Section 1--Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Maintenance

As with any discipline built upon the foundations of science and technology, the study of maintenance begins with a definition of maintenance. Because so many misconceptions about this definition exist, a portion of it must be presented in negative terms. So deeply, in fact, are many of these misconceptions rooted in the minds of management and many maintenance practitioners that perhaps the negatives should be given first attention.

Maintenance is not merely preventive maintenance, although this aspect is an important ingredient. Maintenance is not lubrication, although lubrication is one of its primary functions. Nor is maintenance simply a frenetic rush to repair a broken machine part or building segment, although this is more often than not the dominant maintenance activity.

In a more positive vein, maintenance is a science since its execution relies, sooner or later, on most or all of the sciences. It is an art because seemingly identical problems regularly demand and receive varying approaches and actions and because some managers, foremen, and mechanics display greater aptitude for it than others show or even attain. It is above all a philosophy because it is a discipline that can be applied intensively, modestly, or not at all, depending upon a wide range of variables that frequently transcend more immediate and obvious solutions. Moreover, maintenance is a philosophy because it must be as carefully fitted to the operation or organization it serves as a fine suit of clothes is fitted to its wearer and because the way it is viewed by its executors will shape its effectiveness.

Admitting this to be true, why must this science-art-philosophy be assigned-in manufacturing, power production, or service facilities-to one specific, all-encompassing maintenance department? Why is it essential to organize and administer the maintenance function in the same manner that other areas are so handled? This chapter will endeavor to answer these questions. This handbook will develop the general rules and basic philosophies required to establish a sound maintenance engineering organization. And, it will also supply background on the key sciences and technologies that underlie the practice of maintenance.

Let us, however, begin by looking at how the maintenance function is to be transformed into an operation in terms of its scope and organization, bearing in mind its reason for being-solving the day-to-day problems inherent in keeping the physical facility (plant, machinery, buildings, ser vices)-in good operating order. In effect, what must the maintenance function do?

SCOPE OF RESPONSIBILITIES

Unique though actual maintenance practice may be to a specific facility, a specific industry, and a specific set of problems and traditions, it is still possible to group activities and responsibilities into two general classifications: primary functions that demand daily work by the department; secondary ones assigned to the maintenance department for reasons of expediency, know-how, or precedent.

Primary Functions Maintenance of Existing Plant Equipment. This activity represents the physical reason for the existence of the maintenance group. Responsibility here is simply to make necessary repairs to production machinery quickly and economically and to anticipate these repairs and employ preventive maintenance where possible to prevent them. For this, a staff of skilled craftsmen capable of per forming the work must be trained, motivated, and constantly retained to assure that adequate maintenance skills are available to perform effective maintenance. In addition, adequate records for proper distribution of expense must be kept.

Maintenance of Existing Plant Buildings and Grounds. The repairs to buildings and to the external property of any plant-roads, railroad tracks, in-plant sewer systems, and water supply facilities- are among the duties generally assigned to the maintenance engineering group. Additional aspects of buildings and grounds maintenance may be included in this area of responsibility. Janitorial services may be separated and handled by another section. A plant with an extensive office facility and a major building-maintenance program may assign this coverage to a special team. In plants where many of the buildings are dispersed, the care and maintenance of this large amount of land may warrant a special organization.

Repairs and minor alterations to buildings-roofing, painting, glass replacement-or the unique craft skills required to service electrical or plumbing systems or the like are most logically the purview of maintenance engineering personnel. Road repairs and the maintenance of tracks and switches, fences, or outlying structures may also be so assigned.

It is important to isolate cost records for general cleanup from routine maintenance and repair so that management will have a true picture of the true expense required to maintain the plant and its equipment.

Equipment Inspection and Lubrication. Traditionally, all equipment inspections and lubrication have been assigned to the maintenance organization. While inspections that require special tools or partial disassembly of equipment must be retained within the maintenance organization, the use of trained operators or production personnel in this critical task will provide more effective use of plant personnel. The same is true of lubrication. Because of their proximity to the production systems, operators are ideally suited for routine lubrication tasks.

