Management of a MRO: strategy of effective planning

In present global economy even the small companies work at the market with the high competition, using conventional processes and the equipment. Such internal resources of improving competitiveness as quality improvement of products and cheap labor power are spent in the majority of the industries now. The main hopes of owners of the companies are pinned on decrease in cost value. Since the wages share will not decrease, the list of opportunities is not really big:

• Cutting of costs for maintenance and repairs (MRO). It should lead to decrease in cost value, however should not be followed by deterioration in a condition of equipment.
• Improvement of processes of the companies. It should lead to more effective use of labor resources and the equipment.
• Decrease in energy costs, cheaper sources of raw materials, work with natural monopolies.
  

Expenses on different types of energy and raw materials make usually the most powerful part in product cost, however this big subject requires separate consideration. Besides all enterprises of one region and the industry are in similar conditions therefore obtaining here long-term advantages over competitors is improbable.

Housekeeping overheads of the equipment, equipment and infrastructure facilities can be also very considerable. And the most important is that opportunities for their optimization at the Russian enterprises are still big. We speak, certainly, not about "stupid" reduction of repair services and transition to work "will not collapse yet", namely about search optimal in terms of reliability and an economic benefit of a status of infrastructure and the cost level.

Whether so we lagged behind?

The first what the enterprises beginning difficult rise after recession of the beginning of the 1990th years aimed at is an updating of business assets. For the last 10 - 15 years huge work is performed, and it is possible to draw an unambiguous conclusion: business assets of Russia now not backward. Huge amounts of money are spent for modernization and maintenance of a production infrastructure. Those enterprises which could not make it already replaced owners.

What was shown by this work?

1. It became clear that maintenance and repairs for the industry is a black hole in which everything without effort disappears earned by back-breaking toil.

2. Supply of repairs – the sphere of activity which is extremely hard giving in to management, optimization and cost reduction.
To understand the problem size, it is enough to visit warehouses of the equipment of any large enterprise. Mountains of expensive rusty iron often under the open sky can be seen even at the most, apparently, advanced company.

In the world surrounding the enterprise there are both raw materials, and almost any materials and the equipment now. But there is no such technical director who would tell that maintenance and repairs are supplied well. Services of supply and technical directorate usually see the main problem in a lack of means and are engaged in knocking-out of money at the chief financial officer. To buy still spare parts which can quite settle on long term on an equipment warehouse.
Why does that happen? Each new owner, the director, the chief engineer try to bring order to this sphere. However without radical review of views of infrastructure management methods it is impossible to achieve serious results in this area.

First, it is necessary to review the developed representation of technical services that infrastructure management is a management of repairs. Management of repair work is, undoubtedly, the major control infrastructure. However this process in itself has insignificant resources on improvement for the purpose of cost reduction.

Charges of repair services and the program of repairs and upgrade – the first that gets laid off in case of any difficulties of production company or economic crises. For the last 10-15 their years there was much therefore at most the enterprises repair services are strongly reduced, and infrastructure risks grew above reasonable limits. If to consider that the lack of approach of the young personnel and leaving on age of qualified specialists is characteristic of the large cities, then there is a question: and where, actually, there were reserves?
In search of reserves we will begin from the very beginning.

Whether correctly we plan?

The most difficult in the MRO system is a justification of amounts of works and, respectively, expenses. This question is closely connected with the strategy of maintenance. In effect, it comes down to the fact that people do not understand why they repair. What do we want to reach as a result of this process?
Planning method of works of a MRO, typical for the Russian industry, – calendar or periodic. It is represented on the scheme:

Partly such practice is inherited from Soviet period. Partly it is caused by huge number of works of a MRO, for example, in production workshop of the metallurgical company (tens of thousands for a year). Manage such lot of works with forces of several responsible and schedulers really difficult. The advantage of a method of the periodic scheduled preventive maintenance (SPM) – ease of use and the regulatory and organizational base acquired in decades. Today's chief engineers imposed schedules of repairs still being university graduates.

In what problems of a technique of periodic scheduled preventive maintenance?

