The Super Planner
The super planner is fully integrated into the overall maintenance strategy and in fact is a key player in its development. Specifically his position is incorporated into a Maintenance Business Plan that defines how the facility economically coordinates Proactive and Reactive maintenance practices. The position is NOT intended as clerical or how quickly an individual can shuffle through a particular CMMS software but one that will facilitate ‘cradle to grave’ (request through closure) work documentation that includes entries to the CMMS that ensure appropriate metrics data and accurate equipment histories can be retrieved. Key Point; without appropriate metrics with clean data as a basis, you are dealing with assumptions and cannot reasonably define an improvement path nor gage any improvement. Also, without detailed history, chronic failure root cause discovery becomes elusive and time consuming.
The super planner will be responsible for developing planning department performance metrics. These will generally depict standing backlog, throughput and planning document compliance against a defined standard (meeting expectations).
Besides understanding the ‘business function’ of the maintenance process, the super planner must be knowledgeable of Safety, Industrial Hygiene, Engineering, Configuration Management, Procurement, Accounting, Crew Supervisory, Project Management and Quality Assurance (or Control) core responsibilities. This is required to ensure appropriate job constraints established by these groups are integrated into individual planned tasks. However, the super planner must not be called upon to provide these specific jobs; they distract him from his primary responsibility of organizing the work activity. He should act solely as their liaison.
The super planner must be cognizant of the skill level of the personnel he is providing support to. Specifically, he does not want to ‘over-plan’ the technical requirements of the job, e.g. the nuts and bolts of the task. Understanding the skill level allows the super planner to leverage existing skills into simplified work steps. This allows the super planner the time to put energy into incorporating Safety, Industrial Hygiene, Engineering, Configuration Management, Procurement, Accounting, Crew Supervisory, Project Management and Quality Assurance (or Control) into the job. Specifically, the planner should not inundate the craft with superficial or superfluous job details that are within the crafts control. The planner needs to concentrate his efforts on Scope definition, task Precautions and Limitations, Reference availability, Material requirements, Inspection and Testing criterion and Waste disposition.
The super planner will be relied upon to develop a priority matrix based on asset criticality ranking and asset condition/repair status. The super planner will be included in all priority determinations, including those deemed immediate need (generally classified as priority 1). High priority work will be initiated with a tracking number generated from the CMMS with no planning. Since high priority tasks by definition ‘break the schedule’, they will only be worked to the extent that the deficiency is abated. Any follow on corrective work will be planned and worked as a lower priority. Even though there may be no planning associated with high priority work, this does not exclude the team assigned to the abatement from documenting as found condition, all actions taken, all material used, resources (manpower) required and as left condition. The super planner is tasked with ensuring the job supervisor completes these entries prior to closing the work.
The super planner will manage the weekly and out-week schedule(s) and will be responsible for the enforcement of task priority on the schedule against the defined matrix. All proactive work, including classic time based, condition monitoring, inspection and troubleshooting activities, will make up the schedule bulk and will be considered at a higher priority. This includes corrective activities that clear up high priority abated deficiencies and corrective work resulting from proactive activities. General asset improvements and non-operational or non-production limiting work will be used to flesh out the weekly schedule. Major maintenance items, such as equipment overhaul and capital improvement should be differed to planned outage availability.
The super planner will maintain a work contingency list to support forced outage occurrences. Besides the high priority work that will be required to get the process, line or facility operational, the planner will maintain a list of planned ‘break in’ work that can be completed during an outage. These tasks will replace those items that were committed to the weekly schedule but due to the outage, can be deferred so that quick turn-around activities that require an outage can be completed.
The super planner will be well versed in Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA) and will be responsible for establishing a methodology of collecting and categorizing failure incidents and their dispositioned corrective actions. Data will be collected from sources such as operations logs, production reports, work order closure, safety/injury reports and inspection reports. Failure incidents by and large fall into two categories; 1) cause is obvious and corrective action can be determined by a competent person or 2) there is a substantial cost, a safety or other high importance issue associated that would require a formal RCFA to establish corrective actions. The super planner will be included in and in some instances may be called upon to facilitate formal RCFA’s. The process of collecting, categorizing and dispositioning failure incidents will be used as the basis for continuous improvement of all maintenance activities, e.g. skills development, task optimization, implementing procedures, design improvement, activity frequencies, material procurement/warehousing/staging and operational changes.
The super planner will require a basic understanding of Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) techniques and application and will be responsible for initiating their use. Specifically, this process will be used for determining initial Proactive Maintenance Actions on new equipment installations or existing installations where maintenance history is weak or unavailable. Because of the expense associated with formal FMEA’s, the super planner will use the same asset criticality ranking used in developing the priority matrix to establish a threshold as to when and to what extent a FMEA will be performed. Once a FMEA is completed the super planner will; 1) initiate the recommended proactive maintenance actions and ensure they are scheduled appropriately and 2) ensure FMEA documentation is achieved with equipment and system supporting references.
Based on FMEA’s, RCFA’s, maintenance priority matrixes and asset criticality ranking the super planner along with the materials and/or warehousing manager will be responsible for identifying, establishing and maintaining appropriate spare parts inventory for long lead and/or high cost ‘equipment specific’ material, e.g. not generic or consumable but Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) specific. The super planner and the materials and/or warehousing manager will also establish an initial minimum and work with local vendors in managing a continuing inventory of generic and/or consumable items. Generic and/or consumable items such as bearings, belts, shafting, small frame motors, small frame gearboxes, seals, flexes, fasteners, conveyor, fittings, filters, conduit, electrical fittings, fuses, etc…. that can readily be sourced from a local vendors, should be managed as a ‘point of sale’ from the individual vendors and based on the suppliers own usage algorithms, he would be responsible for adjusting minimum and maximum quantities.
Based on the developed Maintenance Business Plan and as supplemented through involvement with facility specific RCFA’s, FMEA’s plus an intimate association with the planning and scheduling of all upcoming non, partial and full outage work, the super planner will be instrumental in directing the pre-kitting and pre-staging of material for all planned tasks. This should include material, special tools, rigging and outside contractor/vendor support.
The super planner will be required to have a ‘hands on’ background with condition based (predictive) maintenance technologies. The super planner will be the sites condition based coordinator and will be instrumental in determining not only the technology but the level of application. Again this will be based on completed FMEA’s, RCFA’s, maintenance priority matrixes and asset criticality ranking.
