6.2 Work Planning

This presentation is a case study on the Maintenance Journey for the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board guiding participants through the transformation of the school board's maintenance department which originally consisted of an informal program focussed on breakdown maintenance and reactive work, and to the current state of a formal maintenance program.The journey includes leveraging resources to baseline maturity and establish focus areas for evolving practices and adding structure. I will speak about specific initiatives completed and are in process which have established the organisation's programs, engagement, clarity, and purpose. It's a good news story which will also share how the tools and practices inherently part of the PEMAC community and body of knowledge have assisted in modernizing this team and organisation.

SIGGA Technologies deployment with Votorantim Cimentos SAP PM

The City of Winnipeg faced challenges with the condition of their Return Activated Sludge (RAS) piping within the North End Sewage Treatment Plant. Non-destructive and destructive condition assessment techniques were used to determine that the critical process piping was life expired, and required replacement or rehabilitation to maintain process level of service until the plant is upgraded. Replacement of a RAS piping system is akin to major heart surgery on a sewage treatment plant. To manage the process risk, in situ structural renewal using an engineered Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) external wrap system to encapsulate the original carbon steel piping was chosen. Selection of the rehabilitation method reduced the schedule by two years compared to the replacement option and minimized operational risk, as process outages were reduced to a few short-term events. Offline testing of mock-ups and emphasis on environmental and quality control further managed the risks associated with CFRP installation. The project faced unique challenges due to the complex configuration of the RAS piping, which was located inside a congested plant gallery with surrounding equipment, piping, and electrical services in continuous operation. To effectively convey information during planning, design, tender, and construction, a digital 3D model was developed using laser scanning to capture the detailed configuration of the piping and surrounding physical constraints. The 3D model was embedded with data to define the rehabilitation scope, locations of existing pipe leaks requiring immediate repair, rework of pipe supports to accommodate the CFRP installation, and other aspects relevant to the work. This model was a highly effective tool used for collaborative review by all project team members throughout design and construction, leading to successful completion of the RAS piping rehabilitation.

Shutdown is a generic term for what may be called an outage, turnaround (TAR), or overhaul. Running a shutdown well has always been key to the financial contribution of a business. However, something important has changed. The post-pandemic reality is that turnover and extended vacancies are eroding established maintenance processes that now struggle to yield the required plant availability. One tactic to mitigate this is to make the process “turnover-proof.” This is achieved through disciplined execution of documented processes backed by role definitions, training material, cross-training, and training the trainers, etc. The good news is, that tactic is entirely within the control of the maintenance area to create. This presentation proposes a framework to manage plant shutdowns in the mining industry and discusses four case studies, one of which is currently ongoing. The case studies are selected to show application over a range of different size shutdowns, from micro to mini to macro. Shutdowns vary immensely in nature, scope, and duration but all have four common objectives: do no harm (safety and environment); reliability restoration, (i.e., plant runs reliably until the next planned outage); schedule compliance—complete the work within the planned shutdown duration; and shutdown budget compliance. Like any other work, executing a shutdown is a process. It can be thought of as a combination of the weekly maintenance work cycle and a project, as it has elements from both, and any work process can be optimized. Shutdowns have two main loss drivers that impact production: shutdown duration, including schedule overruns; and unplanned outages, post-shutdown, due to work not done or work poorly done during the shutdown. While this presentation focuses on the management of shutdowns to control schedule and restore reliability, it should be noted that these improvements in execution will also benefit safety and cost.

In service providing organizations, coordinating resources to minimize redundancy, manage cost to serve and combat employee disengagement becomes a differentiator. For larger organizations this can further support streamlined captial and operational investments such as facilities, speciality tooling and training. Within the maintenance industry we project that 35% of our trades persons time is actually on the tools (module 6), this is an alarming statistic that resonates with many professionals. Organizing resources intentionally, creating the customer experience while managing these investments can be achieved in a network strategy.  The network organizes resources between generalists and specialists and capitalizes on placing services that require specialization in labour markets that have depth. Organizing is only part of the equation,  having a comprehensive & fluid S&OP process and a mechanism (ex: a control tower) to bring real time visibility into capacity increases productivity and reduces overall cost to serve. At my organization, we have done just that. Beginning in 2019, we designed a hub and spoke model that would support a long term vision of creating capacity through strategic efficiency. This transformational pivot required considerable foresight, change management and Since the MRO articlehttps://www.mromagazine.com/digital-archives/september-2020/ (page 12) in 2020,  the focus on capturing internal & external demand signals to support the maturity of our capacity and capability (S&OP) planning,  we have been able to grow niche market shares by 300% in under 2 years. THe planning coupled with the increased/real time visbility through our contol tower has supported sustainable growth in an ever shifting economic climate.     

