Maintenance departments are struggling to maintain budgeted headcounts, putting performance and even regulatory compliance at risk. At the same time, technician tool time is chronically low, which is an opportunity to increase effective headcount without hiring.<\/p>\n
Outliers\u2019 Tool Time<\/strong> program gathers raw data through specific tools to measure your tool time. Root causes of lost time are investigated in any or all of the following:<\/p>\n A time-on-tools study gained its roots in around 1910 when a concept called time-and-motion was designed for production assembly workers. <\/span>The idea of tool time studies when applied to hourly maintenance workers is to measure what percent of that worker\u2019s time is spent on actual work.\u00a0 Travel time, job planning, getting parts, thinking time, and other non-wrench time activities do not count as working time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A methodical statistical approach ensures that every craftsperson has an equal chance of being observed and that the observation sample is big enough to represent the actual work being performed. Identification of what barriers exist for those who are delayed from executing work might be the most significant part of the study.<\/span><\/p>\n Teams anecdotally know that organizing work can improve. However, quantitative results from the application of management tools and processes need to demonstrate value lost or gained. It is easier to prioritize areas of improvement when they are quantified.<\/span><\/p>\n Capturing averages is valuable.\u00a0 However, grouping high performers can be facilitated by a well-structured time-on-tools study.\u00a0 A leader needs to encourage good performers. Celebrating successes and rewarding behaviours can lead to success which provides an organization with much needed moral.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The use of hourly maintainers is typical in large maintenance organizations. They will spend time doing partial planning when they find a problem in the field. They will also spend time in the CMMS system to input correct work requests with partial planning, materials, specialty items, and other suggestions.<\/span><\/p>\n Craftspeople typically utilize 20-30 percent of the time for pure thinking, often in root cause problem elimination and redesign of equipment. They are also used to assess maintainability issues when purchasing new equipment.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n What does a maintenance department deliver?\u00a0 What is its product?<\/span><\/p>\n The product of a maintenance department is equipment reliability.\u00a0 If that is true, is it necessarily good to have a lot of wrench time? Yes, in some cases, but not always. Make sure you encourage creativity, thinking time, planning time, and problem-solving skills. High wrench time is good for a shutdown. However, not when preparing for a quick intervention on a critical piece of equipment. In such a case, success of the task will depend on time-consuming preparatory work.<\/span><\/p>\n If hourly craftspeople work slowly and a job takes longer than needed, the wrench time number goes up.\u00a0 It is key to design the study to assess worker efficiencies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Optimize your maintenance performance with Outliers\u2019 Time-on-Tools program. Our reports and expert evaluations provide the data-driven insights you need to drive efficiency and maximize productivity. Get started today!<\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Maintenance departments are struggling to maintain budgeted headcounts, putting performance and even regulatory compliance at risk. At the same time, technician tool time is chronically low, which is an opportunity to increase effective headcount without hiring. Outliers\u2019 Tool Time program gathers raw data through specific tools to measure your tool time. Root causes of lost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":366,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[11],"class_list":["post-352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-articles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
Why are time-on-tool studies a good business practice?\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n
Demonstrate performance<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n
Highlight deficiencies in management systems<\/strong> <\/span><\/h4>\n
Such as planning, scheduling and materials management.<\/span><\/h5>\n
Ability to highlight good performance.<\/span><\/h4>\n
Time-on-tools studies are designed for conventional organizational structures<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n
It is necessary for a time-on-tools study to identify such activities.<\/span><\/h3>\n
Measure the ‘right’ thing<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n
Consider how long a job typically takes<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n
\u201cBusy\u201d does not always mean \u201cProductive”<\/span><\/h5>\n