05 Organization & People

From the book cover. A carefully planned shutdown will improve your plant's safety and efficiency, while one that "just happens" can be disastrous. Developed from the author's highly successful seminars, this book takes you step by step through successfully managing production shutdowns. Identify what must be done, schedule equipment and staff, use project-management software, and save both dollars and downtime.  Reference Book for Module 6 of the MMP Program 

Due largely to the release of ISO55000x:2014 family of standards, Asset Management is gaining worldwide acceptance as a valid business practice for asset-intensive organizations. The challenge that organizations now face is how to operationalize the principles and move it from “being understood in theory” to being “the way that we work”, to truly distill effective asset management practices and principles to the nooks and crannies of the organization. One key tenet of ISO55000x is the management of asset risk at all levels of asset interaction. On the other side, one area that has been struggling to understand asset management beyond maintenance management is the traditional Maintenance Department. This paper will capture the steps that Veolia North America is taking one of its Municipal Clients through to understand risk at the more granular levels and build risk resilience into its maintenance strategy.Yet for the average Maintenance Manager, the challenge of interpreting asset risk for the organization is still uncharted waters. There are several ways in which the traditional Maintenance Manager can understand the wide breadth of risks facing the asset, determine appropriate responses and communicate them to the appropriate stakeholders. In fact, one or more of these may already be in place in the organization but may not be seen as building risk resilience. This presentation will explore one methodology used by Veolia to develop an asset-centric, risk-based Maintenance Strategy at the City of Winnipeg’s, Waste Water Treatment Plants using a Maintenance Management Maturity Assessment.The City of Winnipeg’s Waste Water Department is at a very interesting juncture in its history, in that there are several major capital upgrades being undertaken, whilst the plants continue to run. The goal of the Maintenance Strategy is therefore two-fold. To maintain the existing levels of service at least whole life cost with risk balanced against the cost of meeting objectives, whilst ensuring that there is a plan to maximise maintenance for the future asset base to realise the benefit of the investment over the whole life of the assets. As a result, in 2016, in collaboration with its selected O&M improvement partner, Veolia North America, the City of Winnipeg’s Waste Water Treatment Plants, went on a path of discovery. Two significant tools of investigation were employed: 1. An Asset Management Maturity Assessment was conducted and 2. The City participated in the National Waste Water Benchmarking Initiative (NWWBI) Maintenance Task Force Survey implemented by AECOM. The Asset Management Maturity Assessment examined 8 fundamental areas of Maintenance Management and outlined positions of excellence that the City hoped to achieve both at the 1-year and 3-year mark from the date of assessment with 2017 being Year 1. The NWWBI Maintenance Task Force Survey examined 42 granular yet, over-lapping areas of Maintenance Management, with 18 of them reporting significant gaps for the City’s Waste Water Treatment Plants. The results of the two analyses were combined into eight (8) key Objectives and the underlying activities required to achieving them over the next three (3) years. These eight (8) Objectives are: 1. Implementation of Asset Condition Assessment Plan (ACAP) 2. Inventory Management Optimization Plan (IMOP) 3. Work Organization Improvement Plan (WOIP) 4. Implementation of Maintenance Quality Strategy (MQS) 5. Financial Capability Improvement Plan (FCIP) 6. Asset Registry Improvement Plan (ARIP) 7. Implementation of Document Management (DM) 8. Revision and Implementation of Asset Criticality Model (ACM)This presentation will examine the detailed plans for each objective, the inter-connectivity and alignment of the Objectives, the Road Map for the next 3 years, the processes for monitoring and continual improvement and the benefits of implementing this approach. Presented at MainTrain 2017 

Effective maintenance plays a crucial role in today’s business. In order to manage costs, organizations attempt to get the most from their people and assets. Effective alignment between departments can dramatically improve asset reliability, reduce operation and maintenance costs and improve the effectiveness of the workforce.This presentation is intended to provide participants with the information and awareness they need to manage assets effectively. The need of cooperation between the operations and maintenance departments, as well as other departments such as supply chain will be discussed. Employees require more than high level principles; they must understand their role and how effective cooperation at all levels will provide value to the on-going operations, thereby allowing the business to remain profitable. Further, the presentation will examine the concept of Operational Excellence as the beginning of a transformation to a planned culture throughout the entire organization. Key to this topic is confirming who is in charge. Is the asset dictating how things should be done or are the people running it in charge?Asset management professionals often find themselves challenged by competing priorities in an effort to keep the system running. This session follows how maintenance tasks are initiated with work prioritization being a key element. Various roles will be discussed as well as the importance of scheduling and getting everyone on board with the schedule. Potential subtopics tailored to time restrictions: (1) Why do planned maintenance? (2) Cost of a break-in event, (3) Risk-based work selection, (4) Screening and approval of work, (5) Operators role in maintenance, (6) Operations, maintenance and supply chain departments’ role in scheduling, (7) Operations and maintenance coordination and roles, and (8) Managing the daily work list.  Presented at MainTrain 2017 

