the Maintenance Engineering Section develops the PM task lists. Technicians mostly develops the instructions who are evaluated and approved by the Maintenance Engineer / Supervisor. Maintenance Planner is too busy in other tasks, he maybe assigned to monitor if all required PM task lists has been developed and entered at the CMMS.
We also receive feedback from Safety if any recommendations for the PM Program are identified during HAZOP studies. Operations and Engineering participates in the HAZOP studies, Maintenance is sometimes invited too. Later, during the life of the equipment, Operations and QA may recommend changes to the PM Programas as corrective actions / preventive actions (CAPA) arising in production incidents/deviations. These recommendations are consulted with the Maintenance Engineers prior to be entered at the CMMS.
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No new PM or change gets in the CMMS without the Maintenance Engineers approval.

I vote that all 4 of your options should be involed.
The major concerns that I find when running from organisation to organization is that the PM programs are time comsuming and worthless.
If we do not get our craftmen or area maintenance to lead the PM program and have the rest of the group to be more of an resourse for our craftmen the results will be minimized.
I see lots of pencil whipping going on and the PM's are not really benefical. Most of the time I see management tracking PM's to justify to upper management and we lost why we preform the PM's.
So in a nutshell Area Maintenance or our craftmen need to be held reponsible for the PM. Our engineers need to lead by supporting and becoming an resource for area maintenance.

Mark alertanalytical.com

quote:

The major concerns that I find when running from organisation to organization is that the PM programs are time comsuming and worthless.

Why worthless?
* because non technical people developed them?
* Or, technical people used non technical methods to determine what needs to be done and how often?

Most of the time I see that the PM sheet is used as an check-off list. When I train the craftmen and get them in class for awhile that the craftmen find the list like an idiot light on an automobile. They are taught to check the list and they did their job. This check list could be checked off in the lunch room.
The PM's need to be an guide to help remember things to check and not an end to thier job.
What I'm trying to say is that if the PMs are coming from management the PMs are thier job to complete. If the PMs are the responsibility of the craftmen they use it as a guide and the focus comes back to the equipment instead of the check list.

Why worthless ?
1. We are not checking for the right problems.
2. We are not skilled enough to find the right or root of the problem.
3. We are not held accountable for the equipment - just the PM check list
4. We measure how many PMs we completed instead of Mean time Between failures.

Mark

alertanalytical.com

Lets see on "not checking the right problems".

Include at the PM an instruction to clean (or Inspect and clean) the XYZ part or section of the equipment. Add details regarding how to clean, use of solvents, etc. Apart to clean the equipment this instruction provide the oportunity to see the conditions of the components at the equipment section XYZ. During the cleaning task a technician will notice if components show wear, are loose, or other conditions that need attention.

Discipline engineers should be principally responsible for PM task development. Now he may get inputs from techncians under him or operators or any other stakeholders.

CMMS engineer is responsible to ensure the PM is developed and uploaded into CMMS & schedule.

Might I add my two bob’s worth. I have been assisting organisations write and review maintenance programs for over twenty years.
First point I would like to raise is to counter the argument that “the operator may not add a great deal of value”. In my opinion, if the operators are not involved in the development of the maintenance tasks, organisations lose the most valuable component of maintenance… This is the operator maintenance itself. In almost all industries, operators perform more than 50% of the PM workload. In many industries the number is over 75% and in others the number is higher. Now this may depend on what you call PM and what you don’t. Operator inspections and cleaning tasks are definitely maintenance in my book. If technicians don’t know what operators are doing they often duplicate the maintenance or it appears on their check lists and because they seem stupid tasks to do at long intervals the technician PMs loose credibility. There are enough reasons to involve operators that I could write a chapter in a book on this.
Second point is don’t just write PM’s. Make sure you document the rationale and failure mode and you store this information in a secure place. You are hopefully going to be doing these PMs for a while and you will need to review them when equipment fails and at regular intervals. If you set this up right, you will be efficient down the track. If you don’t. you will probably have a certain amount of chaos.
Regards
Steve

Guys,

I am sure this will spark a few of you off, but I have to say that I think nobody within the organisation has the time to dedicate to developing comprehensive maintenance strategies and reviewing them with the rigor that they require.

