Problem areas in the maintenance management system

• There is no standardized approach to prioritizing MRO on equipment.

Decisions to perform work on a specific equipment are made by specialists upon failure / failure detection at meetings with the participation of a large number of specialists. This process is informal and laborious, while there is no guarantee of the validity of the decisions made. Allocation of funds is based only on the “expert” opinion, which can differ dramatically depending on the specialty of the expert (mechanic, electrician, power engineer).

• Allocation of additional funds leads to an increase in spare parts and personnel costs without significant changes in equipment reliability.

The allocation of additional funds leads to the following effect: specialists in the field of maintenance and repair purchase spare parts, guided not by the requirements of the current situation, but by the desire to protect themselves in the event of a reduction in funding. The purchase of expensive spare parts is underway, which may be useful in the future. For the company as a whole, this leads to an increase in the remains of expensive spare parts with a ghostly chance of their use in the near future.

For similar reasons, the number of repair service employees is increasing: an increase in our own personnel reduces the risks of long-term equipment downtime due to the possibility of a significant concentration of labor resources to eliminate the causes of equipment failure. At the same time, the expediency of increasing personnel for daily work is not calculated or taken into account.

• Separating MRO costs into overhauls, routine repairs and maintenance often makes no practical sense, but allows you to hide costs.

Some enterprises have traditionally developed a division of costs for capital repairs, routine repairs and maintenance. The analysis revealed the absence of formal signs for the division of costs by the specified types. At the same time, maintenance, contrary to the opinion of financial services, is the most non-transparent cost item. Reallocation of actual costs between the specified cost elements allows you to manipulate the values ​​of actual costs for maintenance and repair. Moreover, this division allows the overall actual budget to be understated by eliminating maintenance from the repair budget.

• Comparative analysis of unit maintenance and repair costs per unit of production does not allow us to correctly assess the efficiency of the repair service.

The size of the share of maintenance and repair costs in the cost of a ton of products is influenced by the following indicators: the number of redistributions in production, accounting for the cost of internal personnel, accounting for maintenance costs. When additional redistributions are created, the share of MRO costs increases due to an increase in the number of equipment units with a constant volume of finished product output. Internal personnel are not always allocated in maintenance costs, which means that the overall budget can be significantly underestimated. Maintenance costs can be excluded from repair costs and charged to production costs. Despite the obvious purpose of this step, it allows you to hide up to 50% of the maintenance and repair costs. At Russian enterprises, the main differences are related to the last two factors. At the same time, Western enterprises most often have a smaller number of redistributions and, due to this, significantly reduce the share of maintenance and repair costs in the cost price.

• Estimated pricing is a source of opacity and results in accounting differences in relation to actual cost, scope of work and timing.

Estimates are the basis for pricing in most Russian enterprises. Despite the “obvious” transparency of such a system, there are a number of key problems: the discrepancy between the cost and the estimate of the real cost of work on the market, the possibility of supplying goods and materials within the framework of construction and installation work, the impossibility of planning real downtime, long terms for preparing estimates for non-standard, including emergency, work. The result is complete non-transparency of pricing: estimates lead to the formation of the value that reflects the market situation and the required time frame for the work. This is a consequence of the inflexibility of the estimated pricing model in a market economy.

• Detailed regulation of individual repairs does not increase overall efficiency.

A number of enterprises have followed the path of a detailed description of each operation in order to increase the efficiency of work execution and, in the future, reduce costs. This approach is driven by a simple transfer of the lean manufacturing model to the repair and maintenance area. At the same time, the key difference between maintenance and repair in relation to production is the absence of a standard set of works. The key optimization problem is the selection of the list of works required to fulfill the production program under budgetary and time constraints. Detailed regulation does not allow solving this problem. Detailed regulation is necessary when carrying out complex work on capital repairs, but it does not have significant value for a huge set of works of a current nature.

• Decisions are made centrally at the top levels of management with the involvement of a limited number of specialists who directly service the equipment.

Knowledge about the condition of the equipment and the need for its repair and maintenance is concentrated among employees at the level of foremen and section managers (line management), at the same time all decisions are made by the shop managers or their deputies. To make informed decisions, it is necessary to involve a significant number of employees, which is not always possible and reduces the efficiency and validity of decisions. Line management lacks the appropriate mandate to ensure that targets are met.

• Deficiencies in communication and collaborative planning between specialists in different disciplines (mechanics, electrical, energy, etc.) lead to increased equipment downtime.

The coordination of various types of work is carried out by the heads of the shops. This does not allow for efficiently and efficiently planning every equipment shutdown and conducting purposeful work to reduce downtime. The interaction of services is based on the personal relationships of managers, which does not allow for targeted work to increase the efficiency of maintenance and repair.

The problem areas listed above are common to many industrial enterprises. At the same time, their identification can be difficult for senior managers due to the fact that middle-level managers prefer to work in the existing conditions, but not to subject the system to changes.