The first problem obvious to all who are familiar with a situation – lack of economically reasonable regulatory base. For example, at many metallurgical enterprises the main source of standards for formulas of repair cycles of the equipment, calculation of labor costs and frequency are "The provisional regulations for maintenance and repairs of a mechanical equipment of the enterprises of a system of Minchermet of the USSR" 1982, developed by All-Union scientific research institute of production organization and work of ferrous metallurgy. Perhaps, these standards are not so bad and are good as certain diagrams of the new or unknown equipment, reference for calculation, however in use there is an opportunity to specify reliability, a time between failures and problems of each object. However process of the analysis of communication of actions of a MRO and efficiency of the enterprise is absent at most the enterprises. Also there is no mechanism of refining of standards for statistical data about results of works on the park of the equipment.

Though usually the personnel of the enterprise conduct work on magazines of defects, periodic assessment of a vibration condition of equipment is made, this valuable information is almost not used. Within the existing control circuit there are practically no mechanisms of refining of standards, changes of repair cycles on the basis of these data.
The most important lack of tough periodic planning is a high level of costs for achievement of acceptable level of reliability of the equipment.

What to do?

For the solution of these problems it is necessary to perform transition the cycle of management assuming permanent assessment of effectiveness of process.

Such cycle of management has the feedbacks allowing to estimate efficiency of management decisions and costs for a MRO.

As input data for creation of a cost-efficient and safe infrastructure management system (and in general managements of any processes) will serve indicators of risks (value of possible losses and probability of their manifestation), inherent to objects and processes of the enterprise.

The subsystem risk management plays, thus, a feedback role in an infrastructure management system.
The main purpose of a subsystem risk management – to organize and automate process of collecting and data analysis about risks of the enterprise for use in acceptance of a wide range of management decisions.

Specifically in a management system for an infrastructure status for such main questions are:

• What maintenance strategy (the Party of Pensioners of Russia, on a status, on failure) to apply to specific technical places and types of the equipment.
• Determination of structure of repair cycles on types of repairs and frequency.
  • Refining of standards.
• Determination of the necessary not reduced and abnormal reserves of materials and spare parts on unscheduled repairs.

The main problem of this method – need to operate with large volumes of information that it is impossible without creation of the automated system storing the history of repairs and data on objects, or Enterprise Assets Management (EAM). EAM systems allow to manage effectively fixed assets, providing the cost accounting on an asset, calculation of the budget, integration with a personnel system, MTS and accounting. Against the background of economy and increase in reliability of infrastructure which the company can receive costs for creation of such systems are incomparably small.

Implementation of a technique

The "1C: TMAR Technology maintenance and repairs of equipment" software product developed on the 1C:Enterprise 8 platform, most popular in Russia, belongs to EAM systems. The configuration is integrated solution with the product "1C: Manufacturing Enterprise Management 8", so can be used as an end-to-end system of resource management in many divisions of the enterprise – production, financial departments, in sales departments and purchases, in a warehouse, in accounting and personnel department.

Due to implementation "1C: TMAR Technology maintenance and repairs of equipment" increases the accuracy of planning and accounting, logistics process is optimized, the equipment is transferred to repair and service on a status, calculation of costs happens on regulations.

Thus, due to planning on the basis of objective data on reliability of the equipment it is possible to pick up an optimal interrepair time and at the expense of it to reduce the production losses connected with idle times and also to reduce costs on abnormal and unplanned works. Moreover, it becomes frequent obvious a possibility of transition to less expensive structures of repair cycles. It is possible to support the necessary level of reliability, is much more rare making major repairs due to increase in volumes of running repairs and maintenance.

Implementation projects of the MRO automated control system and transition to the most advanced techniques of planning and service should be considered as the beginning of process of continual improvement of activity of the enterprise in the field of infrastructure management.

We do not claim that it is simple projects, however remember that the only thing that your competitors in our century of globalization and standard technologies cannot purchase is processes of your company. Exactly improving processes it is possible to become one step higher than competitors in the long term.

Outputs:

1. In a cost structure of production companies expenses on repairs and support of infrastructure make a considerable share.

2. Expenses on infrastructure give in to optimization of rather more simply other cost items.

3. The reason of a non-optimal status of infrastructure and expenses in outdated "socialist" techniques of work planning.

4. Transition to economically justified strategy of maintenance is connected with processing of considerable amounts of data therefore their use is impossible without use of automated systems.

5. The project on transition to advanced control techniques is put by infrastructure and actually consists of the project of automation and the project of upgrade of a business infrastructure management process.

6. Costs of the similar project pay off usually already in the course of end of separate stages of works.