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  • 1.  Work Management - Metrics

    Posted 08-24-2022 07:44 AM
    I expect to soon be assuming duties of the work management and equipment reliability programs for my employer. We have long struggled with consistency and implementation. One of the areas with with maintenance managers struggle is the multiple metrics that have been pushed down - changing and not helpful for their site management.

    The expectations are high for me to make quick progress. One of the first things I would like to define are 3-5 meaningful metrics that will prove my strategy is working and provide meaningful data for managers.

    If you were to re-implement a work management procedure, what are the top metrics you would define to assist maintenance and operations employees, managers, and corporate oversight?

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    Nicole Hamilton
    Sr. Business Process Analyst - CMRP, CRL
    Wausau WI
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  • 2.  RE: Work Management - Metrics

    Posted 09-02-2022 06:05 AM
    Hi Nicole, There is a lot to unpack in that short post! 

    For work management I strongly recommend the following metrics: schedule compliance, emergency work (break-in work), and fill-in work. When combined these 3 metrics can tell you a huge amount about your work management process. I also like to use estimating accuracy (in $ and hrs) to track planner performance. But these metrics only work when you have certain fundamentals in place like an effective process, time writing, effective prioritisation etc. 

    When you just roll-out work management, or go through a major improvement of the process, it can take weeks to a few months before you see sustained improvement in these metrics. During that initial period, I recommend using leading metrics like has everyone that should be trained in work management been trained, are the right people attending the right meetings, are the key meetings (like the schedule review meeting or the daily review meeting) effective.

    The above is just for work management and there is more that you can add (in the early stages a focus on better prioritization is normally really important as a lot of companies get this wrong). 

    For equipment reliability, there is another suite of metrics that you could look into, depending on your business and its value drivers.

    Feel free to drop me an email if you want to discuss in more detail.

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    Erik Hupje
    http://www.roadtoreliability.com
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikhupje/
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Work Management - Metrics

    Posted 09-07-2022 07:43 AM
    Erik,

    Thank you for your insights and identification of a few leading indicators. I like your advice to focus on the training metrics for courses that explain the updated procedure. That type of metric is easily defined, captured, and useful for safeguarding understanding of modifications.

    I 100% agree with your assertion regarding prioritization - it's a struggle! People want the problems that impact their work fixed ASAP and often grapple with agreeing that resource and production constraints may not align with personal expectations.

    Thank you!
    Niki

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    Nicole Hamilton
    Sr. Business Process Analyst
    Wausau WI
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Work Management - Metrics

    Posted 09-06-2022 11:57 AM
    Nicole, 

    Erik has stated it very well.  I also like to understand weeks of backlog based on your crews.  This gives you a good gauge of what work you have available to keep everyone employed.  4-6 weeks is typically a good metric of workable backlog for most groups.  It is also valuable to show your executives that you are planning work and aligning your resources accordingly. 

    Estimated vs Actuals comparisons for hours planned vs complete are a good metric to keep in your arsenal.  As Erik stated Schedule Compliance.  We have termed it more Schedule Achievement to give a little bit of a positive spin on the metric.  Productivity based on your break-ins would be a crucial point of review as well.  This will be able to help align your schedule achievement and give you talking points to indicate if there is a defect that can be eliminated in your equipment or even your processes.

    Some target points may be as follows: 
    Schedule Achievement (compliance) :  >90%
    Backlog of work:  btw 4-6 weeks
    Estimated vs Actuals: not more than 15%
    Regulatory Compliance:  100%
    PM Achievement (Compliance):  >90%
    CM (corrective maintenance) found during PM activities:  1 in 6 trips - if you find something that needs to be repaired 1 in six times visiting your equipment it will give you a good idea of how your PM program is going.  

    Lots of information I am sure.  Any help I can provide please let me know.

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    Michael Guns, Jr., CRL, CEFP, CMRP
    Senior Maximo/EAM Consultant
    JFC & Assoicates
    www.jfc-assoicates.com
    mguns@jfc-associates.com Cell: 302.358.9381
    www.linkedin.com/in/michael-guns-jr-1b691882
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Work Management - Metrics

    Posted 09-07-2022 07:47 AM
    Michael, 

    Thank you for the suggestions and metric details. I have long been interested in the CM/PM ratio. Can you please explain how you use the 1:6 information to evaluate your PM effectiveness and modifications you have made based on analysis?

    Niki

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    Nicole Hamilton
    Sr. Business Process Analyst
    Wausau WI
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    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Work Management - Metrics

    Posted 09-08-2022 03:38 PM
    The 1:6 ratio has come from a bunch of different source data, like Fuchs "Complete Building Equipment Maintenance Desk Book", APPA (Association of Physical Plant Administrators) BOK, Doc Palmer's "Maintenance Planning & Scheduling Handbook", Road to Reliability whitepapers, etc.  These resources brought together is where you can look at your overall organization and develop it for your needs. It isn't a hard and fast calculations but a guide to start the discussions and data collection to the metric.  This in turn will help you develop your own targets based on your business processes, person power, and overall financial impacts.  