Often people who are good at their jobs at the operations level are promoted to supervisory positions without much thought about how to equip them for success in the new role. The mentality of “sink or swim” has been proven contrary to how people actually learn on the job. So what can you do to up skill your supervisors? What can you do to assist supervisors with transitioning from hourly, operational thinking to salaried leadership thinking? The key lies in knowing how to develop leadership using on-the-job coaching, training and mentorship. When approached strategically and thoughtfully, organizations can effectively equip supervisors to see themselves as part of the management team, develop the skills and confidence to take charge and lead their teams effectively. Presented at MainTrain 2017 

In his book ‘Good to Great’ Jim Collins tells us that the secret to success is to have the right people in the right seats on the right bus. How many of our organizations actually achieve that? What are some of the reasons we don’t succeed? During this presentation we will see that perhaps the biggest reason we don’t succeed is simply we don’t really know what the ‘right people’ look like. We will look at how we normally determine if the people are right based on what we expect them to do as it compares to their skill sets. For example – why is it that so many College Quarter Backs or Junior A hockey players fail to make the big time and play in the NFL or NHL?Getting closer to home we will look at why many people who are put in the role of maintenance and reliability leaders continue to struggle even though they seem well suited for the job and turn out to be the wrong people in the right seats. As we look at the reasons that this happens we will look at what it is exactly that these leaders need to do, know and understand in order to succeed. We can assure you that what you’ll learn from this presentation will change how you approach filling the vacancies within your organization! We promise you that you will listen, learn and laugh!Presented at MainTrain 2017 

Many organizations have embarked on asset management programs and struggle to implement best in class practices, find it difficult to sustain the new ways of working and find it difficult to demonstrate the return on the investment in AM.  Success in Asset Management (AM)  Development and Sustenance of the AM Program depends of effective Change Leadership throughout the program. It requires a focus on the following areas:1. Program and Steering Team Charters2. Comprehensive Business Case3. Comprehensive Project Management  Plan4. An AM Framework and Policy that provides a clear vision for AM5. A Leading Change Plan (and an effective issue management process)6. Communications Plan7. Tracking and Reporting of BenefitsThis presentation will provide practical guidance to people who are embarking on an AM Program, in the throes of implementing one or trying to sustain the new way of working. Participants will hear abut real case studies where challenges in the areas listed above were successfully managed.

Operations management practitioners face several challenges in optimizing the usage of CMMS and AMS solutions. One of the critical tasks in an increasingly complex environment is ensuring that software solutions keep pace with legislative, productivity and efficiency based requirements. Participants in this session will see how operations management thinkers, among them management theorists and organizational behaviorists in particular, have introduced terms like 'big data', 'refresh' and 'disruptive management' in attempts to stimulate thinking around solution development. See how recent experiences from City of Toronto operating divisions with introducing software solutions illustrate the importance of documenting and validating specific and inter-divisional needs as 'beacons' for project management. Effective and efficient management of internal and external stakeholders requires documented artifacts that are constant throughout the project life cycle. Discover how the absence of such artifacts simply permits changes in scope, requirements and expectations.

​Fully understanding the maintenance and reliability strengths and weaknesses within a facility can be a huge undertaking.  Traditionally, a study to understand reliability is performed by either calculating, tracking, and comparing key performance indicators, or through a qualitative approach, observing compliance with best practices of maintenance and reliability activities to determine perceived strengths and weaknesses. Both approaches have downsides.  In this session, participants will learn about a more effective and repeatable reliability assessment that includes a quantitative assessment using plant CMMS work history to develop trends, key performance indicators, and comparisons that will either validate or invalidate strengths and weaknesses as determined in a qualitative assessment with plant personnel.  See how the ability to reliably gather and assess historical CMMS data will depend on determining a set of requirements or data signatures which can be used to validate strengths and weaknesses.  Additionally, the quantitative cost information can be effectively used to justify projects, programs, and personnel required to improve maintenance and reliability activities. Learn how a reliability assessment can most efficiently and effectively be administered in this way; the use of a qualitative assessment to better focus a quantitative analysis provides the best combination of overall understanding from personnel with the accuracy and reliability of historical data. 

In an effort to increase equipment reliability and reduce unscheduled downtime, many organizations have taken the proactive step of implementing a Predictive Maintenance (PdM) Program. Unfortunately, only an estimated 20% of these initiatives actually achieve the anticipated results.  This presentation will explore how to avoid the ten most common pitfalls substantially improves PdM results and provide participants with tools they need to implement a best practice preventative maintenance program.

Assessments are used to measure the current state of a program or system against a future or ideal state. A well performed assessment with detailed documented and practical recommendations can have a significant impact on an organisation. Many organisations offer services to perform such measurements; there are likely thousands of companies who solicit and pay for these services every year globally. However for many companies, particularly small to medium sized ones, funding such services can be challenging. With the growing amount of information that is readily available on the internet, best-practices and ‘ideal state’ definitions are no longer the privy of management consultants and industry gurus. This session presents the notion of a ‘self-assessment’ and the case study of one organisation’s decision to develop its own assessment tool and program. The lessons learned and unexpected benefits as a result are also discussed.