All Member Open Forum

Good evening all,

Recently we implemented a new work order approval process across all our sites.  All new work begins with a service request which needs to be screened by the operations managers and they approve or cancel the request.  We implemented this change to get the "asset owners" involved with work order management and execution.  By doing this the asset owner now knows of all the outstanding corrective work against the assets.  This process also gives them some ownership in the planning and scheduling of the non PM work orders.

My question to this group is who is using a similar process?  For those who don't use a process like this what approval process are you using?  Thank you.

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Jason Resler, CMRP
Corporate Reliability Manager
Green Plains Inc.
Omaha, NE
jason.resler@gpreinc.com
218-770-3719
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Jason,

We too at Ingredion following a similar process as our department managers act as a gatekeeper for all non-emergency / breakdown work.  The department manager acts as the first line of quality control for the request as well by ensuring that it is a well written request, that it is not a duplicate, and as you mentioned they aware of the outstanding work on that asset.  With all of that information the planning and scheduling of the work is more effective because everyone who has a stake in that asset are aware of the issues / request.

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David Schotting
Maintenance Manager
Ingredion
Indianapolis IN
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Immediately following the morning cross-functional meeting between Ops & Maintenance, supervisors from both ops & maintenance & planners remain to review all new notification or work requests that have come in over the past 24 hours.  Between to two groups, they determine if the work is approved or delated (duplicate) and what is the correct priority of the work.  Do not recommend a single person approving and prioritizing the work.  Everyone knows that Ops will make every request a priority 1!!

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Andrew Gager CAMA, CMRP, CPIM, CRL, CSSGB
CEO / President
Wake Forest NC
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Yes, you will find this is a rather common approach to work identification/triage. I like to call it the SR to WO two-step. It really helps to keep the Work Order  system "clean" in that when a WO is created it is highly likely that it will be completed. SRs on the other hand can be judged early and once a WO is created, they can be "closed." One could call it a best practice.

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John Todd
Total Resource Management
Alexandria VA
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Jason, what you describe is a pretty common process in larger sites and something I highly recommend.

I would just like Andrew Gager already suggested ensure that the approval is done in a short (standing) meeting live with your CMMS/ERP screen open with both Operations & Maintenance attending and jointly agreeing validity, quality and priority of all new work requests on a daily basis.

For prioritisation of new work requests, I highly recommend you adopt either a RIME matrix or a Risk Assessment Matrix (RAM) approach so prioritisation is more focussed on the risk to the business and more robust/objective.  

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Erik Hupje
http://www.roadtoreliability.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikhupje/
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Hi,

In our organization, we follow a two level approval process for SAP-PM "notifications". One level is with Process and one is with maintenance team. It is working well from past many years.

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Ashish Singh
Group Lead Strategy and analytics
Reliance Industries Ltd
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It's great you are using a screening and approval process. And a single person being tasked to do this is a best practice …. sorry for those that use a committee for this. However, department mangers spending their time doing this is not the right role for this screening. A gatekeeper or OMC that is a part of the Operations group is used for this initial screening and approval. They are delegated this authority along with other critical responsibilities that are important to both operations and maintenance.
It all comes down to how you want those in various roles spending their time in order to manage your business. And that's exactly where any organization needs to start …. build your business processes and be disciplined to follow those.

------------------------------
Terry Taylor
Taylor Reliability Consulting
St. Johns, Florida
ttaylor@taylorreliability.org
919-537-2812
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 7/28/2023 6:30:00 AM
From: Terry Taylor PE CMRP
Subject: RE: Work Order Approval Process

It's great you are using a screening and approval process. And a single person being tasked to do this is a best practice …. sorry for those that use a committee for this. However, department mangers spending their time doing this is not the right role for this screening. A gatekeeper or OMC that is a part of the Operations group is used for this initial screening and approval. They are delegated this authority along with other critical responsibilities that are important to both operations and maintenance.
It all comes down to how you want those in various roles spending their time in order to manage your business. And that's exactly where any organization needs to start …. build your business processes and be disciplined to follow those.

------------------------------
Terry Taylor
Taylor Reliability Consulting
St. Johns, Florida
ttaylor@taylorreliability.org
919-537-2812
------------------------------

I see pros and cons to both strategies.  My question for Terry is, how do you handle nights and weekends in a 24/7 operation, when a single person is the gatekeeper?

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Martin Payne
Plant Engineer
Southwire Company
Hawesville KY
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-28-2023 07:30 AM
From: Andrew Gager
Subject: Work Order Approval Process

I would disagree that a SPA is a best practice.  Holding one person accountable to approve/delete and prioritize is placing a bullseye on that person.  I've worked every industry and every single one of those clients that switched to committee agreement have shown overall improvement in scheduling and planning effectiveness.