Since around 1997 I have had troubles getting ahold of resources for maitnenance strategy development programs within large scale organisations. (Or any size for that matter)

Since around 2002, this went from difficult to almost impossible.

I think this drive to try to transfer knowledge, and to try to change the working culture is (although laudable and the way things should be done) one of the main contributors for failure in implementations.

For many companies today it is a physical impossibility to dedicate the resources required for the time that it takes to do this properly.

Not a comfortable viewpoint, and not one that I state easily.

Best regards,

This message has been edited. Last edited by: <Ozgipsy>,

quote:

For many companies today it is a physical impossibility to dedicate the resources required for the time that it takes to do this properly.

Sounds familiar, in these times when there is more emphasis on "stock" prices, (elevated artificially or not by be.. ), everything is translated in money.

Steve,
You are spot-on when you say,

quote:

if the operators are not involved in the development of the maintenance tasks, organisations lose the most valuable component of maintenance

Apart from the reasons you quote, let me add the following.
1. Consequences of failure often affect operators more than anybody else. They are more exposed and likely to get hurt. Often they end up clening the environmental damage. When production goes down, they hold the can. Consequences are what we are trying to eliminate or mitigate, and are an essential part of the risk evaluation. Who is better placed to evaluate consequences than those who are closest to the failures?
2. The operating context of the equipment is a very important factor in determining maintenance strategy. Operators are the best people to identify the operating context.

To do good quality work, we should be prepared to invest the time of the most competent and suiatble people in the organization. Strategy development work needs work of the highest quality, as bad PMs cost us needlessly throughout the life cycle. Getting outsiders and Consultants to do the work because your people are 'too busy' is the best way of getting bad PMs. Having Consultants to guide, mentor and facilitate is a good idea. But allowing them to devise your plan is a bad one. It is of course a good way for the Consultants to make a lot of money. I too realise that the reality is miles away from what is right, but that does not change the principles.

GUys,

I repeat, regardless of the will to do this, and regardless of the desire to achieve the benefits required, many companies find it a physical impossibility to dedicate the required resources.

"Preaching" to them about why they should doesn't change this at all. (No offence, I have been known to preach on this as well)

Our challenge is to be able to implement high integrity strategy solutions while minimising the resource impact and speeding up the time to value for our clients or companies.

Not a comfortable position, but one I see more and more frequently.

Best regards,

Daryl,
I am not preaching, just trying to separate right from wrong.

It would be good if operators come out with PM checklists. But what I see operators mainly monitor process and equipment parameters including checking oil levels & minor topping up. The rest of their observations are reported in CMMS for Maintenance to do.

So I would like to see examples where operators come up with formal PM checklists or heavily involved in PM development such as RCM.

However, my comment is restricted to oil & gas industry only. Maybe in mining or manufacturing, the drivers cum operators of heavy vehicles or machineries become maintainers as well. If so, please give examples.

Clarifications:

When it is said operators are resposnsible for more than 50% of PM workload, is it by number of work orders or by manhours or costs of work? The figure appears to be very high.

Do you include overhauls and failure finding tasks during shutdowns in totaling the PM workload or just consider online maintenance?

Is inspection works included in totaling the PM workload?

Josh,

quote:

t would be good if operators come out with PM checklists.

I have not suggested that operators come out with PM checklists. All I am saying is that operators should be playing an active role in developing maintenance strategy, not kept aside 'on a shelf'.
On this forum I see quite a few posts on learning about 'best practices'. These 'best practices' are only useful if we actually apply them. One of these is to develop maintenanace strategies with your own people. Another is to get inputs from operators, maintainers and specialists, including vendors. If one chooses not to apply these two best practices, one should accept the consequences of that decision.

On the other point you made, regarding operators doing maintenance work: every maintenance task is not done by a maintainer. Similarly, every operating task is not always done by an operator. Just because the work is done by a maintainer, it does not become a maintenance task. Equally, any work is done by an operator does not automatically become an operational task.