    This is strictly for FREQUENCY based PMs.  If you are performing Predictive style meter based or IoT style reporting maintenance, then the predictive nature of the failure will be in the actual data.  The premise for the Frequency based is that for each 6th visit you should find something that either needs adjustment, repair, or correction.  If you are seeing it more frequently then you are not PM'ing the equipment enough or there is training needed for your crew to align with the job plans.  If you are seeing those repairs in later trips you may be PM'ing too much or someone is fudging the records.  

    Typical to the backlog calculations in weeks, it is a RULE OF THUMB, but gets you to a starting point to gather information to point you in the right direction to make analytical informed decisions about your processes from the data you collect by having something to benchmark against.  Everyone needs to start somewhere and that seems like where you are.  It is only my intent to aid in that as many did for me when I was on a similar path.  While many others have varying degrees of expertise and thoughts towards the absolute, I tend to waiver on the side of what is my business telling me and how can I find the answer to that question.  Reporting and data will be the only ways to get this information.  Without a benchmark to attain to, you will be squandering resources in maybe the wrong directions.  Guides like these help determine those strategies and the data will be there to analyze for the actuals and provide continuous improvement.

    Here to help if you need it.

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    Michael Guns, Jr., CRL, CEFP, CMRP
    Senior Maximo/EAM Consultant
    JFC & Assoicates
    www.jfc-assoicates.com
    mguns@jfc-associates.com Cell: 302.358.9381
    www.linkedin.com/in/michael-guns-jr-1b691882
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    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: Work Management - Metrics

    Posted 09-07-2022 09:43 AM

    Where did the "best practice" rule-of-thumb 4-6 weeks of backlog come from? Why can't we seem to get past it?

    Some days, more new work enters the pipeline of maintenance jobs and other day less. Over a number of months or a year there is an average of new work. Once the average is known, the craft body (in count and mix) to the plant can be set such that week by week the average is routinely scheduled for execution and completed. Time in backlog should not be the basis of making the determination of craft body.

    Backlog is set such that the average in scheduled work is unaffected by the daily swing of new work. However, setting backlog has another huge ramification. It will also play in assuring that the plant's annual production goals will be met. The longer work remains in backlog, over time the greater the chance of failing to meet the year's production goal.

    Accordingly, the industrial engineering task is to determine the shortest possible statistically based allowed retention time in backlog that still assures that the craft body will execute, each week, the workload determined to be the average of new work entering the backlog. The determination of retention is made using survival hazard analysis with the CMMS data for each task in the maintenance workflow.

    The concept of using a rule-of-thumb backlog of, say 4 to 6 weeks, is arbitrary rather than derived. We need to get past it because it is bad business.

    I once worked with a top-flight job planner to determine how much time at the most is required to return failed pumps to readiness. It was 11 business days. Nobody could give us a good rationale for why history had been 20 to 30 business days (4 to 6 weeks) in backlog-other than it's a "best practice." The next step would be to determine a safe retention time for pumps using survival hazard analytics.




    Original Message


  • 8.  RE: Work Management - Metrics

    Posted 09-07-2022 10:02 AM
    In my opinion and experience, the 4-6 weeks backlog is based on practical experience. It has been important for me to track and it makes sense to me.  

    1.  If the backlog is less than 4 weeks, there is not enough time for the planner to plan (get parts etc) and supervisor to schedule the work, we become reactive.

    2.  If it is longer than 6 weeks, we lose the trust that we can complete work in a reasonable time frame.... typically from operations, but also internally i maintenance.


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    Torbjorn Idhammar
    President & CEO
    IDCON, Inc.
    http://www.idcon.com
    Raleigh NC
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    Original Message


  • 9.  RE: Work Management - Metrics

    Posted 09-07-2022 10:24 AM
    Yes to too long or too short, but it should be derived rather than prescribed based on anecdotal experience. I believe the root of the problem is that we practitioners have not known how to derive optimal retention time. 

    However, the analytic to do is now readily available to us with the free R software and the data we use is very good because a CMMS automatically records status change each time a job enters and exits a stage along the maintenance workflow. This is a ready-made problem solvable with survival-hazard analysis. We need to start solving it.



    Original Message


  • 10.  RE: Work Management - Metrics

    Posted 09-08-2022 01:43 PM
    I think the ROT reference is just so an easy number can be used as a quick gauge.  I agree it really all depends.  Kinda like the safety near miss to LTA ratios ROT out there that every manager uses like an absolute metric or the RCM failure pattern % which is based on one industry, type assets and failure modes of which each different one produces different results.  It is OK for a general reference but about it.

    I don't think the planning time is accurate on 4-6 because many WO I see require months of prep due to material lead times and waiting on installation opportunity (outage).  A more accurate perception of how big the backlog should be is as you suggest Richard, subjective but 4-6 weeks does limit the actual size of it therefore making it more manageable from a planning, execution and priority standpoint.  

    Every job in the backlog over a certain amount is just noise anyway and will get no attention as there isn't enough resources to spend any time on.  That number varies from organization to organization and business so find what works for you, establish your norms and baselines and go with that.  We end up with too many WOs that really have no priority or even justification being planned and executed if we let a ROT drive priorities or decisions of WO management.

    We sometimes take too many generalities and make industry standards or ROT.  I'm not against it but I wouldn't be absolute about it.

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    Randy Riddell, CMRP, PSAP, CLS
    Reliability Manager
    Essity
    Cherokee AL
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    Original Message


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