Utilities Generation and Distribution. In any plant generating its own electricity and providing its own process steam, the powerhouse assumes the functions of a small public utilities company and may justify an operating department of its own. However, this activity logically falls within the realm of maintenance engineering. It can be administered either as a separate function or as part of some other function, depending on management's requirements.

Alterations and New Installations. Three factors generally determine to what extent this area involves the maintenance department: plant size, multiplant company size, company policy.

In a small plant of a one-plant company, this type of work may be handled by outside contractors. But its administration and that of the maintenance force should be under the same management.

In a small plant within a multiplant company, the majority of new installations and major alterations may be performed by a companywide central engineering department. In a large plant a separate organization should handle the major portion of this work.

Where installations and alterations are handled outside the maintenance engineering department, the company must allow flexibility between corporate and plant engineering groups. It would be self-defeating for all new work to be handled by an agency separated from maintenance policies and management.

Secondary Functions

Stores-keeping. In most plants it is essential to differentiate between mechanical stores and general stores. The administration of mechanical stores normally falls within the maintenance engineering group's area because of the close relationship of this activity with other maintenance operations.

Plant Protection. This category usually includes two distinct subgroups: guards or watchmen; fire control squads. Incorporation of these functions with maintenance engineering is generally common practice. The inclusion of the fire-control group is important since its members are almost always drawn from the craft elements.

Waste Disposal. This function and that of yard maintenance are usually combined as specific assignments of the maintenance department.

Salvage. If a large part of plant activity concerns off-grade products, a special salvage unit should be set up. But if salvage involves mechanical equipment, scrap lumber, paper, containers, etc., it should be assigned to maintenance.

Insurance Administration. This category includes claims, process equipment and pressure-vessel inspection, liaison with underwriters' representatives, and the handling of insurance recommendations. These functions are normally included with maintenance since it is here that most of the information will originate.

Other Services. The maintenance engineering department often seems to be a catchall for many other odd activities that no other single department can or wants to handle. But care must be taken not to dilute the primary responsibilities of maintenance with these secondary services.

Whatever responsibilities are assigned to the maintenance engineering department, it is important that they be clearly defined and that the limits of authority and responsibility be established and agreed upon by all concerned.

ORGANIZATION

Maintenance, as noted, must be carefully tailored to suit existing technical, geographical, and personnel situations. Basic organizational rules do exist, however. Moreover, there are some general rules covering specific conditions that govern how the maintenance engineering department is to be structured. It is essential that this structure does not contain within itself the seeds of bureaucratic restriction nor permit empire building within the plant organization.

It is equally essential that some recognized, formally established relationship exists to lay out firm lines of authority, responsibility, and accountability. Such an organization, laced with universal truths, trimmed to fit local situations, and staffed with people who interact positively and with a strong spirit of cooperation, is the one which is most likely to succeed.

Begin the organizational review by making certain that the following basic concepts of management theory already exist or are implemented at the outset.

1. Establish reasonably clear division of authority with minimal overlap. Authority can be divided functionally, geographically, or on the basis of expediency; or it can rest on some combination of all three. But there must always be a clear definition of the line of demarcation to avoid the confusion and conflict that can result from overlapping authority, especially in the case of staff assistants.

2. Keep vertical lines of authority and responsibility as short as possible. Stacking layers of inter mediate supervision, or the over application of specialized functional staff aides, must be minimized. When such practices are felt to be essential, it is imperative that especially clear divisions of duties are established.

3. Maintain an optimum number of people reporting to one individual. Good organizations limit the number of people reporting to a single supervisor to between three and six. There are, of course, many factors which can affect this limitation and which depend upon how much actual supervision is required. When a fairly small amount is required, one man can direct the activities of twelve or more individuals.

The foregoing basic concepts apply across the board in any type of organization. Especially in maintenance, local factors can play an important role in the organization and in how it can be expected to function.

