Do the roles and responsibilities in your Maintenance organization strengthen its operation? Is your organization trending towards delivering superior results at lower costs or inferior results and higher costs? Are you on the path to success in your company and in your career?
The new face of maintenance is streamlined, more efficient and has reliability built into the roles. To meet aggressive targets of reducing maintenance costs by up to 25% while at the same time improving asset availability/utilization. But how do you focus your employees on equipment reliability - from the operator who used the equipment on a daily basis, to the tradesperson who repairs and maintains the equipment.
At some point, a separate Reliability group might be formed to focus on reliability engineering, designing for reliability and analyzing asset information for longer term replacement strategy and modification planning? But for now, build reliability into the team you have.
Roles in the Modern Maintenance Organization:
Equipment (or Reliability) Specialist or Engineer - the asset owner, is responsible for the reliability of the asset focuses on strategy development/work identification & continuous improvement of the asset reliability (maintenance) program. Trained in formal strategy development methodologies (RCM/FMEA/RBI/RCA). He/she acts as the process equipment expert and possesses process equipment depth and trade breadth. The Specialist develops the discipline specific portion of the technically-based asset reliability program, investigates gaps for adherence and adequacy of the program & initiates corrective actions, RCA and improvements to the program.
Planner - focuses on work planning, developing multi-discipline work packages to the level of detail required to execute the work and submits work orders for approval. He/she develops and maintains a library of "standard" work orders based on the asset strategy, capturing accurate information and best execution practices for repetitive work.
Scheduler - manages the "schedule" and work order task backlog. Acts as the key point of interface for coordination between Asset Owner and Trade Specialists. Communicates and coordinates internal and external department workforce resources to satisfy total schedule work demand.
"Asset" Trade Specialist - focuses on work execution. Applies advanced knowledge and skills in an area of specialty (Process/Equipment Specialty Depth). Monitors, checks, inspects, diagnoses. Conducts non-resource intensive change, Replace or repair work. Includes predictive technology, mechanical, electrical, and instrumentation specialists.
Maintenance Team Leader - focus on Work Execution, supervising a team of multi-discipline trades people, planner(s) and scheduler(s). Assigns, monitors and measures work schedules and work packages based on trade competency. If and when Reliability evolves into a separate department, a Reliability Team Leader focuses on supervising the team of reliability engineers and fostering the culture of reliability through supporting best practices and technology.
Building a Culture of Reliability
Building and leading within a culture of reliability needs clarity on the roles and responsibilities in order to gain the support of the people that make it all possible. Then discipline to process with adherence measures are required to monitor day to day the process as well as measuring results. Technology can support as you move towards a proactive approach to Maintenance. Finally, make sure you reward proactive behavior not good fire-fighting and celebrate successes both formally and informally (a few ‘at-a-boy's or ‘at-a-girl's' go a long way).
For more on roles and responsibilities mapping in a reliability focused organization, contact Brian Flett at Bentley Systems brian.flett@bentley.com.
Tip Provided by: Bentley Systems.