The energy landscape is shifting with the rise in electrification of transit and the rise of renewable energy shaping a new energy era that is changing the way we think about infrastructure decision making. This presentation will articulate how electrification of transit and an increase in renewables will impact medium and long-term infrastructure planning by providing examples and a practical perspective (case study) to demonstrate how Asset Management decision-making played a vital role in a utility company’s response to this change. This utility company is a key contributor to several electrification initiatives. They recognized the challenge associated with these initiatives and the overall success of the first implementation phase with minimal disruption to current operations. They are also preparing for electrification of the government transit’s first all-electric bus garage to support future procurements of battery-electric buses (eBuses) and will be working on the design and implementation of charging systems infrastructure across the city(?). Over the past 20 years, more than 50 renewable energy systems have been installed on City buildings and properties. In 2020, the city developed recommendations for the utility to achieve greater outcomes for energy efficiency, demand management, and renewable energy. The city also mandated installation of renewable energy systems on all buildings, where feasible, by 2020. The rate of development in electrification and technology in the transit sector is faster than implementation of major infrastructure developments; changes in demand patterns impact everything from the transmission and distribution networks to generation, dispatch and peak-load system capacity design; so it is not possible to “wait and see” before committing to infrastructure investment decisions. This presentation will cover how the utility is dealing with these changes by ensuring an appropriate long-term decision-making framework is in place to assure business continuity and reduce the impact on climate because it poses a particular risk for asset owners and operators. AMCL will present best practices for long-term decision-making and how the impact of change should be taken into account during the development of long-term infrastructure planning processes, in the context of a public utility.

We’ve all heard time and time again the value that Planning and Scheduling brings to a Maintenance organization. But, is your organization fully realizing this value? If Planning and Scheduling is intended to be a “wrench time multiplier” of you Maintenance Technicians, have you looked at the “wrench time” of your Planners and Schedulers? What are the potential barriers preventing them from achieving the ultimate goals of their roles? Can one Maintenance Planner really bring the same effective value as 15-17 tradespersons in your organization? Likely not, and it isn’t the fault of your Planners and Schedulers. In this presentation we’ll review the planning and scheduling function, define what it really is, and more importantly what it is NOT. We’ll also take a close look at many of the “value vampires” common in Planning and Scheduling that detract from the intended value generation. We’ll compare what an ideal Day-in-the-life of a Maintenance Planner should be against the realities they so commonly face. The intent of this presentation is to help you understand Why Planning and Scheduling is likely less effective than it could be in your organization. More importantly, this will hopefully trigger changes that help the Planners and Schedulers in your teams do more of what they do best.

We know that reliability has value to your business, but many of us with technical backgrounds struggle to present a good business case to decision-makers. We are very often held back by budget constraints and we are not in a position to make decisions involving financial risk-taking. Most of us don't have a business background, nor do we speak "finance". It is a whole different language than maintenance and reliability, yet we all want the same things for our business. This presentation will give you some ideas on what you will need to determine in order to show what reliability is worth, and how to present that to decision-makers.

The ultimate maintenance KPI must show if we are keeping assets from breaking and not just fixing them after they break. While our maintenance forces are responsible for fixing things that break, we have really failed in our primary mission to keep them working in the first place! In Six Sigma terminology, the ultimate maintenance KPI should be about eliminating defects. Emergency and urgent work requests are “defects.” How many do we have? Are we getting better at eliminating them? Simply put, that’s what it’s all about. Modern maintenance knows that the key to reducing emergency and urgent work orders is doing more proactive work such as PM, PdM, and project work to head off reactive work. However, because many plants are overwhelmed with reactive work, planning and scheduling are critical to help us complete the extra proactive work. We track and manage simple supporting planning and scheduling KPIs to achieve super-high productivity and quality of work. These easy-to-measure KPIs are schedule compliance, schedule loading, work order completion rate, planned coverage, creation of reusable job plans, keeping a minimal unplanned backlog, and amount of helpful feedbacks received.

Continuous processing or manufacturing facilities will occasionally require planned outages to primarily address reliability or maintenance issues. Due to the high cost of these outages (opportunity and real), careful planning and scheduling practices are used to come up with detailed execution plans to reduce the planned duration as much as possible. While outage duration is typically determined using the critical path methodology, large quantities of smaller but similar in nature jobs can lead to unexpected schedule extension. A planning team recently applied this lesson-learned by calculating the schedule impact of such critical mass work. During inspections and maintenance outages, labor cost is usually a significant expense. In order to meet the required cost and duration goals, worker efficiency is critical. As part of the job plans and schedule creation, a planning team was able to model one crucial feature of labor efficiency – worker density, that is the maximum number of workers that can be allocated to a specific work area over a given time span with minimum productivity losses. As a result, small changes were made to the scheduling of individual tasks. This case study will illustrate how both constraints were considered when planning & scheduling a major maintenance outage.