1. Type of operation. Maintenance may be predominant in a single area-buildings, machine tools, process equipment, piping, or electrical elements-and this will affect the character of the organization and the supervision required.

2. Continuity of operations. Whether an operation is a 5-day, single-shift one or, say, a 7-day, three shift one makes a considerable difference in how the maintenance engineering department is to be structured and in the number of personnel to be included.

3. Geographical situation. The maintenance that works in a compact plant will vary from that in one that is dispersed through several buildings and over a large area. The latter often leads to area shops and additional layers of intermediate supervision at local centers.

4. Size of plant. As with the geographical considerations above, the actual plant size will dictate the number of maintenance employees needed and the amount of supervision for this number. Many more subdivisions in both line and staff can be justified, since this overhead can be distributed over more departments.

5. Scope of the plant maintenance department. This scope is a direct function of management policy. Inclusion of responsibility for a number of secondary functions means additional manpower and supervision.

6. Work-force level of training and reliability. This highly variable characteristic has a strong impact on maintenance organization because it dictates how much work can be done and how well it can be performed. In industries where sophisticated equipment predominates, with high wear or failure incidence, more mechanics and more supervisors are going to be required.

These factors are essential in developing a sound maintenance department organization. It is often necessary to compromise in some areas so that the results will yield an orderly operation at the beginning yet retain sufficient flexibility for future modification as need indicates.

Lines of Reporting for Maintenance

Many feel that a maintenance department functions best when it reports directly to top management.

This is similar in concept to the philosophy of having departments with umpire-like functions reporting impartially to overall management rather than to the departments being serviced. This independence proves necessary to achieve objectivity in the performance of the maintenance engineering function. However, in many plants the level of reporting for the individual in charge of the maintenance engineering group has little or no bearing on effectiveness.

If maintenance supervision considers itself part of production and its performance is evaluated in this light, it should report to the authority responsible for plant operations. The need for sharply defined authority is often overemphasized for service or staff groups. Performance based on the use of authority alone is not and cannot be as effective as that based on cooperative efforts.

Certainly it is not practical to permit maintenance engineering to report to someone without full authority over most of the operations that must be served by it. The lack of such authority is most troublesome in assigning priorities for work performance.

Maintenance engineering should report to a level that is responsible for the plant groups which it serves-plant manager, production superintendent, or manager of manufacturing-depending on the organization. The need to report to higher management or through a central engineering department should not exist so long as proper intraplant relationships have been established.

Specialized Personnel in the Maintenance Organization Technically Trained Engineers. Some believe that engineers should be utilized only where the maximum advantage is taken of professional training and experience and that these individuals should not be asked to handle supervisory duties. Others feel that technical personnel must be developed from the line in order to be effective and that the functions of professional engineering and craft supervision must somehow be combined. Both views are valid. The former arrangement favors:

1. Maximum utilization of the engineer's technical background.

2. Maintaining a professional approach to maintenance problems.

3. Greater probability that long-range thinking will be applied, i.e., less concern with breakdowns and more with how they can be prevented in the future.

4. Better means of dealing with craftpersons' problems by interposing a level of up-from-the ranks supervision between them and the engineer.

5. The development of nontechnical individuals for positions of higher responsibility.

Combining engineering and supervisory skills assures:

1. Rapid maturing of newly graduated personnel through close association with craftpersons' problems.

2. Increasingly expeditious work performance through shorter lines of communication.

3. Possible reduction in the supervisory organization or an increase in supervision density.

4. An early introduction into the art of handling personnel, making them more adaptable to all levels of plant supervision.

5. Less resistance to new ideas.

Staff Specialists. The use and number of staff specialists-electrical engineers, instrument engineers, metallurgists-depends on availability, required need for specialization, and the economics of a consulting service's cost compared to that of employing staff experts.

