Maintenance Tips Maintenance Inventory To free up money in your maintenance budget and space in your maintenance storeroom, have your Purchasing Department or Storeroom Manager negotiate with vendors to carry high cost items for you.  You guarantee to the vendor that they are your sole source for the given item(s) and that you will buy a certain dollar amount per year from them.   Also, have them carry large quantities of small items that are used frequently but take up too much space.  Water treatment sedimentation basin Trac-Vac™ bladders come to mind. Additionally, set these purchases up on an annual blanket P.O. or use your corporate credit card.  This will eliminate the expense of creating a P.O. every time you need the item. Do not fill all available space with spare, repair, and consumable items.  Contrary to the law of nature that states, “nature abhors a vacuum,” maintenance storerooms do not.  Just because you have extra shelving, bins, or drawers does not mean they need to be filled. Also, do not organize your MRO storeroom by equipment.  Organize it by inventory types.  For example, if you use a given bearing in a number of equipments and the storeroom is organized by equipment you could have that bearing at each equipment location.  If you organize by inventory type you have bearings in a central location and will have that equipment covered.  And then again, if it is a common bearing and it is readily available at your local bearing supplier, let them keep it on their shelf and you buy when you need it. Special tools should be in the tool room or in the maintenance storeroom.  The use of them should be controlled through an issue and receipt system.  One of the best ways to do this is to issue “chits” – round metal disks stamped with the employee's ID number – to each maintenance technician.  Get a tool turn in a chit.  Chit is then placed where the tool goes.  Return tool receive chit back. Maintenance Management The DIN (Do It Now) Team consists of the maintenance techs that respond to emergency or urgent call outs.  They are doing routine jobs that can be put aside for a time as they go check out what the problem is – i.e., with a sewage grinder pump.  If they can handle the problem, a rag caught in the impeller for example, within a reasonable amount of time, 30 to 60 minutes, then they do so.  If it is going to take longer than that they submit a Work Request to the planner and return to their other duties. There may be occasions when it is not possible to complete all maintenance tasks in a given period of time.  When this happens there needs to be a procedure for closing the Work Order but not taking credit for completing the PM.  In this case change the work order type from PM to PMI – Preventive Maintenance Incomplete.  This ensures the integrity of the program and also provides a vehicle for tracking how often these occurrences happen and taking the appropriate action to address the cause. A key organizational tool for any maintenance management position is the tickler file.  The tickler file is a pair of accordion folders, one with twelve sections for the months and one with thirty-one sections for the days of the month.  Papers such as evaluations, project notes, deferred work requests that are due for review in a given month are placed in that month’s section.  The items for the current month are then placed in the day section for action that day.  This system works well in conjunction with MS Outlook or other scheduler programs because it files and organizes the paperwork. Maintenance Planning & Scheduling During the preplanning stage of a major overhaul of equipment use Post-it Notes.  Write each task to be covered by a work order on a separate note.  Then arrange the notes on a chalkboard or white board and develop the critical path.  Be aware of jobs to be performed off site and by contractors, ensure they are accounted for and included.  This method allows the flexibility of changing and adding tasks and modeling project sequencing until it is correct. For projects, use your CMMS work order numbering system to create an intelligent numbering system to assist with control and management of the work.  Open and assign the next work order in the system for the overhaul of, for example, the large frame-milling machine.  Establish this as your primary project control number, such as 01225.  With the work order setup utility in your CMMS, configure the next number to be 01225-01 (or 001 if you need more than 99 work orders) so the system will automatically generate subset numbers for the individual tasks to be accomplished under this main project work order.  For example, the task of removing way covers will be work order 01225-01, sending way covers for refurbishment work order 01225-02, remove ball screw work order 01225-03, and so on.  Create work orders following the project job sequence; don’t number tasks such as removals and re-installations together.  After all of the work orders have been generated reset the work order numbering and create a work order summary for this project.  As the work orders are completed, close them out and check them off of the project work order summary.  Ensure that the work orders are signed off and turned in as they are completed.  If a work order isn’t signed off in order that raises a flag and needs to be investigated.  Work orders that are placed in hold can be placed in the tickler file to coincide with the date that they have been scheduled for reissuing. When setting up the Preventive Maintenance program account for non calendar frequencies or situational requirements: Situational Requirement - When a specific incident occurs, differential pressure of 10 psi R1 Weekly or every 100 operating hours, whichever occurs first W1R Monthly or every 400 operating hours, whichever occurs first M1R Quarterly or every 3,000 miles, whichever occurs first Q1R Semiannually or during each overhaul, whichever occurs first S1R LU - Lay-up maintenance tasks prepare equipment for periods of prolonged idleness, and are performed at the beginning of the inactive period. SU - Start-up maintenance tasks ensure that equipment is in a condition suitable for operation or to reactivate an equipment or system that has been inactivated, in lay-up, for a prolonged period.  Start-up maintenance consists of performing turn-on procedures and restoring the equipment to operational status. Create the Lay-up (LU) and Start-up (SU) maintenance tasks the same as Preventive Maintenance (PM) tasks in your CMMS program.  Then schedule them when needed, generate a work order, and accomplish the task. If your CMMS program automatically schedules tasks after the work order is closed ensure you unschedule the task(s) until needed again.   Back For More Information info@maintsysdev.com 843-761-3521