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  • 1.  Work Order Completion - Notes by Exception or Default?

    Posted 09-13-2021 02:23 AM
    Morning,
    there is an ongoing 'discussion' that WO notes/records from field teams are not recording PPM information sufficiently. Noting that if a reading should be taken (pressure, temp, CO2 level etc), and the MMS facilitates the recording of it - it should be taken. However, if the checklist has been followed by the maintenance team, what should be recorded?  Is there something in particular e.g. maintenance done as per check sheet? Leave notes blank? I don't want front line teams to waste time writing for the sake of writing but equally don't want them to be compromised/tackled for poor records. For clarity, my FM teams have generally reported by exception so the notes are clear if there is a finding or issue and not having to dredge through nonsense to see details of an issue - they are empowered to deliver the maintenance as per the maintenance planning tables set out and the WO issued to them. Any guidance/thoughts? What do you record? Thanks

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    Leighton Millward
    Operations Director
    Aktor Como Intercity Facilities Management
    Doha
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  • 2.  RE: Work Order Completion - Notes by Exception or Default?

    Posted 09-14-2021 07:04 AM

    Leighton, given your teams are operating in a facilities maintenance environment I'm working on the assumption you the only interaction with the assets is by maintenance team, ie no operations staff  and no or limited remote monitoring in place ?

    In the absence of any comprehensive monitoring I'd suggest it's important to record data so trends can be established and problems identified upfront prior to failure.

    Maybe a generic attachment for readings with those relevant for each piece of equipment recorded ? 



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    Andrew Innes
    Petrofac
    Kelty
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  • 3.  RE: Work Order Completion - Notes by Exception or Default?

    Posted 09-14-2021 08:00 AM
    I don't have specific suggestions for what information should be captured. All I can say is that, as a consumer of that information, when I look at a work order I want to know what happened. What was found, what work was done, what condition it was left in. It doesn't have to be eloquent, or even written in complete sentences, but the information has to be there. If it's captured in checklists, that's fine.

    Often a work request will be written based on an incomplete or incorrect assessment, for example someone asks to have a motor replaced when the problem was actually with the cabling. And sometimes PM instructions don't exactly line up with how the work is performed. Therefore I don't like to assume that the work performed perfectly matches the work order instructions. I want to know what really happened. In the case of a PM like you're asking about, even a simple note like "no exceptions noted" or "passed all tests, see checklist" gives some indication that the equipment really was good to go.

    One other point is that, of all the work orders completed in a given week, it's impossible to know which ones will have to be revisited months or years later. The only good option is to capture information on all of them. When I'm investigating equipment history and the CMMS has the complete story, it's like finding gold. I have made a point to thank the craftspeople for their good closing notes, so they know their effort is creating value for the company.

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    Dale Nicholson, PE, CMRP, CRL
    Reliability Engineer
    Evonik Corp
    Lafayette IN
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  • 4.  RE: Work Order Completion - Notes by Exception or Default?

    Posted 09-14-2021 03:26 PM
    I agree with Andrew and would add some additional things to think about. Checklists expand over time and many items on them are reactions to random failures which don't add value. I would suggest a PMO style approach to reviewing your checklist information so you can be sure that what is being collected adds value and drives action. When I've done this type of review in my past, it has been normal to delete one-third to half of the items which didn't tie to failure modes and drove no action.

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    Wayne Griffin
    Global Reliability Director
    Guardian Industries
    Rochester NY
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  • 5.  RE: Work Order Completion - Notes by Exception or Default?

    Posted 09-14-2021 07:49 AM

    Leighton,
    Work Order Notes and Feedback from the field has been and continues to be a struggle for most companies. I have seen that the best notes, along with other general information, usually reside in log books. I believe it is a matter of trust that the technicians often have in their particular work order system. Let me explain -
    The root cause of the problem of the technicians not providing good information is that the information they would provide is not easy to retrieve, or impossible to retrieve, should they need it. Companies need to understand that the Notes and the Feedback they want is more important to the technicians than it is to the company. So if the info is not easy to retrieve by the technicians, or perhaps not even available to them because of several reasons -
    1. They don't have access to the CMMS system
    2. They aren't allowed to use the CMMS system
    3. The company doesn't want to spend the money to get the techs a license to use the CMMS system
    4. The company doesn't want the techs to use any available "wrench time" to be on a computer (This is an interesting conversation)
    5. The company provides little to no training on their CMMS system.
    6. Other ……
    …… you'll never get them to provide the info you want or at best, they may may provide very limited notes. 

    It's the reason the best notes and information is found in log books. The notes are important to whoever wrote it, or it's important to their peers, and it is easy to retrieve. The information found in the log books is not unimportant and it is not a waste of a technicians time to write it down.

    Honestly, as many industries and CMMS systems that I see, you would think I would have one example of good notes and feedback in a work order system that I could point out. But the fact is, I don't.  