Clerical Personnel. Here there are the two primary considerations. Paperwork should be minimized consistent with good operations and adequate control; the clerical staff should be designed to relieve supervision of routine paperwork that it can handle.

The number of clerks used varies from 1 per 100 employees to 1 per 20 to 25 employees. These clerks can report at any level of the organization or can be centralized as proves expedient.

MANPOWER REQUIREMENTS

The number of employees-labor and supervision-to assure adequate plant maintenance coverage depends upon many factors. Each plant must be treated as a separate problem with a consideration of all its unique aspects.

Hourly Personnel Ratio of Maintenance Manpower to Total Operation Personnel. This ratio is too often considered the measure of adequacy and relative efficiency of the department. In practice it will vary with the type of machinery and equipment expressed in terms of an investment figure per operating employee.

To estimate the number of maintenance employees necessary to maintain a plant properly, an approach based on the estimated size of the maintenance bill and the percentage of this bill that will cover labor has proved more realistic. Experience factors, however, can be used in many industries to estimate maintenance cost as a percentage of investment in machinery and equipment. Before building a plant, many companies determine the approximate rate of return on investment that can be expected. One factor to be considered here is maintenance cost. Generally, the annual cost of maintenance should run between 7 and 15 percent of the investment. Building maintenance should run between 1 1/2 and 3 percent, per year. The cost of labor alone, exclusive of overhead, will run between 30 and 50 percent of the total maintenance bill.

In addition, other duties of the maintenance department must be considered and extra manpower allowances made. This supplementary personnel can serve as a cushion for fluctuations in strictly maintenance work loads by adding 10 to 20 percent of the maintenance force estimated to be necessary under normal conditions.

These criteria are only suited to a preliminary study. Actual manpower requirements must be controlled by a continuous review of work to be performed. Backlog-of-work records are a help here; and the trends of the backlog of each craft enable maintenance supervision to increase or reduce the number of employees to maintain the proper individual craft strength and total work force.

Crafts That Should Be Included. The crafts and shops that should exist in any good maintenance operation are set by the nature of the activity and the amount of work involved. This means existence of a close relationship between plant size and the number of separate shops that can be justified.

Another actor is the availability of adequately skilled contractors to perform various types of work. In some plants jacks-of-all-trades can be used with no special problem. Yet, in spite of the difficulties inherent in recognizing craft lines in scheduling, there is a real advantage in larger plants to segregating skills and related equipment into shops. In general, however, it is difficult to justify a separate craft group with its own shop and supervision for less than 10 men.

Supervision

Supervision Density. The number of individuals per supervisor (supervision density) is an accepted measure for determining the number of first-line supervisors needed to handle a maintenance force adequately. Though densities as low as 8 and as high as 25 are sometimes encountered, 12 to 14 seems to be the average. Where a large group of highly skilled men in one craft perform routine work, the ratio will be higher. If the work requires close supervision or is dispersed, a lower ratio becomes necessary. For shops with conventional crafts-millwrights, pipe-fitters, sheet-metal workers, carpenters-one foreman accompanied by some degree of centralized planning can direct the activities of 12 to 15 individuals of average skill. Supervision density should be such that the fore man is not burdened with on-the-job overseeing at the expense of planning, training workers, or maintaining the personal contacts that generate good morale.

Cross-Craft Supervision. The use of first-line supervision to direct more than one craft should be considered carefully. If a small number of people are involved, this arrangement can be economically preferable. But, for the most effective use of specific craft skills, experience indicates that each should have its own supervision.

SELECTION AND TRAINING

Selection-Craft Personnel

Normally, the union contract places sharp restrictions on the means by which applicants for maintenance craft training are selected. If there are no such restrictions, more definitive selection methods can be employed. When this is the case, bases for selection should be education, general intelligence, mechanical aptitude, and past experience. When it is possible, personnel with previous craft experience offer the easiest and most satisfactory method of staffing the maintenance engineering department, particularly when the cost of a formal training program cannot be economically justified.

