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Get the most out of a plant shutdown |
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Written by Terry Wireman
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Page 2 of 2
Good communication skills also are required, since the STO planner will be involved in many meetings. For example, there should be a pre-STO briefing, daily updates and regular talks during the STO to deal with exceptions.
As a result, the planner's communication skills will be essential to keeping everyone focused on accomplishing STO goals. At the conclusion of the STO, the planner will need to prepare a detailed analysis of the entire event. The report will include sections focusing on:
• Lessons learned during the STO that can be applied in the future. This involves mistakes to avoid with the next STO.
• Comparing planned cost versus actual costs. This report may be task by task or by a cost centre or an accounting code.
• Reviewing the planned versus actual in days and hours.
• Detailing whether the STO was finished early or late, which means there was extra or lost capacity.
• Providing an analysis of the jobs that were scheduled versus jobs completed. This section may also be broken down into hours and cost.
• Any safety and environmental issues that occurred during the STO itself.
• Any exceptions to the STO master plan. These exceptions can be safety, environmental, work schedule related, scope-creep and cost overruns.
This report then should be distributed to the stakeholders who were involved in the STO and all involved management personnel. Everyone must review this report before the next STO, which will help improve the quality of STOs in the future.
STO process flow
The overall STO process flow begins by identifying the STO work that will be performed during the event. You need to ask if the work is coming in after the close date. The close date is the cut-off date for work to be received and still be planned and scheduled for the STO.
If the work has been requested after the close date, then it must receive additional approval. If the work is approved, it's given to the STO planner for planning.
If the work isn't approved - it's given back to the originator who may choose to re-submit the work for the next STO project. If the request for work comes in prior to the close date - it's automatically given to the STO planner.
The STO planner will check the work request to ensure that it has all of the appropriate information. The work request should include information, such as who originated the work, what's needed to approve the work and a good description of the work being requested.
The STO planner will then visit the work site and inspect the request: to ensure that the job scope is clearly understood. Once all the information is collected, the work should be examined to see if engineering is required. For all approved work, the next step in planning is to check parts availability.
If the parts aren't available - then the MRO purchasing department needs to be contacted and a purchase request placed, which will be converted to a purchase order.
The purchasing department will track the purchase order, until it's received, and it will notify the STO planner that the parts have been received and are available. If the parts were in stock - then the STO planner requests and reserves needed spare parts. The MRO storeroom personnel will then build the spare parts kits by work order and stage the spare parts in the STO storage area.
It should be noted that in some organizations, all STO-related spare parts must be direct order. This situation develops, because MRO inventory personnel want to keep the maintenance inventory as low as possible. As a result, they don't stock spare parts that will be required for an STO.
Even if some of the spare parts for the STO are routine spare parts - they're not allowed to be withdrawn from the storeroom since this would drive a re-order. It may also produce a stock out, which could lead to a production disruption.
While I don't condemn or condone this practice - it clearly highlights the need for good communication. I'm referring to all groups that are involved in routine maintenance, STO's and MRO inventory and purchasing.
In addition to spare parts, all special tools and rental equipment must also be reserved for the STO. This ensures that there will be no work delays with crews waiting on tools or equipment.
When all of the approved jobs are in the ready-to-schedule STO backlog, the STO planner develops a critical path chart and overall major STO schedule. This will be the main communication vehicle for the entire STO.
The material in this edited article is derived from the new textbook "Work Management Processes" available from Industrial Press. Terry Wireman is vice-president with Stamford, CT-based Vesta Partners LLC.
First published in Plant Engineering and Maintenance magazine.
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