Recently I was leading a panel discussion with various experts who all agreed that dedicated planners were an essential element for a successful maintenance and reliability program.

After the session closed, two people from a Japanese/American joint venture company approached me to let me know that they had a self-directed workforce and the "area owner" planned all required maintenance work. They smiled as if they were holding a valuable secret so I asked a few more questions thinking that they were probably reactive in nature and planning was really just reacting to daily needs.

That was not the case at all - in fact they seemed to have a pretty unique system (at least for the USA) set up that was working very good.

Does anyone else have comments on the advantage of maintenance planning through a self directed workforce or other effective alternatives to a dedicated planner?

Any comments or guidance would be appreciated.

Terry O

We have a similar system.
We have a planning section (Maintenance control Center) that:
1) Monitors the PM program, releases the PM's for the area owner, within 2 weeks the PM must be reported back to MCC.
2) Planning of turnarounds and shutdowns is done at MCC

All PM's are classified like priority 3 (normal), shutdowns/turnarounds are classified like priority 4.

The "area owner" must have a very good excuse for not completing PM within designated time frame.

Other priorities are 1 (emergency) and 2 (urgent), but the boundaries are clearly defined. Priority 1 means that maintenance will stop all other activities to resolve the problem.

For any not PM workorder, "the equipment owner" deals directly with the "area owner". Thus WO's like repair this or stop leakage there, don't enter in the planners section.
The "equipment owner" is free to use the 3 priorities, but abuse is not tolerated. It is not allowed to put an urgent (priority 2) on Saturday and wait until Monday when maintenance sees the workorder. If it is urgent, they have to call the Foreman in. If it is an emergency, higher management must be notified.

Planning is done by "area owner" (foreman) if it is difficult, the heavy weights come in.

Terry,
With a good CMMS system that ia part of or links to an ERM, delegating planning and scheduling of work for most of the smaller job to the workforce enriches their jobs and can act as a great motivator. In my view, that is the greatest strength of a good CMMS. Self directed teams are the way to go if we want to keep high productivity levels. They enable flat and lean organizational structures. There is transparency with a networked CMMS, so this P&S work can be shown to be delegation, not abrogation.
Only large jobs, say 8 manhours or more need be assigned to a dedicated planner. This way, his/her job is also enriched, by focusing on the more difficult areas. It also gets rid of the culture of micro-management.

svanels, Please clarify, to which Department reports the following "entities".

* Equipment Owner = Operations
* Area Owner (foreman) = Operations? Maintenance?
* Planning Section (MCC) = Operations? Maintenance?
Do the mechanics reports to the Area Owner(foreman)?
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If corrective orders (repair this, stop leak) are not planned by the MCC, who plans them?

Sorry for the confusion Eugene, but I used the terminology employed by terry

• Equipment owner = Operations
  
• Area Owner = Maintenance, we call it MRC (Maintenance Responsability Center)
  
• Planning Section (MCC) = Maintenance
  
• The mechanics report to the the MRC (maintenance) foreman
  
• corrective orders are planned by the foreman
  

We started with a so callad area maintenance organization. You had the central maintenance shop (no network). The main function of the MCC was to register the assets, monitor the PM program and keep track of equipment history, after the necessary papers were delivered. Since the core business equipment owners and the designated MRC's where miles away together in the swamps (land preparation, oil drilling) it was impossible to have a central planning institute. A consultant in 1994, compared our operation with the maintenance on unmanned stations in Alaska, only reached by airplane. We don't have airplanes, but when the service trucks left early in the morning, they would come back after noon.

Now I am on a plant with a central maintenance shop, (it was build just 10 yeras ago) but the habbit of designate corrective / modification work to the MRC still takes place (by the way we always worked that way). It gives more flexibility.

Terry, when the Japanese were talking about the Area Owner, they were referring to Operations or Maintenance?
In my plant, the Area Owner or Area Supervisor is the applicable Operations Department Supervisor.

This particular person was an electrician.

Terry O

Ok then, no dedicated planner, planning being performed by the "Area Owner" who in reality is an electrician, a member of the self directed Maintenance Crew?

I think that if:
* the plant is small,
* number of jobs to be planned is not high,
* priorities are set clear and respected among the self directed crew and operations clients,
* the electrician have also good mechanical knowledge, or is supported by experienced mechanics when planning a complex mechanical job, ...
the system can work well. However, if job complexity increases, high conflicting priorities, workload increased over available capacity; multiple contractors on sites ... I would prefer a dedicated planner (even if the job title remains as electrician).

Terry

Many facilities with less than 10 maintenance have tried the planning route and abandoned it. It works well in large process type industries, but is unsuitable for small ones.The problem is that most CMMSs are built around the Planner model. Planning for these facilities is restricted to PMs and shutdowns. The key is good credible data and analysis of that data to feedback to PMs and Asset care. See my article in Pumps & Systems, September 2006 and I will expand on this theme in my paper at Daytona Beach in September. Time for a paradigm change!

Dave Griffiths,Senior Consultant, CWorks Systemss Inc.

I don't see any difference between an "area owner" and a "dedicated planner"

An area owner having a responsibility of planning is a dedicated planner.

Lot more depends on the size,type and number of equipments/machines.As per me area owner is a person who takes care of only some of the in the equipments in the plant and if the size ,number and complexity of that equipment is high,he should be assigned the responsibility of dedicated planning.

Dev Patel

The system we are currently using has planning in various stages of maturity, with some self directed planning and execution.

The electricians do their own planning for their work. When it elevates to be multi-craft, with other than support services, then the job goes to dedicated planners.

We have a class of mechanics that we term as SMETs. They are completely self managed. By this we mean that work is coded to them in the work order system, they communicate with the asset owner to establish priority. Then plan and schedule their work. Typically their work is one dimensional - with minor support craft work.

We also have dedicated planning functions for the various crafts for larger more complex work.

The vibration program lets you know machinery condition and you can predict very accurately within a couple of weeks or so most every time. With this crystal ball you can have planned scheduled maintenance. # 1 - you need a good lubrication program so the vibration will work correctly. #2 you need valid electrical practices in place. I've taken plants to planned scheduled maintenance and not just one. I was teach my alignment seminar in Macon, GA and while in the midst of it mentioned PdM and a guy spoke out where I've had a program for ~8 years and said, we've not had a failure or worked overtime in over five years plus we've trippled machine life.

So, this is planning but the planner is the binder. There is too much for one person and it isn't good to get spread too thin.

I can say a lot here but I won't cross political boarders on the subject. Seems you hear all kinds of claims coming out of Japan but!

No such thing as planning without a planner becasue any work will involve some amount of planning with the simplest being the doer itself does the planning.

If remembered correctly, Stephen Covey says highly effective people will spend most of the time on the second quadrant which focuses on planning.