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

Our overhauls are typically included in PM Orders, depending on the equipment and mfg recommendations in annual or longer frequency PM Orders.

Is inspection works included in totaling the PM workload.
Depends:
* Inspections by Maintenance personnel: Yes, documented in PM Orders
* Some PM Inspections delegated to Utilities Operators like they were another Maintenance crew: Yes, again documented in PM orders
* Inspections in the Daily, Weekly, Monthly routines of the Utilities Operators (or other Operations unit): No, daily routine inspections are not part of the CMMS

Vee,

I am not going to argue with you that this is important; I think we can take it for granted that I think that.

I am also not going to get into a debate about what is more important, quality or reliability.

What I will say is that I don’t think there is any real “right” way to do things. (I like how that emotive term crept into the conversation) There are merely different ways to do things.

If you find a client who is willing and able to dedicate the resources to reliability program implementation, including knowledge transfer, change management, project management, and making sure that the project is able to turn up results quickly, then great! Go for it!

I have been implementing projects in that fashion since 1991 and still do when I am able to.

But what if the client just cannot? The modern reliability world is pretty complex in terms of how work is managed. What are your alternatives?

• “Sorry, call me when you get serious”
  
• “It’s the ‘right’ way or no way at all”
  
• “Too bad, good luck with your non optimized state. Hope you don’t have any severe incidents!”

I think we both would agree that our responsibility, duty even, is to try to ensure that reliability concepts are as widely applied as possible throughout industry.

A few examples:

• In lean organizations it is very difficult if not impossible to free online employees for offline projects for any period of time. Backfilling the front line roles with experienced people is not an easy thing to do today. (In fact it rarely has been)
  
  
• What about a company with service provider contracts in place? Should they really take more time and additional cost to do this over a longer period of time? And train up their service providers staff at the same time?
  
  
• Or what about companies where there just aren’t the funds available to either take people offline for short periods over a long term, or to back fill roles as experienced people move off?

As you well know these are just some of the realities our clients face almost daily. It can’t be right that we tell them they are doing things in the “wrong” way.

If a client is in a situation like this, and they choose to use external resources (expert resources, not graduates sold as experts) or new technology to speed things up, reduce the organizational impact and achieve the benefits they are after, then are they doing the “wrong” thing? (There are a lot of organizations out there doing the “wrong” thing in that case)

The “right” thing to do is always to help them improve their situation. That’s it. Reliability improvement does that, we all know this, that’s why we are here.

Best regards,

quote:

In lean organizations it is very difficult if not impossible to free online employees for offline projects for any period of time

In overstaffed organizations it is impossible to free employees because
1) of the burocratism
2) everybody busy looking what other people should do, and don't have time to work.

A lean organization in some cases has more flexibility. The exeption is when the organization is too lean

Even though I believe operators do some operator maintenance tasks and should be consulted when developing the PM checklists, I still find it difficult to accept the view that the operators do more than 50% PM workload even after including all operator maintenance tasks. If this is so, I would like to see the details of the basis for this view. Are these exceptional cases or good practices which can be worth-duplicating in any facilities to become best practices? So I seek to understand this view first before being understood (Stepthen Covey's).

The basics of PM is keep the machine clean and lubricated. I will stress on clean, lets say that the operators don't lubricate, but it is impossible to do a good job on a filty machine, and I doubt that the machine will perform up to standards.

quote:

No, daily routine inspections are not part of the CMMS

Did you imagine the overhead to comply with this, and the "watchdogs" you need to ensure that it is done and documented properly in the CMMS for "analysis" by "well" paid engineers doing RCA, weibull and the whole circus?
We have a proverb for that; "being more catholic than the pope"

Josh

quote:

Even though I believe operators do some operator maintenance tasks and should be consulted when developing the PM checklists, I still find it difficult to accept the view that the operators do more than 50% PM workload even after including all operator maintenance tasks.

Please take a look at these numbers:
two shift operation - operator checks take 15 minutes for two people each shift. that is one hour per day. Over 350 manhours per year and then you add the 52 weekly one hours gets you to 400 manhours per year.
Same machine has a weekly done by the technicians. These are one hour each. (done 52-12 = 40)
Then there is a two hour monthly (done 12 - 4 = 8) totalling 16 hours, a three hour six monthly done once and a 12 hour annual done once.
If you add these numbers you get the following:
Operator 400 hours per year
Technician - 71 hours per year.
If you go to a process plant, it is not uncommon to find operators doing four hours per shift of inspections.... and do you figure the control room has 24/7 surveillance on the plant condition?
You can play with the figures here and there but this is where the info comes from. I have stacks of it.
Regards
Steve

In that case, I think the view should be qualified to online monitoring during equipment running. Whereas by PM workload, I include all PM tasks including the major PM like overhauls, failure finding & inspection of vessel internals especially during shutdowns.

Josh,
Are you going to remove Vibration Analysis from PM as well?

No, VA is considered under PM workload especially if the vibration monitoring is generated by CMMS. Actually it's an online monitoring activity. Btw, I did not suggest VA to be removed from PM.

Conversely, I suggest to include all major PM works in totaling the PM workload to have a more representative view of the actual scenario.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Josh,

Josh,
In my view, on line monitoring is part of PM as is VA. Not sure but I think we both agree. There is no need to qualify whether or not the monitoring comes from a CMMS or a Standard Operating Procedure.
The first example comes from a manufacturing site where overhaul is mostly on condition. It seems you are from a process industry where you may have some intensive inspections. If those inspections require shutdown maintenance, then the inspections are PMos but the repairs are not (in my opinion, they are correctives). Regardless of that, the point is that in process industries, you will find that the operators spend most of their day, every day, every shift doing inspections. This workload is massive and compares to what PM is done by technicians.
I was not setting out to review what is PM and what is not and this is of course and interesting topic - But I did want to provide input into the questions of operator involvement in PM analysis.
Regards
Steve
PS - I did some work in Taiwan recently and found that the operators were tradesmen - very little demarcation. The operator trade is handed down from father to son in this company. It is not just cheap labour that makes some of these countries low cost producers.

