POWER August 2012 - 15

Breaking the Cycle of
Reactive Maintenance
Nobody can schedule unplanned events that will affect power
generation. And no one wants to start a day expecting an emergency
to occur. But when critical systems fail in the power supply
system, it's time to respond. That's a given of power plant
maintenance.
For plant managers faced with economic constraints and regulatory
mandates, a common topic of discussion is the need for
power plants to cut costs and improve maintenance. Yet a deeper
understanding of the advanced processes where true return on
investment (ROI) exists eludes many. There are plenty of enterprise
asset management (EAM) webinars and analytics training
courses out there, but often it is the underlying attitudes-the
fears, presumptions, sheer crush of work to be done-that can
keep plants stuck in reactive maintenance.
For many plants, changing from reactive to proactive maintenance
means challenging old norms, communicating change
management benefits, and correcting improper uses of the system.
These problems can include bad data; a system designed
and led by the information technology department instead of
functional users; and having no business analysts, business rules,
computerized maintenance management system expert, analytical
reports, or long-term road map.
Too Busy to Be Proactive?
In every plant there are seasoned staff who know the equipment,
know the systems, and are quite capable of " putting out fires. "
Yet all too often, when asked how well they use their EAM system,
power plant maintenance managers concede they are too
busy maintaining with far " too little staff " to do much beyond
using the system to create tickets for items that need to be addressed.
This forms the cycle of reactive maintenance.
As a business process improvement consultant, I am often
met at power plants by planners/schedulers with a common
complaint. It goes something like this: " We cannot perform any
advance planning; we're fully utilized already. We have so much
emergency and urgent work, it requires our immediate attention.
On top of that, we are the main point of coordination when it
comes to EAM system input and output. It's too much! "
Under the " tyranny of the urgent, " all work is treated the
same-although some of it gets done quicker. This also means
you could have self-inflicted reactive maintenance. The overall
result is mismanagement of the maintenance backlog, resulting
in unnecessary costs associated with reactive maintenance. The
primary benefit of creating a schedule is to align departments,
coordinate crafts, ensure job safety, minimize risk, and minimize
delays.
Without more staff, some planners/schedulers cannot visualize
a world in which they can proactively manage data to reduce
reactive maintenance. Rather than look for efficiency with " advanced
processes, " they revert to " we need more staff. " But with
no budget for hiring, the situation is at an impasse.
Power plant workers have long-held misconceptions about
what an EAM system is or can be. Most see it as a work order
number provider that gives them a number " to charge time to. "
From this perspective, why should they look for failure trends
and worse offenders or reexamine preventive maintenance (PM)
frequencies (maintenance strategies)? When stuff breaks, they fix
16
it. Organizations have been operating like this for so long that
there is no memory of any other viable approach.
Create a Comprehensive Vision
My on-site customer observations confirm that there is a common
problem: the general lack of a comprehensive road map to
clearly define the end game, link inputs to outputs, and provide
clear business rules for roles and responsibilities. The planners
are often consumed with reactive maintenance. Work orders
are initiated but not properly categorized or prioritized. Work
is performed but lacks proper feedback as to asset condition,
recommendations to prevent future breakdowns, design flaws,
and maintainability issues. Ownership of the backlog is lacking,
which leads to incorrect asset numbers, inaccurate statuses, duplicate
tickets, and stale work. When basic processes and foundation
data are suspect, it is very difficult to take that next step to
fully leverage the EAM system.
Often, it isn't the lack of staff or lack of time at all; it's a
lack of knowledge-or even a lack of belief in the feasibility-of
how to put EAM to work to proactively manage assets across the
entire enterprise.
It's commonly stated that reliability is everyone's job. That
said, the maintenance and upkeep of the EAM system should also
be everyone's job. For the EAM system to be a true knowledge
base, there has to be buy-in from all levels of the organization,
including maintenance, operations, engineering, supply chain,
and management. Ideal duties and roles are shown in the table.
Six Questions
It's time for the power industry to move beyond theoretical discussions
and take on the real-world problems faced by power
Enterprise asset management requires teamwork.
Source: Cohesive Information Solutions Inc.
Planner/
scheduler
Fully believe in concept of work order planning.
Be a student of proactive maintenance, enterprise asset management
(EAM) system better/best practices, and advanced concepts.
Reduce percentage of backlog planned.
Reliability
engineer
Be an active participant in the reliability process.
Lead the Reliability Team.
Advise the Core Team on how to set up the EAM system to support
analytics.
Maintenance
manager
Facilitate new work reviews, separating true emergencies from
work that can be planned/scheduled.
Support weekly schedule meetings.
Maintenance
supervisors
Create long-term vision and roadmap for the future.
Believe in, and work to, a weekly schedule.
Facilitate accurate work order reporting, especially at completion.
Encourage work order feedback in support of improved reliabilitycentered
maintenance.
Operations
Handle emergency/urgent work, as needed.
Identify emergency/urgent work.
Perform first-level feasibility review of new/incoming work.
Identify work that can be properly planned and scheduled.
www.powermag.com
POWER | August 2012
http://www.powermag.com
POWER August 2012

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