When, however, you must draw on plant personnel, the factors cited above, plus the candidate's age, should be considered. It is an unfortunate fact of life that it is easier to develop a craftsman from someone in the early twenties than someone who is over forty.

Training-Craft Personnel

This activity can be performed in two ways-formal instruction or informal on-the-job instruction.

Formal Instruction. While this subject is covered in some depth later in this handbook, it has a place in this earlier area. Many formalized maintenance training programs are currently available, usually in packaged form. The most common is an apprentice training program that conforms to the National Apprenticeship System of the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Apprenticeships.

Moreover it has the added advantage of acceptance by most unions. Graduates are presented with certificates and are considered to be fairly well equipped on a nationwide basis. But the administration of such a system constitutes an expense which must be taken into consideration.

Most other formalized training plans are those developed by major firms for their own use and then made available, at a fee, to others. Often these have an advantage over the federal plan since they can conform to peculiar plant needs. But they are usually even more expensive and lack the universal recognition of the former.

Informal Instruction. This consists primarily of spot exposure of personnel to intensive instruction in some phase of plant activities. It takes the form of lectures, sound slide films, movies, or trips to suppliers who may, with or without charge, provide instruction on their particular equipment.

Usually these are directed more at developing advanced mechanical skills, however.

On-the-Job Training. This is the most prevalent method for training maintenance personnel.

Although its short-range effectiveness is difficult to measure, many excellent craftsmen have acquired their skills in this way. Usually a new man is assigned to an experienced craftsman as a helper and learns by exposure to the job and from the instruction he receives from his appointed men tor. The effectiveness is improved if the training is supplemented by routine rotation of the trainee among several knowledgeable craftsmen and is accompanied by personal interviews by the foreman to determine the degree of progress.

Selection-Supervisory Personnel

Only very general rules can be set out for selecting supervisory people for maintenance. For the first and second levels-that is, those directly in charge of craft personnel-prospective candidates should possess better than average mechanical comprehension and be capable of handling a number of diverse problems at one time. And while high craft skill is desirable, it should not be the sole basis of selection. In fact, there is more chance of developing a satisfactory foreman from an individual having all the traits except craft skill than of trying to develop these important abilities in a man with only craft training.

Although there are advantages in selecting people entirely from among maintenance employees, others who display leadership potential should be considered. But too much importance attached to long years of experience and technical skill can result in poor selection of personnel.

Serious consideration should be given to the temperament of technically trained individuals when choosing them for maintenance. For the best results, candidates should be slightly extroverted and prone to take the broader view of their own professional utilization. They should be able to temper professional perfectionism with expediency. Since effectiveness in maintenance depends greatly on the relationships that exist with other plant units, the technical man in this field must have some of the attributes of a salesman.

If possible, aptitude testing and comprehensive interviews should be part of the selection process.

The use of comprehensive interviews in the selection of all supervisory employees is of great value.

This service can be obtained from professional sources or developed within an organization by training key individuals. These interviews afford good basic information on the inherent personal characteristics of the candidate.

Training-Supervisory Personnel

This training consists of initial orientation; a formalized, sustained program of leadership training; and on-the-job coaching and consultation.

Orientation gives the candidate basic data about the management team he is joining and about company and department policy. Included also are facts about the scope of his personal responsibilities and the limits of the authority delegated to him.

Training ensuring continued effectiveness and improved performance should include such subjects as human relations, conducting of interviews, teaching methods, safety, and many more. Goals of this part of the program should head toward increasing the candidate's effectiveness as supervisor, instilling a feeling of unity with fellow managers, and enhancing personal development.

On-the-job coaching is especially important for the embryo supervisor. There is no substitute for frequent, informal, personal contact with a superior concerning current technical, personnel, or personal problems. This type of development is a force for high morale and job satisfaction. It should include both praise and criticism, the former sincere, the latter constructive. Bear in mind that a cadre of highly capable and motivated supervisors will make overall maintenance management simpler, easier, and, in the long run, far more economical.

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