Today’s Gremlin – “No plan needed”, shows up even where there are planners. This gremlin is comfortable creating maintenance work schedules that are little more than wishful thinking! Plans describe what work must be done, how it should be done and with what resources (skills, tools, parts, etc.). Schedules show when the work will be done. Between the two steps is a check on the availability of all those resources. Without them, the schedule is at risk. Without a plan, you don’t even know what to check on! “No plan needed” is at the heart of maintenance inefficiency.
What’s in plan?
Today’s Gremlin – “No plan needed” doesn’t really care what should be in the plan. It’s not his worry. This gremlin is often a planner or a supervisor with absolute faith in the skills of the trades-persons. Indeed, those skilled crafts can plan their work, arrange all the logistics of parts, etc., get the right permits, and then execute the job. But is that efficient?
The plan should describe, task by task, activity by activity, what work is to be done. Each of those has a requirement for skills (electrician, mechanic, welder, instrumentation, mechatronics, etc.), will likely consume parts, and uses tools. The skills come with the person. Some tools will come with the person also, but special tools (those that aren’t used all the time) won’t. Parts are only available if you identify the need and acquire them (from your storeroom, or through purchasing). Knowing how long the job and each activity will take helps you schedule your people. For instance, if you need an electrician at the start of the job and at the end, but not for the 6 hours in between, you can keep that electrician gainfully employed at other jobs in between.
Without a plan
“No plan needed” works without all the details. This gremlin may be an experienced trades’ person who knows how to do the jobs and expects other trades to know it also. He doesn’t believe the detail is needed. But what about the apprentice, or the new hire? What about the standards you need to adhere to for balancing, alignments, and other precision tasks? Left to the discretion of the trades’ person in the field you’ll get highly variable results. For alignment you might see a range from “throw on fit” to “it looks straight” to the use of laser tools. Only the latter will produce consistent high quality results.
If the parts haven’t been specified and sourced in advance, the trades’ person will open up the equipment, find out what is needed, and then begin to get it. If it’s not on hand (a common problem), you’ll be rushing parts in from suppliers and paying premium prices, on top of delaying the job execution.
Planned work saves money – lots!
Planned work, executed on schedule, is less expensive than unplanned work by a factor that ranges from 1.5 to 15 times. The widely accepted figure is 3 x less expensive. Time is wasted otherwise – in identifying what has to be done, what parts are needed, getting them, looking around for instructions and standards, etc. If that equipment is critical to operations, you are also losing revenue while it’s down.
If you don’t have a plan, and haven’t checked on resources, your schedules will not be achievable. Work execution will be chaotic with the next job being dictated by the arrival of parts at the receiving dock. Coordination of various trades is all but impossible so delays and inefficiencies multiply.
Why are we so bad at this?
Although planning is widely seen as important, it is not treated as such. Planners rarely have much, if any training, they are working with systems they are not familiar with and with storerooms that are not stocked adequately. When breakdowns occur, they are the panic artists who find solutions to all the things that need to be done – chasing parts, chasing tools, finding extra trades or contractors…
We don’t give planners the respect they deserve, the training they need, or the time to do their job right. We expect them to make up for all sorts of inefficiencies in supervision and poorly designed work management processes.
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