 

A

CMRP, CPIM, CAMA, CRL

 

Original Message:
Sent: 7/28/2023 6:30:00 AM
From: Terry Taylor PE CMRP
Subject: RE: Work Order Approval Process

It's great you are using a screening and approval process. And a single person being tasked to do this is a best practice …. sorry for those that use a committee for this. However, department mangers spending their time doing this is not the right role for this screening. A gatekeeper or OMC that is a part of the Operations group is used for this initial screening and approval. They are delegated this authority along with other critical responsibilities that are important to both operations and maintenance.
It all comes down to how you want those in various roles spending their time in order to manage your business. And that's exactly where any organization needs to start …. build your business processes and be disciplined to follow those.

------------------------------
Terry Taylor
Taylor Reliability Consulting
St. Johns, Florida
ttaylor@taylorreliability.org
919-537-2812
------------------------------

Hello Forrest and all fellow SMRP members. In the course of my career, I've worked with dozens of maintenance operations designing and implementing work management processes. While each company was unique, there are some basics that worked well.

Each used a "gate keeper" from operations, the asset owner. A title and job description for Maintenance Coordinator was assigned to one person who would approve work to be done. They assigned the priority based on the equipment condition and criticality that had been developed with maintenance and engineering work teams during the process design. Prioritization had been structured clearly, trained and published such that the Maintenance Coordinator was not needed on back shifts to start work on true Priority #1's (e.g., imminent physical hazard, production stopped, environmentally hazardous materials spilled).  

The position worked with the maintenance planners and schedulers in weekly sessions consolidating work and coordinating equipment outages with production schedules.  The Maintenance Coordinator assisted with coordinating LO/TO, special equipment movement (large cranes), or issues arising during maintenance jobs that required operations cooperation. 

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Mike Palm
Managing Partner
Convergent Results
Cockeysville MD
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-28-2023 07:56 AM
From: Martin Payne
Subject: Work Order Approval Process

I see pros and cons to both strategies.  My question for Terry is, how do you handle nights and weekends in a 24/7 operation, when a single person is the gatekeeper?

------------------------------
Martin Payne
Plant Engineer
Southwire Company
Hawesville KY
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 07-28-2023 07:30 AM
From: Andrew Gager
Subject: Work Order Approval Process

I would disagree that a SPA is a best practice.  Holding one person accountable to approve/delete and prioritize is placing a bullseye on that person.  I've worked every industry and every single one of those clients that switched to committee agreement have shown overall improvement in scheduling and planning effectiveness.

 

A

CMRP, CPIM, CAMA, CRL

 

Original Message:
Sent: 7/28/2023 6:30:00 AM
From: Terry Taylor PE CMRP
Subject: RE: Work Order Approval Process

It's great you are using a screening and approval process. And a single person being tasked to do this is a best practice …. sorry for those that use a committee for this. However, department mangers spending their time doing this is not the right role for this screening. A gatekeeper or OMC that is a part of the Operations group is used for this initial screening and approval. They are delegated this authority along with other critical responsibilities that are important to both operations and maintenance.
It all comes down to how you want those in various roles spending their time in order to manage your business. And that's exactly where any organization needs to start …. build your business processes and be disciplined to follow those.

------------------------------
Terry Taylor
Taylor Reliability Consulting
St. Johns, Florida
ttaylor@taylorreliability.org
919-537-2812

Good question and that is addressed when you build your Business Processes. But basically work is broken down into 2 categories of either Emergency work and Non-emergency work. On nights and weekends if the situation is an Emergency, an Emergency Work Order would be generated and the situation resolved. If it is not an Emergency, in this case we would call it found work, a Work Request or Notification would be generated and it would be reviewed on Monday morning.

It's why building the business processes up-front are so important for everyone in the organization. These establish your rules of engagement.  

------------------------------
Terry Taylor
Taylor Reliability Consulting
St. Johns, Florida
ttaylor@taylorreliability.org
919-537-2812
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-28-2023 07:56 AM
From: Martin Payne
Subject: Work Order Approval Process

I see pros and cons to both strategies.  My question for Terry is, how do you handle nights and weekends in a 24/7 operation, when a single person is the gatekeeper?

------------------------------
Martin Payne
Plant Engineer
Southwire Company
Hawesville KY
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 07-28-2023 07:30 AM
From: Andrew Gager
Subject: Work Order Approval Process

I would disagree that a SPA is a best practice.  Holding one person accountable to approve/delete and prioritize is placing a bullseye on that person.  I've worked every industry and every single one of those clients that switched to committee agreement have shown overall improvement in scheduling and planning effectiveness.

