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From vicious to virtuous: how ERPs can help turn the circle in maintenance performance


The way in which Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications are used to support maintenance processes in many asset intensive industries (like oil and gas) is often stuck in a vicious cycle that not only fails to deliver on efficiency gains but actually destroys value. 

Poor quality master data and repair history data mean that the preventive maintenance (PM) schedules produced automatically by the ERP system are not trusted. Not only does this force maintenance managers to do their planning on side applications or spreadsheets it means that the benefit of seamless integration with the ERP’s material requirements planning and procurement modules becomes heavily impaired.  This makes the forward planning of materials and specialist services purchasing more problematic leading to frequent postponement of maintenance work due to non-availability of materials.  Such churn in the maintenance schedule requires further manual re-planning contributing to a descending spiral of inefficient working.

When it comes to corrective maintenance (CM), in chronic situations, any items identified through monitoring or visual inspections may not even make it onto the ERP.  “Bucket” job codes, that are never closed,  are used to enable materials and services required to be ordered.  Information about the module or component repaired and actual work carried out are completely lost.  Even for PM, the completion of closeout information for a maintenance job can be sketchy or non-existent.   Both cases lead to maintenance planning decisions being made without vital information to hand. For example, if a valve has been repaired three times over a two year period the information will not be available to make the decision to replace rather than repair.  If maintenance techs or operators do not remember that this valve has required repair three times recently, then the next time the problem occurs it will just go into the CM action bucket further contributing to the vicious circle by inflating the maintenance workload.

A strong contributing factor to the mis-use of ERPs in the maintenance process are their very complexity.  For maintenance supervisors and technicians using the ERP system is a small part of their day.  So the multiple fields that are required to be filled, notation required and codes to be remebered, all become an obstacle to these infrequent users closing out their maintenance jobs.  Rather than being seen as a vital tool in delivering the maintenance schedule, the ERP is seen as an hurdle.  Work gets done in spite of the system not because of it.

Turning the circle on maintenance is a serious challenge.  One way it has been done successfully is to remove ERP entry from the front line maintenance staff and create an expert bureau to handle all the key steps in the maintenance delivery process.  In this case “Expert” means taking discipline engineers with knowledge of the asset, immersing them in the ERP to a level on a par with system vendor consultants and getting them to carry out the key steps:

·         Solution identification

·         Work planning

·         Procurement liaison

·         Work pack confirmation

·         Liaison with maintenance supervisors and technicians

·         Job closeout

The deep professionalization in the way the ERP is used and the increase in “wrench time” for the maintenance technicians means that dramatic improvements in process efficiency (high nineties compliance with PM and CM targets) outweigh the cost of setting up a small specialist group.  Day to day working can be further enhanced by having procurement staff and operational planners co-located in the specialist bureau.

Having a bureau also enables a “just in time” approach to be taken to fixing master data.  As part of the work planning step the completeness and accuracy of the master data, the representation of the module or component on the ERP system, is checked and fixed by the expert bureau.  Years of the vicious circle of maintenance will mean that the master data is in a parlous state and correcting it is more often than not placed in the “too difficult” pile by senior managers.  This expert bureau approach allows it to be done without kicking off a costly and difficult master data correction project.

In my experience turning the circle from vicious to virtuous has little to do with the capabilities of the ERP itself but is about organisation, process and culture.  Some specific success factors are:

·         Communication and trust between the expert bureau and the maintenance teams bolstered by having credible experts in the bureau

·         Professionalisation of the use of the ERP system – getting the entries right is seen as key to completing the job correctly

·         Everything on the ERP – from corrective notifications, to the maintenance schedule, to task list commentaries, to closeout notes – everything should be on the ERP and viewable to help plan future maintenance

·         Treating the ERP data as an asset requiring the same care, maintenance and integrity as the physical assets themselves

Such an approach can be extended to other complex processes such as Projects (major development projects and well delivery), where accuracy and process compliance is mission critical but where key users (project teams) enter data on the ERP infrequently.



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