    As far as what Notes and Information to record, solve the problem above and they will provide the info that's not only requested but what is important.



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    Terry Taylor
    Taylor Reliability Consulting
    Raleigh, NC
    ttaylor@taylorreliability.org
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  • 6.  RE: Work Order Completion - Notes by Exception or Default?

    Posted 09-15-2021 07:31 AM
    Good morning all.
    I work in a similar environment as the original poster. Our maintenance organization supports several aging facilities. Our struggle was (and is) capturing valuable feedback during performance of PM's, and then being able to retrieve the information and act upon it. This was one of our major obstacles when we started our PM optimization process 5 years ago. We stressed the importance of good feedback. Craft was resistant in the beginning due to the fact that they had "heard this before" many times. "Nobody listens to what we say, so why should we keep telling you". This was the prevailing culture. Over a period of the next couple years, we captured their feedback in long text form on the work packages (paper documents), reviewed manually and created spreadsheets to track feedback and act upon as needed. Even though this was a step forward from "nothing", this process was obviously far too cumbersome to be efficient. Eventually, we incorporated craft feedback into our CMMS (SAP) by writing tasks on the notification during the work order closeout process. This put the data in a retrievable, and trackable location, so that we as reliability engineers could pull the data, run the reports, and act on the feedback. 
    The other thing that is important, as mentioned by someone in another post, is the the feedback is most important to the craft person. We modified the paper document that goes to the field with the craft to include the feedback that was given on the last generation of the PM. So now, the craft performing the work can also see what his co-worker said on the previous PM, good or bad.
    All that being said; we are still not where we need to be yet. The ultimate goal is for craft to use a mobile worker app (tablet or other electronic device) and have their results immediately loaded into CMMS. This method of input along with incorporating use of inspection points and measuring points in SAP, will allow us to fully automate acting on results of inspections and/or PM's, by generating follow up work orders based on pre-set triggers inside SAP.
    In closing, you can see that there are different methods that can be used to capture and act on the feedback. The moral of the story is that if you don't receive the feedback and close the feedback loop by making sure the craft realize that you are listening, then not only will you lose the willingness of the worker to participate by providing the feedback, but you also have a PM process that is not being used effectively if you do not identify potential failures during the PM and ultimately mitigate the failure with follow up work.

    Tony Israel, CMRP, RMIC
    Reliability Engineer
    Consolidated National Security
    Oak Ridge Tn.

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    Tony Israel
    Reliability Engineer
    Consolidated Nuclear Security
    Oak Ridge TN
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  • 7.  RE: Work Order Completion - Notes by Exception or Default?

    Posted 09-15-2021 04:35 PM
    In most cases I'm not surprised it is hard to find anyone getting detail feedback on WO in a CMMS system.  Most of them have never been user friendly.  Getting technicians who are doing jobs in the field to go into a clunky system and enter detail is a tall order.

    As far as reporting on exceptions goes on original topic entry, it depends on what you are looking at.  An exception note would mean there is some absolute value as the reference.  For example, any temperature over 180F or .25 in/s vibration; however, what that would not catch is a change in a temperature or vibration which can be just as much a concern.  A change in temperature from 100F to 170F or .05 in/s to .22 in/s is of concern even if they didn't break a single  threshold value for exception reporting.  So in that case you would need to record all data for trending and to note changes.  I guess you could instruct them to record drastic changes too but just more detail for them to manage.  The changes may correlate to other changing variables - speed, load, grades, etc.

    Back to CMMS, if you want any kind of detailed trending of that kind of data, my experience has been don't try that in CMMS anyway.  CMMS is best saved for managing WO process not a data collection hub outside of financial/WO type data.  I have seen baseline data entered into a CMMS for equipment which can be helpful just like other specifications.

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    Randy Riddell, CMRP, PSAP, CLS
    Reliability Manager
    Essity
    Cherokee AL
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  • 8.  RE: Work Order Completion - Notes by Exception or Default?

    Posted 09-15-2021 12:34 PM

    It's a common problem we also face at the LNG facility.  Thank you to those who posted, great insight.  I wanted to add a comment that we did & was helpful.  
    When WO's are not fully documented with field observations, we started out prioritizing by WO types: Breakdown, CM and CM from PM- it is mandatory to fill out field observation to close those types of WOs, as they contain equipment failure information.  I also specify three fields:
    1) Failure code (dirty seal surface, loud noise, disc tear, misalignment),
    2) Detection method (vibration trip, oil analysis, alarm trip),
    3) Action (repair or replacement, what was done to fix the asset).

    For asset condition readings (temp, pressure, flow, vibration analysis, oil analysis, etc), M&R staff can use PI and other systems to trend the data to improve the asset reliability.

    Suzy



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    Suzy Jiang, CMRP, APM Certified
    Reliability Lead | Staff Engineer
    Houston TX
    suzy.jiang11@gmail.com
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