Steve,

I did not say we should qualify whether or not the monitoring or rather the data come from CMMS or SOP.

What I ask to qualify is the statement that operators do more than 50% of PM workload which becomes not quite true because the percentage can be lower if we include all PM works such as overhauls, failure finding & inspections are included in the denominator ie the PM workload.

It appears that you have not included major PM tasks carried out by Maintenance such as overhauls (condition based or not), failure finding and inspection works in your calculation. You merely compare operator checks versus technician checks.

By the way, we normally not consider process parameter checks by operators (which are frequently done by operators) and the 24/7 surveillance by Control Room on plant conditions as PM.

We do consider first line maintenance done by operators as PM and thus called operator maintenance.If the trademen become operators, it would be good for first line maintenance.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Josh,

Sorry if ther is confusion Josh,
These numbers DO include time based overhauls - that is if the parts are to replaced regardless of condition.
Most organisations have move away from time based overhauls so the numbers I quote are from a modern approach to maintenance - one which is mostly condition based.
No doubt if we did the numbers on an old fashioned industry that had an annual shut down and replaced a stack of componentry regardless of condition then the numbers mat be entirely different.
We are talking about thousands of operator inspection hours and yes every year a lot of work can be done on a shut down... but a lot that work is corrective based on condition.
I have attached some verifyable results from a chemical plant.
I can provide you the plant people you can talk to about these numbers.... and I have plenty more where these came from.
Regards
Steve

OperatorPMNumbers.ppt (712 Kb, 23 downloads) Operator PM Ratios

Ok, the process online is very high. May we know what are the tasks involved here? Does it include online process parameters monitoring on the DCS and offline operator logs?

I've read responses with great interest thus far, and find that each has their merit in who should develop the PM programs but are not addressing the question posted in totality.
I tend to agree that all (Planner, Operations, Area Mtce. & Engrg) should be involved in the development process, as they all have vested interest in ensuring a Safe, Reliable and Cost Effective production.
Having said that, we all can agree that there has to be a champion in assuring that the developed program is monitored, its progress charted and continued improvements are undertaken such that complacency does not set in, with achievements. My opinion and experience dictates that Engineering is normally involved in the global aspects of Plant operability and would be in a better position to not only take a lead in the development of PM program of key physical assets in a Plant environment but, also Optimize PMs.
My two bits worth of input, for your comments....Thanks

RajSha, if the experts in Maintenance are within the Maintenance Department, why the champion of development the Preventive Maintenance be in another organization?

I realize that Engineering has first the information about the design, first contacts with the equipment manufacturer/supplier, and receive the manuals and technical information for the construction/installation phases. But getting the information is one thing, analyzing it and translation it to PM Order tasks lists is another thing; and I see the Maintenance Engineer (which I assume is in Maintenance not at Engineering) duty to lead.
Engineering focus on Project Management, from design, procurement, construction, up to handover to Operations. After handover Engineering focus on next project. PM Program development is just a little task within the whole project for them, they will (should? must?) put Maintenance in charge of it and facilitate to the Maintenance Engineer all information they got. Then, the Maintenance Engineer shall get any other pertinent information from Operations, Safety, etc. and do what he/she was hired to do in the first place: design/implement maintenance.

All 4 need to be involved. Each is a stakeholder in the equipment, and should have input and oversight.

Per Quote = “If the experts in Maintenance are within the Maintenance Department, why the champion of development the Preventive Maintenance be in another organization? … I see the Maintenance Engineer (which I assume is in Maintenance not at Engineering) duty to lead.”

I find these statements to be somewhat accurate however let me try some thoughts. Perhaps semantics (but I do not believe this is a semantic at all) but let’s use the term Reliability Engineer instead. This guy could be any type of engineer, technician, operator, consultant or a whatever but he is the champion of reliability and all that that means. This guy facilitates what/who is needed to ensure reliability. Granted the Maintenance Department should be the experts of maintenance and in most case they are. But I would challenge that they are not usually the developers of reliability process and procedures. They typically are tasks performers not strategist. Developing of PMs is a portion of the strategy to ensuring reliability.

PMs for the sake of PMs provide just as much value and poorly written PMs as does poorly performed PMs. And I don’t believe anyone is challenging that but the reliability engineer looks at the big picture and develops the proper strategy for ensuring reliability. Let’s try this = PM development is an organizational effort facilitated by the Reliability Engineer. At least that's how I see it in my small part of the world. The Right Maintenance at the Right Time.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: David M, CMRP,

Then topic migrates to:
* Individual company organization differences or
* Maintenance Department Mision/Vision/Staff vs Engineering Department Mision Vision/Staff.

In our organization, we do not have a Reliability Engineer; however the duties under that job description are definitely within the Maintenance Engineering Department staff; that is splitted between the Maintenance Engineers (who also supervise crew of technicians) and the Maintenance Systems Engineer (in charge of the CMMS and supervision of the Maintenance Planning group).

If the Maintenance Department Vision is only being performers of strategies designed by others (Engineering) then Engineering should lead.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Eugene,

Anyone please suggest the book of PM/PdM user guide