Smart Shutdowns: Avoid Costly Mistakes with Your Outages

The technical database is all the information needed to plan and schedule efficiently and effectively. Having the eight components of the technical database in place will allow quick determination of the what, how, how long, who, and when of a maintenance job. Application of three simple best practices will generate the most value from the technical database. Focus on developing a technical database that is accurate, accessible, and applied.

Manufacturing facilities know downtime is money.  Every hour you are offline for a shutdown is costly from both lost revenue and cost of the workforce employed to maintain the facility. This article will discuss the 5 steps to Best Practices that will optimize your shutdown program.

It’s common knowledge that increasing the share of planned maintenance over the time spent on breakdowns should be a top priority for forward-thinking maintenance organizations. The financial benefits of that strategy, however, may not be readily apparent.

Estimating lays the foundation for planning, scheduling, and management of business critical projects. It is also critical for budgeting, bidding and contracting. Achieving consistent, quality estimates is critical to business success. However, many companies lack systems and procedures to ensure consistency in estimating across the enterprise and easily define, benchmark, and refine corporate estimating standards. The potential long term benefits of instituting an effective solution to this problem are enormous.

There are three best practices that will allow equipment drawings, manuals, and pictures to enable high quality planning and scheduling. Focus on keeping the documents accurate, accessible, and applied.

The technical database plays a critical role as an enabler to the planning and scheduling process. The results of a poor technical database are often hidden but can be substantial. To function well, all eight components of the technical database need to be accurate, accessible, and applied during the planning and scheduling process. Benefits of complete bills of material, well labeled equipment in the field, and easy access to original equipment manufacturer procedures will lead to high quality standard job plans that are produced quickly and reliably.

Cutting costs has become a high priority, due to the recent economic conditions. Maintenance shutdowns are a major part of the annual budget at most mills, and are usually a target for cost reduction. Maintenance shutdown costs can be reduced by 30-50 percent from historical levels, with start up after the outage occurring smoothly and predictably. Using simple and effective shutdown management techniques can result in such improvements, creating savings equal to several weeks of additional production each year. This can be done without sacrificing any work, or canceling any scheduled downtime.