CS-138

The Situation:

A leading Canadian crude oil producer saw an opportunity for improving the standard integrated reporting process or system for their maintenance organization. The various departments were not consistently measuring, tracking or trending the same performance indicators, and there was not a common methodology to assess the productivity of the departments or the entire organization. Additionally there was a need for more integrated tools in place to provide information to support the planning and use of maintenance resources.

The Driver Goal:

To provide the routine maintenance management organization with the ability to evaluate, measure and trend departmental performance against agreed upon goals and targets

Actions Taken:

The Highland Group was brought in to develop a process to gather and analyze performance and to create baseline key performance indicators (KPIs) for the maintenance organization. Understanding maintenance processes and developing key performance indicators was only step one. In order for the new processes to be sustainable, the managers in the field also need to be trained on how to develop, report, and react to maintenance KPIs.

During implementation, barriers to success were uncovered and addressed. The lack of reliable data and standardized data capture required Highland to create the basic input processes and structure. Poor communication channels between maintenance planning and maintenance execution also needed to be overcome through weekly meetings and training on new processes. The major barrier was the company culture; specifically that management was not accustomed to reporting or analyzing departmental performance. Significant training on how the new tools could lead to better management of day-to-day operations led to greater understanding in this area.

Highland team members worked closely with maintenance teams to develop processes for:

• Weekly performance report
• Weekly trend graphs
• Weekly departmental performance review meeting
• Barrier code Pareto analysis
• Standardized data capture and reporting systems
• Management report 

In conjunction with maintenance management, The Highland Group created and implemented a comprehensive, multi-level management control and reporting system for the maintenance organization, including:

• Daily/weekly reporting that included integrated weekly performance report and weekly performance review meetings.
• Agreed upon performance indicators rolled out across the entire site and departmental goals and targets for each performance indicator.
• A consolidated reporting structure and data gathering system robust enough to service a diverse maintenance organization using one unified approach.

 
The Results:

This was one component of an integrated project that:

• Produced  $70 million dollars in annualized savings
• Improved budget attainment for Hydro-transport Outages by 41%, despite a 24% increase in material cost, 14% increase in equipment cost and a 6.5% labor rate increase
• Reduced Contractor overtime by 24%
• Reduced permit field authorization by 34 minutes 
• Improved “Time on Tools” from 31% to 34%
• Improved supervisory behaviors and employee morale
• An agreed upon set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) used by all routine maintenance organizations across all plant sites

This specific effort contributed:

• The first ever standardized weekly Maintenance Performance Report
• An effective cross functional review meeting actively addressing maintenance performance issues
• Improved communication between planning & maintenance
• A clear understanding by the maintenance leadership of the major issues and barriers effecting departmental performance