15OrganizationOfTheMaintenanceDepartment PT4– Click To Download PDF

ORGANIZATION OF THE MAINTENANCE DEPARTMENT

(Part 4)
Albert K. Fletcher
CEO/PM Consultant
(Dataman System Consultancy)

SPAN OF CONTROL (continued)

In addition to these responsibilities, which cannot be transferred, there are a variety of staff “assignments” that the first-line supervisor must undertake whenever they are not provided by others. These include:

  • Auditing and control reporting

  • Machinery and machinery restoration knowledge

  • Determination that the right work has been described and assigned

  • Ensuring that individual jobs are planned properly, in the proper stepwise fashion, and using the proper methods

  • Ensuring that the proper tools, machines, materials, and parts are available when and where needed

With these responsibilities, the supervisor is limited in the number of employees he can control, even when needed staff work is provided by others. This “span of control” can vary:

  • 1–2 craftsmen per supervisor when every action requires a new judgment determination

  • Up to 25 craftsmen when the job is highly repetitive and work quality is easy to determine

A supervisor’s span of control depends on:

  • Experience and skill levels of his craftsmen

  • Geographical area he must cover

  • Type of work involved (repetitive vs. once-only, as in new construction)

  • Amount of staff work he must perform

Generally, the maximum number of craftsmen an experienced supervisor can control averages about 12, though it may vary. This maximum can be reached only when adequate staff assistance is available. The work sampling technique of an Industrial Engineer can, and should, be adapted to determine whether the number of supervisors is optimum for the number of hourly employees.

Certain staff activities can be related to the number of hourly or craft employees:

  • One Planner/Scheduler is generally optimum for every 30–40 craftsmen

  • Other staff activities vary depending on the type of plant, its age, process complexity, and required reliability

A careful review of the functional outline can be used to estimate how many line and staff people are required for the optimum organization.

MAINTENANCE FUNCTIONAL OUTLINE

Regardless of plant size, the maintenance organization must be able to accomplish all of the following, which suggest types of effort covering the line activities of the Department:

A. SERVICE Effort

Service effort describes activities of the Maintenance Department which aid the flow of the product but are not related to Repair and Maintenance (R & M), capital work, or facilities improvement.

Service work includes, but is not limited to:

  • Utilities generation

  • Raw material handling and storage

Sometimes service work is assigned to maintenance for convenience, or because of the skills and tools of the Maintenance Department.

B. FIELD Effort

Field effort is primarily restoration work with the production areas as the “fields.”

  • Tools are brought to the work rather than the vice versa

  • Ideally, field effort includes major maintenance, preventive maintenance, and replacement of units restored in shops, where environment, tools, equipment, and supervision are better

When the formal organization involves area forces, the plant is generally too large to be maintained solely from central shops.

Field or area organizations may also exist for:

  • Equipment size or geographic reasons

  • Psychological reasons – maintaining a parallel structure to production helps demonstrate to each production unit that there is a corresponding maintenance unit addressing its problems

C. PROJECT Work

Project work may include:

  • Restoration in large units, e.g., overhauls

  • Field construction, e.g., new facilities

When normally assigned field crews are inadequate for the size of the project, they may be augmented from project forces. Responsibility for the work resides with the field or area maintenance people, while the project crew acts as “sub-contractors” to the area people.

Additionally, the project organization is the proper home for craft specialists needed anywhere in the plant but not on a continuous basis, such as:

  • Civil trades: carpenters, masons, painters

  • Technical specialists: riggers, scaffold men, boilermakers, mechanics, plumbers

(End Part 4 – To be continued)

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