Maintenance Technology April 2017 - 25

WORKFORCE STRATEGIES
■ Identification is the timely
pinpointing and prioritization of
maintenance work. These activities are
performed by equipment operators
who use a well-defined work-prioritization matrix or by maintenance
coordinators who base priorities on
business and related needs.
■ Planning is formal organization
of the work to be done, including
scope assessment and identification
and procurement of the labor and
materials required to complete the job.
■ Scheduling includes setting the
optimum time period in which to
complete the planned work. It takes
into account the overall resources
required at the site and attempts to
level the resource load to use normally
available maintenance resources.
■ Execution is the actual hands-on
work performed by skilled maintenance craft personnel. This includes
company personnel and contract
maintenance workers.
■ Closure involves capturing work

history, including critical information
on failure modes used to facilitate
reliability analysis.
Failure to have or follow a well-defined
maintenance-work process results in
chaos and, therefore, grossly inefficient
resource utilization.

Tools and prep
The next factor that influences
maintenance-labor efficiency is the
availability of tools and materials
required to complete the assigned
work. Without that availability, work
can't be completed in a timely manner.
Wrench-time studies consistently
reveal that traveling for tools and
materials is the most common barrier to
maintenance-workforce productivity. If
highly skilled (and costly) maintenancecraft personnel have to spend time
retrieving tools and materials, it will take
significantly longer to complete the work,
including possibly delaying completion.
It's troubling why so many organizations
depend on highly skilled maintenance

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resources to perform such mundane
work (material and tool transport) rather
than assigning those tasks to less costly
storeroom and/or delivery personnel.
Next in line as a detrimental impact
on maintenance-workforce efficiency
is the interface with operations. Equipment must be prepared in advance of
maintenance work. Examples include
equipment decontamination, lockout/
tagout, and work permitting. If these
types of tasks aren't performed in a timely
manner, wrench time will suffer. Paying
highly skilled maintenance workers to
stand around while operators perform
such work-that should have been done
in advance-is absurd. Yet, as wrenchtime studies show, this is a common
occurrence in today's plants.

The culture effect
Empirical evidence suggests that
particular work environments, or
cultures, are more prone to maintenance workforce inefficiency. At the
top of this list is an environment in

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APRIL 2017

MAINTENANCETECHNOLOGY.COM | 25
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Maintenance Technology April 2017
