Richard Palmer and Associates

Let us presume you have superb communication and teamwork.  You have good storerooms and ready spares.  Technicians have first class hand tools and a tool room plus equipped shops in which to work.  Training is conducted at all levels and many improvements are made to work processes.  There is also a CMMS with an equipment database.  Management is supporting PM, PdM, and project work.  Work order planning (including scheduling) is supposed to bring it all together.  But how do you measure the leverage of work order planning?  How much does it help? continue reading…

WIIFM means “What’s in it for me?”

We must know why a craftsperson, a supervisor, a manager, and a company would want maintenance planning if we are to successfully implement a planning program. What is in it for each of these persons or levels in the organization? continue reading…

We have heard a lot about “wrench time” in the last few years.  Increasing productive work is the objective of planning and scheduling and is best measured by so-called wrench time.  You do not necessarily have to measure wrench time to obtain the benefit of planning and scheduling, but you could if you wanted to fairly easily in-house.  This presentation discusses the concept of wrench time and how you could go about running a quick in-house study. continue reading…

Below are 23 categories intended to capture all observed maintenance activities.  Occasionally, activities are observed which do not fall neatly into one of the pre-defined categories.  When necessary, after consulting with either the maintenance supervisor or maintenance manager, a category is selected and an appropriate category clarification is made in these instances. continue reading…