 

A

CMRP, CPIM, CAMA, CRL

 

Original Message:
Sent: 7/28/2023 6:30:00 AM
From: Terry Taylor PE CMRP
Subject: RE: Work Order Approval Process

It's great you are using a screening and approval process. And a single person being tasked to do this is a best practice …. sorry for those that use a committee for this. However, department mangers spending their time doing this is not the right role for this screening. A gatekeeper or OMC that is a part of the Operations group is used for this initial screening and approval. They are delegated this authority along with other critical responsibilities that are important to both operations and maintenance.
It all comes down to how you want those in various roles spending their time in order to manage your business. And that's exactly where any organization needs to start …. build your business processes and be disciplined to follow those.

------------------------------
Terry Taylor
Taylor Reliability Consulting
St. Johns, Florida
ttaylor@taylorreliability.org
919-537-2812

Terry I agree with you that the Operations Manager is not the right person for approving the service requests.  We had to go this route due to limitations (licensing) with Maximo access.  Hopefully in the future this will change and we can change the "gate keeper" at that time.  I will also say that some of our sites are adopting a morning meeting to review and agree as a group what work should be approved, and assign the priority.  It does seem to be working well at those sites.  We have seen an improvement in schedule compliance at the sites doing this.

------------------------------
Jason Resler, CMRP
Corporate Reliability Manager
Green Plains Inc.
Omaha, NE
jason.resler@gpreinc.com
218-770-3719
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-28-2023 06:30 AM
From: Terry Taylor PE CMRP
Subject: Work Order Approval Process

It's great you are using a screening and approval process. And a single person being tasked to do this is a best practice …. sorry for those that use a committee for this. However, department mangers spending their time doing this is not the right role for this screening. A gatekeeper or OMC that is a part of the Operations group is used for this initial screening and approval. They are delegated this authority along with other critical responsibilities that are important to both operations and maintenance.
It all comes down to how you want those in various roles spending their time in order to manage your business. And that's exactly where any organization needs to start …. build your business processes and be disciplined to follow those.

------------------------------
Terry Taylor
Taylor Reliability Consulting
St. Johns, Florida
ttaylor@taylorreliability.org
919-537-2812
------------------------------

Aside from short-fused, nighttime emergency work, the area operations manager may need to be involved from a financial control perspective.

To get operations managers interested, I used to tell them that an approved work order was a blank check they gave to me with their signature on it. My department determined all the spending, and when it cashed, it charged their cost center. Few of them knew that, and they were all concerned about it when they realized.

Of course this depends on how the settlement receiver or functional location cost center is set up in your system. I’ve done this in both SAP and Maximo. (Hopefully it doesn’t just identify that the maintenance department owns all machine costs.)

To many maintainers, this is a complete mystery. Part of maintenance management is knowing what approach was taken and why. You corporate controller has an opinion, and you should try to stay in line with their philosophy.

So, if an area ops manager is really interested in cost control for some reason, they may not want a gatekeeper fully approving an expensive work order.

Also, some work orders can exceed the minimum for a capital investment, and so require different approvals or treatment. This also depends on controller policy.

---------------------------------
Karl Burnett

General Electric
Anderson SC
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-28-2023
From: Jason Resler
Subject: RE: Work Order Approval Process

Terry I agree with you that the Operations Manager is not the right person for approving the service requests.  We had to go this route due to limitations (licensing) with Maximo access.  Hopefully in the future this will change and we can change the "gate keeper" at that time.  I will also say that some of our sites are adopting a morning meeting to review and agree as a group what work should be approved, and assign the priority.  It does seem to be working well at those sites.  We have seen an improvement in schedule compliance at the sites doing this.

------------------------------
Jason Resler, CMRP
Corporate Reliability Manager
Green Plains Inc.
Omaha, NE
jason.resler@gpreinc.com
218-770-3719
------------------------------

Good morning,

We have a similar set up, see steps below;

1. Work request submitted by any employee. In doing this there are required fields which must be completed before the work request can be generated. Some fields include: assigned department, assigned task lead (which can be changed), asset number, work priority, risk category, risk rank etc.
2. Similar process if a technician is creating a work order. This is usually done when corrective work is identified during or after a PM or from general equipment checks.
3. The created work request is assigned a number in the system. The operator supervisor is required to review all work requests daily in order to approve genuine work requests.
4. The planner converts these approve request to work orders.
5. The planner can also create work orders aside from the steps 1 through 4 for PMs.

Note: we practice this in the mechanical department. Other departments sometimes require the planner to engage the electrical supervisor to reassign work orders/work requests depending on the required work. They have specialized certain aspects of the job where as all mech techs are required to work on any piece of equipment.

Hope this helps.

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KAMARIA DUNCAN
Mechanical Technician III
P.P.G.P.L
Point Fortin
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