Hello Forum,
I’ve discovered through data analysis that a high number of ‘breakdowns’ are being recorded in the CMMS as ‘planned’ activities. In other words if the equipment breaks down today and we can plan to fix it tomorrow or next week – then it becomes a planned job. It makes the ‘planned versus unplanned’ KPI look really good but it’s not a true reflection of what is occurring in the field.
So when should you call a breakdown a planned activity?
Any thoughts?
Cheers Gary

When your philosophy is run-to-fail.

They are planning on failing

Start updating your resume ;-P

Thanks Slim,
I agree with you they are planning to fail, although thats not what they want to do. I'm just running an RCM study and I have said that a breakdown is an unplanned event. A PM routine whether Preventive or Predictive is a planned event.
The only time I would call a breakdown a planned event is when you have decided that the equipment strategy is 'run to fail' and when it does fail - its what you planned for.

I'm afraid I've got some work to do in convincing the doubters, or those responsible for the nice looking KPI's!!

Cheers Gary

You can write me for some documents.

pdmsampickens@gmail.com

Hi GLT,

They are confused with the word of "breakdown" and "planned" breakdown. Breakdown is unplanned event or unexpected activities on the equipment, however, the 'planned' breakdown is the activities after carrying out the PdM work to identify equipment will going to breakdown soon if not corrective maintenance take place. I have done a few data analysis and also found the similar issue happen due to the operator cannot differentiate the plan and unplan concept. Of course, two different KPIs need to be set usually 90(planned)/10 (unplanned) rules depends operation requirement as well.

Tks

Gary,
It seems that people don't always differentiate between Planning and Scheduling. Planning is the 'mental execution' of work, where we think through the scope, the steps, identify the tools, materials, preparatory work, logistics, drawings, procedures etc. When we schedule work, we assign start and end dates, resources and ensure that all of the planned inputs are available.
As others have pointed out, we can 'plan' for items to break down, or apply a run-to-failure philosophy. These can still be planned; we identify the steps, resources, drawings etc. The only thing we don't know is the start date, as that depends on when the item fails. Thus we can plan, but we cannot schedule such work in advance of the breakdown.
When we use PdM, we do NOT predict failure; that has already commenced, else there would be no change in readings, hence no trends. What we do predict is the TIME of failure. That allows us to schedule the work (not plan the work, that hopefully has been done already).
Planning is the best way to improve execution quality. As far as possible ALL jobs should be planned. That is in principle a desk exercise. For the majority of routine work, this can be a one-time activity, to be revised from time to time. If we have done e.g., RCM studies, we would know the work required and its timing. This includes failure modes where we have, using RCM logic, decided to apply a run-to-failure strategy. All the work, including time-based, condition-based, detective and run-to-failure tasks can be planned.
Good scheduling minimizes downtime losses by finding the best time to do the work. It enables the most efficient execution of work by ensuring that all the 'planned inputs' are available. Doing the scheduled work on time or compliance, ensure s high levels of reliability.

There are of course genuinely unplanned (unknown before the event) breakdowns and trips. These do not feature in our 'desk-study' list of planned tasks. These can never become 'planned', since we do not know the steps, scope, resources etc. till it hits us. We can still schedule such unplanned work, but they remain unplanned work. These are best identified and eliminated over time, using RCA.

What matters is whether the volume of our proactive work content, which includes
- planned time-based work
- planned condition-based work
- planned breakdown work
- planned detective tasks
keeps increasing. Perfection is when it approaches 100% in due course.

Reactive work, including unplanned breakdowns, trips and operational upsets are to be managed to trend downwards.

Some of the commonly used PIs are prone to misuse/abuse and manipulation by vested interests. These are done by managers who manage PIs, not performance.

To add a little to Vee's notes, I think you need to look at what you are trying to measure with the KPI. As Vee said you can have a job plan in place for a known failure mode where the timing is unknown or unexpected. But you can also have planned and scheduled work originating from an unplanned breakdown. This is especially true if the equipment is duplexed or is not imediately critical to the process, or in fact it the event is detected before complete functional failure.

The planning function identifies the steps and sequence of the job, the parts, tools and equipment required, the numbers and types of crafts needed to do the job most efficiently. The scheduling function ensures that the parts, tools etc are kitted and staged at the job site in time for the job to start and that the correct number of the right crafts arrive at the right time to carry out the job steps in the correct sequence. So if a breakdown does not require an immediate response the job can still be fully planned and scheduled from the maintenance process prespective.

If your goal is to acheive maximum possible planned and scheduled work (90% planned and 10% unplanned or emergency work seems to indicate a reasonably efficient process) and your planners and schedulers are issuing quality job plans and scheduling 100% of available craft time then what you are recording might mean something, and you may well have an efficient planning process. However, to understand the state of the total process requires more than just one KPI. You may want to look at what percentage of the total work load is proactive versus reactive (inspections, PM tasks, condition monitoring and condition directed work, versus breakdown generated work) to get a picture of how efficient your maintenace strategies re at addressing failure modes.

Each of these internal KPI's needs to be tuned a the specific aspect of the process you are trying to improve and used to identify and close gaps which in turn will drive improvement in the overall process (e.g. improved overall reliability and reduced maintenance costs). Then the KPI will mean something.

Regards,
Richard.

quote:

I’ve discovered through data analysis

This reminds me of the time when we "populated" our CMMS with a lot of "intelligent terms" to facilitate data analysis. We have a field called Worktype which had 4 options: Breakdown Maintenance, Corrective Maintenance, Preventive Maintenance, Modification Maintenance and Other. Just to make a quick selection on the type of work.
The default was Breakdown Maintenance because it was to the first on in the pop-up box. It took us some years to make people realize, that breakdown had to be used in conjunction with the priority field (Emergency, Urgent, Normal, Combined with Shutdown, Turnaround) to make any sense.
What are the other options to chose? Maybe the first one to pop-up is "planned" ?