An Asset is either working, waiting to work or being maintained. Starting, stopping, adjusting speeds and loads, supplying raw material and removing the product are all examples of operational work. As you know, any work that helps keep the item in good order so that it can perform its function is maintenance. Thus cleaning, lubrication, alignment, balancing, keeping bolts tight, replacing worn or damaged parts, testing for hideen failures etc are all examples of maintenance work.

Typical maintenance tasks that operators do include e.g., testing for hidden failures (standby equipment, shutdown valves, gas detectors, fire pumps etc). Also, zero-checking of instruments,lubricatioon, cleaning, checking for tightness etc. are often done by operators. That does not make these operational work. In addition, in some cases, operators carry out some simple dismantling and reassembly work, normally done by maintainers. Many of these will not be recorded in the CMMS, at least with details of manhours and costs. Steve's observations should be read with these points in mind.

Vee,

DOn't take it personally. We have all gone in talking about the strategic importance to dedicate resources to do this sort of work.

MY point is merely that these resources are less and less available.

Our goal as a managerial discipline, I put to you, is to see good reliability and risk management practices throughout all industries, not just in those that are willing to take "your" (or my) advice and dedicate additional resources to get over the implementation "hump".

THis is one of our modern challenges as I see it. Its not about right or wrong, its about a pragmatic approach to ensuring as many organisations as possible are able to implement good asset management practices.

Best regards,

Daryl,
I did not take any comments persionally; no worries as you ozzies say.
You said,

quote:

Our goal as a managerial discipline, I put to you, is to see good reliability and risk management practices throughout all industries, not just in those that are willing to take "your" (or my) advice and dedicate additional resources to get over the implementation "hump".

Let us take a Quality Improvement project as an example. Would all its team members be a bunch of Consultants? Or even most of the members? I suggest that there would be at most a Facilitator from a Consulting firm around, to guide the QIP in process matters. Is reliability less important than Quality? I suggest that reliability by itself an essential element to achieve quality. We should spend our effort getting managements to understand why it is important to staff the reliability effort correctly.
The old saying 'a job worth doing is worth doing well' is quite apt in this context. To do it well, one must invest high quality resources; this is after all a job that will cost us hundreds of times during the lifetime of the item if not done properly.
My point is there is a right way, and another 'pragmatic' way to accomodate the current 'shortage' of resources. You never get over the implementation hump if you dont do it right the first time.

From Steve

quote:

Now this may depend on what you call PM and what you don’t. Operator inspections and cleaning tasks are definitely maintenance in my book.

Inspection and cleaning are PM tasks, and I recognize that operators perform some inspection (we Maintenance defined those and send them to the Operators checklist instead of the CMMS' PM task list) and are responsible for the equipment cleaning.
However, when talking about PM:
* I'm not ussually reffering to what the operators do (or we delegate them to do).
* PM KPIs did not include Operators hours expent in cleaning and/or inspecting.
If Operations fit in the description I included in my first post, then I would say they can develop the PM (still to be evaluated and approved by Maintenance before data entry at CMMS); if not they only can recommend or provide information to be evaluated by the technical people developing the PM.

quote:

Originally posted by Josh:
Clarifications:
When it is said operators are resposnsible for more than 50% of PM workload, is it by number of work orders or by manhours or costs of work? The figure appears to be very high.

I work in in the pharmaceutical industry, here mfg / packaging equipment cleaning requires detailed procedure of disassembling, cleaning, re-assembling, and inspection performed by Operators. ZERO of this time enter in the CMMS as PM hours or PM orders.
Operator cleaning is part of the maintenance that an equipment requires, and it is done; but it is not part of the PM workload, Maintenance KPIs, or CMMS module. This operator cleaning is part of the Production Planning processing / module. The only cleaning that is part of the PM workload is the cleaning by mechanics performed as part of the PM they do. The cleaning made by Operations maybe limited to the product contact parts, the mechanics PM order may contain cleaning other equipment areas (chains, sprockets, motor) that are not in the scope of the operator.