Doing more with less: How to improve maintainance labour utilisation
This paper examines industry benchmarks surrounding maintenance labour utilisation, commonly known as 'wrench time' or 'time-on-tools'. In the current environment of severe skills shortages, coupled with severe competition for skilled maintenance technicians, potential exists to implement programs targeted at increasing labour utilisation. The paper concludes that: (i) Reported 'time-an-tools' varies between a low of 20% and a high of 55%. By assuming central estimates, a left-skewed distribution can be fitted with an average value of 36% across all industry sectors; (ii) Principal reported losses include: time spent on nonroutine work; partially reported work hours, gaps between recorded hours and best practice; poor inventory management; rework; misapplication of machinery; losses in parts, tools, instructions and travel, procedural delays; punctuality and tool preparedness; (iii) Four broad areas of improvement opportunity are identified, involving: measurement; planning; e-maintenance and job-readiness. In more details is suggested to: Personnel and asset tracking technologies are suggested as a means for developing better methods to measure 'wrench times' and classify sources of logistic loss; Greater use of condition monitoring data, coupled with the use of models that help predict remaining useful life of equipment and major components, could greatly assist in reducing the incidence of unplanned work; The increased application of e-maintenance technologies (high speed wireless, hand-held devices, and web enabled databases)can enable field technicians to access the status and locations of spare parts, access drawings, services manuals and best practice advice; The preparation of repair kits and adequate tools to suit a job can again help reduce costly delays in searching for parts and tools. The paper recommends that a business case be established for investing in personnel and asset tracking technologies in surface and underground mines. This would necessarily involve quantification of the relative financial impact of logistic delays.
Year of publication: |
2011-01-01
|
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Authors: | Knights, Peter |
Other Persons: | Victor Babarovich (contributor) ; Alvaro Endo (contributor) ; Rodrigo Pascual (contributor) ; Raul Stegmaier (contributor) |
Publisher: |
Gecamin |
Saved in:
freely available
Saved in favorites
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