White paper – copyright Quant 2015
How maintenance productivity measurement identified
significant maintenance cost reduction opportunities
By Jose Baptisa – Development Manager of Reliability - Quant
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How maintenance productivity
measurement identified significant
maintenance cost reduction
opportunities
Jose Baptista, Development Manager for Reliability
at Quant, identifies how facility’s can improve their
business operations through outsourcing.
Throughout my career, I saw, or rather felt, the
various economic crises created by several factors
from the 1970s oil crisis at the beginning of my
career to the world economic crisis in 2008 when
I first moved to the U.S. The crisis periods and an
increasingly competitive market always results
in one common remedy: an enormous pressure to
reduce costs. Without the proper precautions or
criteria, this cost cutting may jeopardize business
continuity.
Labor productivity has a major impact on the cost
of maintenance and few maintenance managers
know the effectiveness of their crews. They should
know and improve the conditions that affect labor
productivity on their sites. The way they design
and implement their maintenance management
processes directly impacts the productivity of the
maintenance workforce.
I will try to illustrate how the company, Quant, the
global leader in industrial maintenance helped one
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customer to identify and remove barriers to improve
the maintenance workforce productivity.
I will start by defining maintenance productivity as
the ratio of the output to the input of a production
system. With a given input, if output of products
or services is higher, then productivity/ efficiency
is higher. Efficiency is doing things right or it is the
measure of the relationship of outputs to inputs and
is usually expressed as a percentage.
In summary, the total productivity of the
maintenance workforce can be divided into three
factors:
1. Utilization:
The elimination and reduction of nonproductive
work such as time spent waiting, walking or being
idle.
2. Performance:
Increasing speed of task execution through a higher
quality of employees, improved tools and working
methods and planning and scheduling.
3. Quality:
The elimination of unnecessary tasks using work
flow and plans analysis, organization analysis, failure
analysis, execution quality and equipment design-
out.
Utilization X Performance X Quality = Total
Productivity
Our study focuses on the utilization factor only. We
wanted to identify the wasted time associated with
maintenance tasks, for example, the time technicians
lose having to move around unnecessarily in
different areas of the plant or wasted time waiting
for work permits, spare parts, tools, instructions and
other documentation required for completing an
assigned task.
To be able to measure productivity, we adopted
the work sampling methodology, which is a
measurement technique developed in the 1930s
by L.H. Tippet to analyze, classify and quantify
work using instantaneous observations of work in
progress taken randomly over a period of time. It is
based on the laws of probability and to determine the
proportion of the total time dedicated to the various
components of a task.
To conduct a work sampling study, a large number
of observations or snapshots are taken randomly
and during each observation and the condition of the
worker is determined and recorded in a predefined
category of activity pertinent to the particular work
situation. Inferences are then drawn concerning
the total work activity from the proportions of
observations in each category.
Based on these measurements, we conducted this
study in various petrochemical plants in Brazil.
The study was carried out over a 30-day period,
and observations were made at predetermined
locations to cover the entire plant. Based on statistical
calculations, the numbers of required observations
were 8,800 with a margin of error of ± 1 percent. For
the study, the maintenance activities were divided
into three categories: productive, support and
nonproductive:
Productive: Working and Planning
This category includes adjusting, welding,
positioning, cleaning, inspecting, assembling,
analyzing discussing execution, drawing sketches and
a number of other activities.
Support: Watching, Walking and Waiting
Watching refers to supporting and serving as a stand-
by, while waiting refers to time spent acquiring tools,
materials, scaffolding, lifting equipment, work permits
or instructions.
Nonproductive: Personal and Idle Time
Nonproductive time is classified and personal and idle
time such as drinking water, coffee breaks, smoking
and conversations not related to work.
The study revealed the following percentages:
Working: 26 percent
Planning: 11 percent
Productive (Working + Planning): 37 percent
Waiting: 27 percent
Walking: 28 percent
Nonproductive (Personal): 1 percent
Nonproductive (Idle): 7 percent
Assuming a workforce of 100 people with an average
labor rate of $40.00 per hour, these losses represent a
substantial economic drain equal to $4.6 million each
year.
Assuming a workforce of 100 people with an average
labor rate of $40.00 per hour, these losses represent a
substantial economic drain equal to $4.6 million each
year.
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If we consider that the maintenance labor
productivity benchmark for petrochemical industry
is 60 percent, we can say that this company
achieved their target. The results demonstrate the
importance of monitoring maintenance functions
in order to improve efficiency and productivity in
manufacturing plants.
Author: Jose Baptista – Development Manager,
Reliability Quant
For more information, please visit:
www.quantservice.com or email
[email protected]
Available daily hours per craftsman 7
Measure Value 37%
Lost time per day (minutes) 265
Number of workers 100
Days per month 22
Lost time per month (hours) 9702
US$/Hour $40.00
Losses per month $388,080
Losses per year $4,656,960
The results of study were presented to plant
management and interested parties and then
working groups were created to analyze the causes
of unproductive time and to propose plans for
improvement. These groups studied and suggested
actions for each of the priority items. For example, for
the “walking time” issue, the working group identified
the following causes: logistics and improper layout,
incomplete maintenance planning, deficiencies in
internal transport, workers stretching lunch breaks,
unavailability of tools, difficult access to productive
areas, unavailability of scaffolding, and lack of
operators to issue work permits.
Several actions were suggested and implemented
to eliminate and reduce walking time including
reviewing standard work order preparation, reducing
internal bus intervals, reviewing meetings schedule,
inventing a mobile tool cart so that workers would not
have to go to the warehouse and allowing tools to be
left at work during breaks and at the end of the day.
After implementation, a new study was conducted
with the following results:
Working: 50 percent
Planning: 10 percent
Productive (Working + Planning): 60 percent
Waiting: 17 percent
In Transit (Displacement): 19 percent
Nonproductive (Personal): 2 percent
Nonproductive (Idle): 2 percent
With the results above, the losses were reduced by
approximately $1.7 million per year.
Available daily hours per craftsman 7
Measure Value 60%
Lost time per day (minutes) 168
Number of workers 100
Days per month 22
Lost time per month (hours) 6160
US$/Hour $40.00
Losses per month $246,400
Losses per year $2,956,800
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Maintenance is
a people business
www.quantservice.com
Quant is a global leader in industrial maintenance. For over 25 years, we have
been realizing the full potential of maintenance for our customers.
From embedding superior safety practices and building a true maintenance
culture, to optimizing maintenance cost and improving plant performance,
our people make the difference.
We are passionate about maintenance and proud of ensuring we achieve our
customers’ goals in the most professional way.