What justifies maintenance overtime? How do you decide between:
* the crew has to continue until done, vs
* time's up lets continue this job tomorrow.

Depends on work priority?

That is not easy, every case has its own characteristics

1) priority
2) Environment (some jobs are better executed at daylight, while others at night)
3) Workload next day
4) Safety, overtime is prone to create accidents
5) Availability of fresh workors

Culture of Technician doing until work finish

Normally, My planner decided from Condition of plant or process because some equipment to be done at night time such as Fin Fan some equipment can not stop such as Change catalyst.

Work priority should take into account HSE & production losses etc.

If Priority 1 is loss of HSE, can ovetime?
If priority 2 is loss of production, can overtime?
If priority 3 is normal/routine maintenance, can overtime?
If priority 4 is general/non-core maintenance, can overtime?
If priority 5 is turnaround/shutdown works, can overtime?

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

In its simplest form the answer must surely be what are the costs of the overtime versus the cost of the equipment being down?

Make you decison based on this.

I agree with you Bryan if we compare cost of overtime and cost of downtime, it more difference

Normally, the system have redundancy so may be include this for decison .

quote:

Normally, My planner decided from ...

I though overtime descisions must be taken by the Supervisor of those to be working overtime.

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

I thought the question was what decides it as opposed to who decides it?

Yes, the original question was "What" not "Who".

However, many times treads drift to other subtopics, and I do not mind that. If we are done with the "What" (thanks to all your responses guys), we could continue with the "Who" or start discussing the differences in job duties of the Maintenance Planner vs the Maintenance Supervisor.

Many of the threads I start here are intended to spur discussions rather to answer actual questions I may have, I enjoy learning from boards members in these type of discussions.

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

About the who?

The planner won't be working overtime so he has no vote , if it is "planned" overtime wouldn't be an issue (except in extraordinary cases)

quote:

That is not easy, every case has its own characteristics

What about: "But boss, tonight is the world championship game !!!"

Darth,
I am not sure if you your question is what shoulddecide or what does in practicedecide whetehr we work overtime or not.

What should be the decision criteria is easier to answer, so let us look at that first. The question is what are the risks to HSE or production if the work is not completed in the next 4,8,16, 48 or 72 hours etc. The higher the percieved or actual risk, the greater the need to work the job through to completion. Note the word percieved risk; this is subjective, and depends quite a lot on the past experiences and mental make up of the person deciding to proceed or not. If you already have a well established priority setting process, that can help identify the risks. If you can lower the risks by some mitigatory action, the need for working overtime is reduced.

In this context, using downtime or maintenance costs alone as a measure of risk is insufficient, though it is one of the factors to consider.

In practice, many other factors often come into play, e.g.,
- do operators trust maintenance to complete the work tomorrow if they let them go now?
- how much screaming do the operators do?
- willingness of technicians to work overtime; in some parts of western Europe with high tax levels, workers have to be convinced they should work overtime
- social legislation
- is the quality of 'day-work' better than that of overtime work?
- is shift maintenance cover available?

The same operators who insist we work overtime sometimes refuse to start the equipment after handover as they see it as unnecessary work for themselves. This makes the whole of the overtime work pointless. Maintainers must insistthat if they work overtime the repaired item must be tested by a start and load exercise by operations, as it is necessary to demostrate that the risk has been lowered.

As to the 'who' as far as I am concerned, it is the 'owner' of the equipment who should decide. That is the operator, not a maintenance planner or supervisor, unless that authority has been delegated to them by the operators.

quote:

The same operators who insist we work overtime sometimes refuse to start the equipment after handover as they see it as unnecessary work for themselves.

A common situation, especially when you have 3 owners during the day (shiftwork)

quote:

As to the 'who' as far as I am concerned, it is the 'owner' of the equipment who should decide.

Sadly enough the owner always wants over time, thus if there is no priority system defined, maintenance is fried.

quote:

As to the 'who' as far as I am concerned, it is the 'owner' of the equipment who should decide. That is the operator, not a maintenance planner or supervisor, unless that authority has been delegated to them by the operators.

Labor workers (operators) taking administrative decisions?
I would concede Operations Supervisor justifying, arguing, and/or screamming to the Maintenance Supervisor to approve the overtime, but not taking the desicion for him/her.

quote:

As to the 'who' as far as I am concerned, it is the 'owner' of the equipment who should decide.

On second thought, this seems like the old proverb "the client is always right".

Eugene, the term "operator" in especially the oil field industry can range from:
"valve turner" to operations director, in a broad context the "operator" can be seen as the client

Steven,
I understand your frustration with the situation, and believe me, I have also had such experiences. But that does not change the principles, which are that the Asset must be owned by Operations, that Maintenance provide services, and the designated representative of Operations, be it the valve-turner or Director is, for the purpose of this discussion, the operator.
You have to try hard to eliminate the them and us culture; my model for this is a chariot with two wheels, Operations and Maintenance. Improving operational reliability is a really uphill task without a good chariot. All the duty/standbys, RCMs, RCAs and other 'improvement tools' will not work if the two wheels do not move in concert. When it comes to reliability, culture matters a lot, often more than even the business process, the fancy PdM gadgets, silver bullets like QIPs, Six Sigmas, Lean,JIT, TPM, RCA, RCM etc. If the choice is to work only on one thing, get the chariot wheels moving together

Maybe a lot of chariots are equiped with wheels of different radius. And guess which one has the shortest ie. has to perform more revolutions.

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

Vee, frustration is a strong word, I try to look everything from a positive side.

The positive side of maintenance:

You don't have enough time to get bored