The topic of conversation around the lunch table at a recent conference for maintenance professionals was not surprising. They spoke of the difficulty they often have in getting sufficient time to perform necessary maintenance on the production equipment in the factories and plants in which they work. The conversation wasn’t surprising because this is an issue that both maintenance and production people grapple with on an ongoing basis.

The conflict arises because the two groups sometimes appear to have opposing tasks:

• Production must keep the equipment running as much as possible to maximize output, but
• Maintenance needs to take the equipment down to perform maintenance so the machines can run at peak performance.

It’s an odd argument, because both production and maintenance people really do have the same end goal in mind. Production wants to run the equipment at maximum efficiency so the organization’s production goals will be met. Maintenance wants to keep the equipment in good working order so the organization’s production goals will be met.

Maintenance and production managers in most organizations understand they share that common goal. The majority are responsible and make at least some effort to work together to accommodate each other’s individual objectives while still achieving the overall goal. The process generally starts with a planning session to cover a long-term period, often a period of one year, sometimes up to five years, occasionally even longer. We refer to these long term planning sessions as “slow loop” planning sessions.

Building plans in the slow loop phase

During the slow loop planning phase the production targets are set for the overall time period; individual targets may also be set for sub-sets of that overall time period. For example, if the planning period is one fiscal year, there may be a single target for the year itself as well as individual production targets for each quarter within that year. Management must establish the equipment production schedules to generate the output required to meet the production targets for each individual time period, as well as the overall goal. Maintenance, in turn, must ensure that scheduled maintenance activities are performed when needed to be sure that the equipment operates at peak performance, while also making certain that maintenance procedures don’t interfere with the required production runs. This slow loop phase establishes the maintenance and production plan for a pre-defined future period of time.

There's no crystal ball

However, neither maintenance nor production management can see into the future, so this planning process has been a rather daunting task. Part of the reason it’s been difficult is because there have traditionally been few, if any, tools to help the managers with this planning process. It has, at best, been a “hit and miss” process, with the best available tools being spreadsheets or project planning solutions, which are designed for less volatile environments. And it’s volatility that significantly complicates the planning process.

Running operations in the fast loop phase

The volatility arises when the long-term plan actually begins to be executed. We refer to this execution phase of the plan as the "fast loop" phase. It’s during this fast loop execution phase that unanticipated events will occur. Some examples include:

• A surge in demand requires equipment to operate for longer hours than planned.
• A scheduled preventive maintenance is cancelled to allow equipment to continue operating to meet that increased production demand.
• An unexpected equipment failure results due to the missed preventive maintenance.
• An additional unexpected failure on another machine causes excessive delays because the spare part needed to repair the machine is not available for three days.

These events could not have been anticipated during the slow loop planning phase, and they occur erratically and without warning.

Nearly everyone in both maintenance and production in almost every asset intensive industry can site numerous other examples from their real life experience. Suffice it to say that the fast loop is always full of surprises, and the slow loop can’t anticipate them all.

The impact these unexpected incidents have on both near term operations and the long-term plan can be enormous. Recovering from such disruptions requires getting the day-to-day fast loop operations back on track as quickly as possible so the goals as set for in the original plan can be realized. And sometimes these disruptions or alternations to the original schedule are so significant that the original plan itself may have to be revisited and revised. These recovery activities and evaluations usually involve considerable effort and consume a significant amount of management time--time that could be better spent on other matters.

Learn how Actenum MPS addresses slow loop/fast loop challenges